Christmas lessons, exam week, and junk food (but not too much)

So things are beginning to slow down now after a hectic past few weeks. Last week and the week before I was getting all of my classes in with their final lessons before exam week this week. I did a Christmas lesson with my first year Oral Communication classes. There wasn't a lot of oral communicating going on I guess but it was still a fun lesson. We did a white elephant gift game. You know, the game where you can keep your present or trade with someone else (that's my class version.) I made some of the gifts and bought the rest at the 100yen store. Before this job I would have griped heavily (and did) about spending any of my own money on stuff for classes, but I didn't really mind this time. It was actually kind of a treat for me. The gifts that were stolen from other people (or traded in this case) most often were the Dave Matthews Band and Coldplay CDs I burned, the Christmas card signed by me and Andrea (mostly stolen by girls), and the 100yen coin. I found this odd because it was just 100yen (roughly equivalent to $1) but these kids wanted that money. I guess they needed to buy something to drink at lunch. So anyway, that was a lot of fun and the students really enjoyed getting gifts no matter how small and inexpensive they were.

So this week has been exam week. It's weird because there are actually two more weeks of classes after this before winter break, but it's just one of those things you don't question because there probably isn't an answer. So I wrote all of my tests last week and have been grading this week. It's nice because unlike most ALTs (including Kelly) I have someone to split the duty with. But I graded 122 OC tests, 120 English II tests, and about 75 International Course tests complete with essays which are always fun to grade. It gets to the point when reading essays where I'm not even sure what's proper English anymore. Our OC students did the best by far. I actually thought the test was going to be a bit hard but they all did well. Well, there are always exceptions of course, but for the most part they all did well. So they've earned themselves a harder test next term! Haha!

Other than that not too much is going on. We had a Thanksgiving dinner last Saturday at a friend's house in Fujinomiya. We all had to work on Thanksgiving so we made up for it on the weekend. There were six of us there and we had chicken (no turkeys to be found in our city), mashed potatoes, sweet potatoes (made by Kelly), green bean casserole, dressing, homemade rolls (made by Kelly), and pumpkin pie. It was all very good. Then we sat around and played Wii and some other games for the rest of the day. Here's a picture of the food:

There are more pictures from the event on Flickr.

あの...other than that, I'm getting ready for a two week break coming up in a few weeks. One week that I'm taking off and one that I'm given off. Kelly is leaving next weekend to go on her trip through Abilene and Nashville. She'll be gone for 10 days so I'll have plenty of time to get myself in trouble. :)

Last few notes, I took my first test from the JET Program Japanese language course. You take it on your own but I didn't look at the book or any dictionaries or anything while I took it (even though you're allowed to.) After I finished, I checked my answers and only missed 2 out of 40. So I was pretty pleased with that. Now it's time to start on month two.

And finally, just to show how immersed into the Japanese culture I am getting, I realized today that my taste for sweets is not as it used to be. This morning I made my daily stop at 7-11 to get my breakfast and lunch and they were out egg, ham, and lettuce sandwiches (my usual breakfast.) So I looked around at what else I could get and saw some doughnuts covered with icing and sprinkles. I used to be a sucker for doughnuts, especially ones covered or filled with any type of icing or frosting, but as soon as I considered getting it my stomach turned at the thought of eating anything that sweet for breakfast. So I turned around and got a microwaveable ham and cheese burrito instead. Hey, I didn't say I've lost my taste for unhealthy food!