School Day Adventure

So a couple of Tuesdays ago, I go to work. Tuesdays I teach at the special needs school up in the mountainous region of borderline Hofu. I absolutely adore that school. Well that day, for some reason my morning classes were cancelled. I teach Junior high there in the morning, and I think the junior high kids were taking their High School Entrance exams. So I was stretching out, getting ready to be on facebook all day. And then my supervisor comes and asks me if I wanted to take a walk! Money!

Another teacher joined, and we walked up and up. :) It ended up being about a 2 hour walk. We would have stayed at Seminar Park longer, but we had to get back for lunchtime.

Side-tangent--lunchtime at Hofu Minami koto shien gakko (special needs school) is awesome. The food is great, and the students and teachers all eat together.

Seminar Park reminded me of the Huntington Gardens, only more chill, and FREE. Love free places. :) Forests all around. Found lots of good hiding spots in case of zombies, or apocalypse.

Don't you love when lily-padded lakes are just silently chilling around your city? I do.

Here are the two teachers that took a walk with me. Okura sensei on the left (my supervisor at Hofu Minami koto shien gakko). and Otsuka sensei to the right. They are both super super nice. I don't even teach with Otsuka sensei, but next time I go there, they changed some schedules around so I can make a "guest appearance" in her class. haha. Okura sensei gives me a ride all the way home every time I work there. That is so above and beyond. Scheduling wise, I still have to walk TO the school, and it is really way far up there in the mountains, but it is good exercise and a beautiful view around me. I went hiking in those mountains with my friend Eric, which hopefully I'll get pictures up of sometime this year. :)

Not sure why I felt the urge to go for the carl's jr. star look. But I think I was just amazed at all the beautiful things around me, and the fact that there was no one else there. I mean, it was 11a on a Tuesday...wonder what this place looks like on weekends?

Above: This is one of the rockclimbing walls I'll be climbing later. You can see the one in the background too. There are four big rockclimbing walls that I will have access to after I get rockclimbing certified. I only found out about the class because of this walk I took with the 2 teachers. So happy I went out. I love beautiful days in Japan. A beautiful day in Japan is about twice as beautiful as a beautiful day in California. Too bad a bad day is three times as bad. hehe.

So later on in the day Okura Sensei brought me to go watch tea ceremony. Like I said, I only had 1 or 2 classes this day, so she wanted to show me a lot of things while I had the free time. :)

I ended up taking part in the ceremony. I got served. It was excruciatingly painful to sit on my legs for the 20 or so minutes. My legs just aren't built like that. I wonder if I'd get used to it, or not. Don't want to have to try.

I really like the tea-ceremony teacher. She also does a lot a hiking and such, so she will go hiking with me one day.

There is a special way to both deliver and to drink the tea. Here the teacher is showing them how they must rotate the cup, right before delivering it to their person. I'm not really sure what all the big deal with tea ceremony is. I know its traditional and important and stuff. I just don't get it.