On the run in to June..
Weekend was good with a good session rounding off about 4am Sun nite and up for a sports day Sun am, not so pretty but turned out to be cancelled anyway. Leaving me and Carrie to pig out on pizza at Yuko's place instead of running around with 10 year olds, a better option for the day that was in it we stil believe. Went for a spin on bikes with Iain on Sat, more like a 2-wheeled climb up aload of hills around Maruyama Koen with me puffing behind. Sekushi!

Funniest thing about today was a lunchtime q from a rocking out ichi-nen sei gal .. When it comes to eating crepes what do you like to have inside" (rough translation) , I answered, bananas and cream and strawberry aisu! thought that was very sweet q and a good measure of my personality if ever there was one.
will be in touch!
MAeve

Toya-Ko Marathon 2007. 1 year on 5 minutes faster!
Hope the summer is a rolling in there just as the weather picks up here too after heaps of rain. 5 of us went down to Lake Toya, about 3 hours outside Sapporo and we ran various distances there! I did the 10K in 52m43s so was pleased with that!! strong head wind honest! Mano and Jeff also did the 10K in more like 48mins as the head wind had just cleared by the time they caught up to me!! and Theresa and Tim ran the full marathon, Theresa ran it in 3hrs 39 mins , pretty amazing. tim was just using it as training and you can see a pic of him with his hands over his head just after he got in. A full marathon is still under half of what he has to run in a few weeks. He is now in training for his ultra marathon in June (all 100K!! of it). Great weekend, we camped out like gypsies the night before heating up our pasta on the stove in the hotel room!!

All go here with plans to make the most of my last 11 weekends!! Can you believe it. The job hunt for teaching in Sept. is in process and have decided to run another fundraiser here for ARV, my new found favorite amazing association in India. Myself and Carrie (the Patricks day planners ) are going to have a beach party by the river on June 16th ., Theresa and Tim(in the photos here) are going to help us too, as they led our group to India in May.

Best sign off and get back to drafting a few letters. Doing what I do best , plaguing people. The hunt for sponsorship for our fundraiser is on!!
Love in Summery Sapporo

I was teaching the grammar point "Would you like to come home with me? " in formal classes today to 3 nen sei.
Thinking of their futures or what!!

To Omiyage or not to Omiyage, that is the question!

So I brought back omiyage from India to give to my new school and I ploitely suggested that they didn't have to eat it if they thought it didn't look appetising (as it's not wrapped in 50 trees to keep it clean) but By God had they no intentions of being polite about it anyway... so 4 teachers stood around pointing and laughing at my box of sweets and one took a taste and started shouting 'Mazui Mazui ' which means tastes terrible , ooh yuck! The nice sealed (expensive) chai tea that I bought for them in Duty Free also caused a stir, not only because the instructions were written in English and one knowledgable chap was unsucessfully convincing them that many people can speak English in India (so wished I knew the Japanese for 'official language' at that point) but this foreign tea also meant they'd have to drink it with milk. The ensuing heeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeyyyyyyyy that followed this revelation still rings in my ears...

Well if you didn't laugh, you'd cry I tell ya!! Never any harm to seek revenge for all those times Anko and Mochi were forced upon me in various staffrooms along the way...