Week 2: Said and Done.

Whew! What a week. Our first week of camp with kids went wonderfully. We had thirteen campers (all 3-4 years old) in my classroom for the morning sessions, and only 6 in the afternoon. I think that was the perfect break into camp so we could establish what we’d be doing and really get to know each other in a work setting before we get into the big numbers (We’ll be up to about twenty in a couple weeks). We take the kids swimming and to the park every day (morning and afternoon switch between the two) and between that and art projects and snacks the day is pretty full. There are only a few really spoiled kids (the ones that cry about everything we do because it’s not their idea or they’re afraid to get dirty), which is nice as I expected a lot more (I figured Embassy kids would be spoiled). The girl I work with in my classroom, Lora, is a very good worker and the two of us keep the classroom running pretty well.
(These are pictures of our room - I am pretty proud of my tree idea most of all)

I certainly have not let the weekend slip away. We walked around town Friday night, and I met some cool skateboarders – of course I asked if I could borrow a board and made a fool of myself trying to do tricks on the brick street, but I felt pretty cool when would even try a trick. A bunch of us had a slumber party in one of the girls’ hotel rooms and after three hours of sleep, we got up at 4:30am to go to a fish market. Supposedly, 90% of the fish bought in Japan is sold at that market between 3am and 8am every morning. I think we missed the real rush since we didn’t arrive until about 5:30 or 6, but it was REALLY cool to see how fast everyone was moving, and all of the different fish, and the whole backstage of where my food comes from! Only four of us were brave enough to stick around afterward for breakfast. I had raw cuttlefish tentacles, egg sushi, a snow crab hand roll, and a tuna hand roll for breakfast. I was a little disappointed because I think it was yesterday’s fish, not fresh from the fish market as we had hoped, but it was still pretty good. After breakfast we walked around the outside of the market where a whole farmers market of fish was set up for blocks around. We tried tons of free samples - a lot of completely unidentifiable things… some of which were better than others. After a nap we headed out to Shibuya, the largest intersection in the world (woo hoo…?) to do some shopping. It was not the highlight of my week, but it was fun. Then, after some dinner (yay oatmeal!) a few of us headed back to Shibuya for some clubbing, which turned into our first night of karaoke! I was a little sad because, apparently, karaoke in most Japan is all private. You pay for a room for a certain amount of time, and your group all just sings to one another. So, we didn’t get to see any Japanese karaoke, and we didn’t get a chance to publicly embarrass ourselves, but we did have a really good time. Hopefully we’ll be able to find a public karaoke sometime.
Today they say a tropical storm is moving in, so it is all rain all day. This works out well for me so I do not feel bad about having to spend the whole day inside doing programming for camp. Yes, I came all the way to Tokyo to do more Camp Adventure homework. Oh well. It’ll be nice to just stay in for once, I suppose.
I hope everyone is well – thanks for keeping up with me! Please enjoy this video I made of the fish market yesterday!