Post-Halloween Thoughts

So, Halloween has been over for 10 days now, and the horrific flashbacks have finally started to fade.  My dreams are no longer haunted by the sound of paper crinkling and scotch tape being peeled off the roll.  Life has settled nicely into the post halloween, downward slope into the Christmas holidays.  Speaking of downward slopes, I finally have some plans for my holiday!  I recently decided to stay in Japan, instead of coming home (sorry Mom, but I can't pass up the chance to travel around Japan) but I didn't have any definite ideas about how to occupy my time.  My fellow OBC teachers are both leaving the country, so I will be the only one here, and that had me feeling a bit nervous.  However, thanks to my wonderful friends here, I have a tentative plan to hit the slopes and do a little snowboarding in Nagano Prefecture.  I have to say, the idea of tearing up the same slopes as the '98 Winter Olympians is pretty exciting.  So, no need to worry Madre, I will not be spending Christmas all alone!

My Room, complete with the
Rocky Mountains and the Grand
Canyon

But, I digress.  Back to Halloween.  My responsibility for OBC's Halloween party was to create a game involving English and some aspect of American culture, that 5 or 6 six kids could do at one time and took roughly five minutes to complete.  The party would have about 50 students in attendance, only half of which would be actual OBC students, the other half would be friends and family members.  With the help of the wonderful Sydney Rajchel and my loving mother, I decided to turn my classroom into a road map of 'America.'  I chose 4 destinations:  Disney World, Target Field, the Statue of Liberty, and the Grand Canyon, and my students had to navigate a road map and overcome a few obstacles to find their destination.  When they arrived, they got a postcard that I had made and some candy.  Turning a classroom into something interesting enough to hold the attention of a bunch of 4 to 14 year old students was just as difficult as it sounds.  I spent more time taping sheets of paper together than I would I ever like to repeat.  Thus the aforementioned flashbacks and sound induced nightmares.  I also made a road out of paper for the kids to follow, and in order to prevent it from being destroyed by the sugar-crazed stompings of little children's feet, I taped it to the floor with industrial strength scotch tape.  This seemed like a good idea at the time, but after two hours of scrubbing the floor with paint thinner to remove the tape residue, I can tell you that it definitely wasn't.  To make up for the unpleasantness, I think our guests actually enjoyed themselves, so I suppose in the end, it really was worth it.  


Enough of Halloween, I don't want to stir up those memories any more than necessary.  As I said earlier, I'm on the downhill side.  Life is looking good from where I stand.  I feel confident when I walk into the classroom, I think most of my students like me, or at least think I am somewhat interesting, and best of all, I get to see Sydney in less than two months.  I'm doing alright.