ネイティブが教える英会話のジェムスクール☆Teachers☆

Recently Sadie and I received a care package from my parents. They sent us two heavy boxes filled with goodies we miss as well as some very useful items. For the next few weeks we will be sharing the contents of it with you! For my 21st birthday my parents gave me a very nice and expensive watch. Everyone has those things that they just wish they could have. For some its cars, houses, boats etc, in my case its watches. My previous watch I forgot to take off during a soccer game and the sweat destroyed it. I spent roughly a year and a half without a watch, mainly because I couldn’t find one I liked. I can be very picky when it comes to watches and the ones I did like were simply outside my price range.

I haven’t been able to use my watch since I arrived in Japan, and this is because it has the wrong time. I need to change the time zone and turn off the daylight savings feature. Even though this might sound easy it’s like defusing a bomb with a hidden timer! If you don’t take the proper steps you might end up with the wrong day, you can get the leap year incorrect, or maybe even fall behind or jump forward an hour in a few months time. The watch is fairly high tech and it came with instructions on a CD. I have not been able to find the instructions online but now I have the CD! Thank you Mom and Dad! The watch never requires a battery change because it uses sunlight as its source of energy. In order to make sure that it doesn’t die I let bathe in the sun from time to time.

Do you like watches? Whats the one thing you wish you could collect?  

Team "Fancy Ladies" Rose, Kimiko, Callem (who is not a lady) and Me

Two weeks ago, I went to a Pub Quiz. It was an event organized by other foreigners that live in Japan. There were about 25 of us that were able to go. We went to an Irish pub (a kind of bar) and joined up into random teams. Our hostess read the questions aloud while the teams wrote down our answers on a sheet of paper.

I had Rose and my friend Kimiko on my team. I met Kimiko at a Marugame castle party last year. A super nice guy named Callem was on our team but we named ourselves the "Fancy Ladies" anyway. We all had a really great time! There were not enough pop-culture (movie, music, tv, comics) questions for me to be of much help, but I loved working with my team to come up with answers. I even got a Battle Royal question wrong and I LOVE that movie!! I also spent a lot of the time trying to remember the name of an actor on our paper. I eventually worked it out. There were way too many sports questions!

I want to talk with these other English teachers even more and can't wait for there to be a Pub Quiz again!  

Spring is upon us!....is what I want to say, but somehow it is still getting cold out there! Brrr. Sometimes the changing of the seasons is too slow for me. One day it is beautiful outside, with the temperature allowing for maybe just a light sweater. The next day, it feels like the middle of winter, with sub-zero temperatures (just an exaggeration, haha). Still, slowly but surely Spring is approaching. And back in the states it is around this time that we do some "Spring Cleaning"! It differs from place to place, but for me, at least, it means cleaning up the mess that winter left behind. Or rather, the mess I left behind that winter covered up, hahaha. At my mother's home, we have a lot of trees, which have lots of leaves that all fall off. Of course, one should rake them all up before the onset of winter, and I strongly suggest you do, based on experience. Otherwise, you will have to deal with a lot of soggy, muddy, and especially heavy leaves that you still have to clean up. It will just be a bit harder, maybe take a lot longer than if they were dry. Spring cleaning can also mean a general cleaning of the house, both inside and out, after a long winter. Get out all the garbage that you couldn't deal with when it was cold. Change out your clothes, putting away your winter gear and taking out your spring wear. I can't do that here, mainly because I don't really have many clothes right now. With all the clothes I own now, I barely fill up my closet. So I currently don't have "seasonal clothes". I need to do some shopping, which I may be able to do soon. But it will be a while, I think, before I have enough clothes to switch out for each season. Hahaha, so in the end, for me, it won't be so much a "Spring Cleaning", but rather "Spring Shopping"!