ネイティブが教える英会話のジェムスクール☆Teachers☆

In several towns and cities in the US have something called the "Rubber Duck Race" is held. Thousands of rubber ducks are set loose into a river. I once went to one in Breckenridge Colorado where it's a 30 year tradition. You can "adopt" a duck to send down the river and the money generally goes to a charity or fundraiser.
  

Many years ago I went to Germany with my family. We went and saw Neuschwanstein Castle. It was in many movies and watch said to be the inspiration for the Disney Sleeping Beauty Castle. It was constructed near the end of the 19th century so Ludwig II of Bavaria could live out his idea of the middle ages.

  

The renaissance festival it one of the most popular summer attractions in Colorado. It's where people will come to dress up as knights, princesses, or other figures from the medieval to the renaissance time periods. There are also hundreds of booths that sell crafts or games themed around these periods, and there are stage preformances and jousting matches held throughout the day. While you dont have to dress up-- it's a lot of fun to. They sell costumes at the festival too. Fantasy things like dragons and fairies are common here as well.

  

A common place I’d go with friends in Colorado Springs was an Escape Room. You’re locked into a room full of puzzles and you have to solve those puzzles to get out or solve a mystery. They’re relatively popular and are usually full unless you book a room early.
You are usually given an hour to solve the room and/or escape. There are many locked boxes, codes, ciphers, and keys to find. The more boxes you unlock and more information you find the closer you get to solving the final puzzle and escape.

I’ve been to many themed Escape rooms around Colorado Springs. One was a horror room in which we had to escape a murders house before he returned; this one had multiple rooms to it that we unlocked throughout the hour. Another we had broken into a lab of a crazy scientist to steal an antidote.
There are many, many, more themes and premises these escape rooms have, so the puzzles and rooms are always different. It’s definitely a lot of fun and teamwork oriented.


  

Some time ago I drove to the state of New Mexico with some friends. Its about a 6 hour drive through mostly planes, so it can be a pretty boring drive. When we got to our location we stopped at a Denny's for a while. After a couple hours we returned to the parking lot to find the most aggressively American car we've ever seen. Painted bumper to bumper with red, blue, and white, littered with various "american" quotes. About 4 US flags strapped to the top and a small bald eagle glued to the front. It was such a strange and funny sight we took several pictures by it and waited for some time to see if the owner would return. We never got to meet to owner since he didn't come back before we had to leave, but I'm sure he would've been an interesting

fellow.  

I spent the entire day before my flight to Japan moving the last of my stuff into storage. I got about 2 hours of sleep and was on the road at 4am to Denver International Airport. My friend drove me through the troll road instead of the free road to get me there on time. I'll have to send him gifts back to Colorado for that... I managed to get to my gate 30 minutes before my flight to Vancouver Canada. I don't really remember that flight. I think I might've just repressed that memory. After landing in Canada I discovered the country can truly be summarized in one word: maple.

I got on my final flight to Osaka. It was a large 787 plane, but it was practically empty. Almost everyone had 3 seats to themselves. This meant I and everyone else could just lay across our rows for the flight... and that's exactly what we all did-- It's probably the first time I've actually fallen asleep on a plane.



So here's the thing... I've lived in Colorado for most my life. It's far away from any ocean and a mile above sea level. It doesn't get humid that often, nor is the humidity high. Once landed the wall of humid air hit immediately. Before I had been wearing a thick wool coat that couldn't fit in my bags. It was only mildly discomforting with low humidity and 80°F temperatures, but when this wall hit I knew I'd probably just end up collapsing from heat if I kept wearing it. I ended up tying the coat to my suitcase.

All I had left was a 2 hour bus ride. Luckily the buses here in Japan are actually nice and well kept... unlike the Greyhound buses in the USA. Greyhound buses are basically the long distance buses in the states. You get on them in a building that looks like it's been abandoned for a decade, and get on with people of questionable character. The seats are worn down as much as the bus itself, and you wonder if they've been cleaned since the 1900's. The bus I took here in Japan looked like new and even had reclining seats. Anyways, two hours of driving later I finally arrived in Takamatsu.