Jan. 27, 2012 - Sixth Grade Intermission

I've been pretty caught up with the ocean shipment, so I forgot to share this exciting bit of news: we sold our house!  We actually got three offers on the house, and in consultation with Cartus, the relocation company, we accepted the best one.  Cartus now owns our house; the relocation company, on behalf of Exxon, buys the house from us, and then they are the people who deal with the sale to the new buyer.  We had only until the end of January to sell the house ourselves and be eligible for the incentive payment.  Otherwise, we would have had to take the company's guaranteed offer.  We made it with time to spare.  Yay!!

Since I'm working on the disaster that we currently call home, Greer is going to write today's entry so she can tell you about the "extended campus activity" in which the sixth grade recently got to participate.  Wednesday through Friday of this week is what is called "intermission" at the middle school, and each grade has a special program.  For sixth grade, the first two days the students have Japanese cultural experiences and special activities on campus.  The third day they participate in an exchange with a Japanese school.  Here's Greer:

On day one, we started at our advisory class and then we headed down to sumi-e (a kind of painting).  Our teacher taught us how to do bamboo, grapes, dragons, and many more!  Here is a picture of my favorite one!

I loved doing it, it was art in a new way!
After sumi-e, we headed down to Taekwondo (the teaching of kicking and punching).  The teacher told us that it was from Korea.  We learned the basic ten blocks, 2 different types of kicks, and 2 different types of punches.  After that activity, we headed down to the commons and (me and Zoe) watched people sing karaoke.  If you know me well enough, you know I would never ever go up and sing like everyone else did.  Finally, we had lunch.  I had a buttered bagel, vegetables, and some water.  Then right after lunch, we had a yakisoba cooking class with my homeroom teacher.  First we cut up all the vegetables.  Then we put the oil on the pan with the onions.  Once the onions were brown, we added peppers and cabbage.  Then they cooked for a while and we put in meat (don't worry, it was already cooked) and then the noodles with some sauce.  Bon Appetit! I brought it home and everyone tried it! :)

The next day, we started at taiko drumming.  It gave me a headache!  We yelled, shouted, and pounded on the drums!  It was sooooo loud!  Thankfully, the session eventually ended.  After that, we headed to zori. Zori are shoes woven from straw. Here is a picture of my masterpiece:

I am proud to say mine was the best in the class and everyone else's was falling apart because they didn't weave it tight enough!  Any way, I am glad mine turned out the way it was even though it could have been a little wider and a 1/2 inch shorter.  After that class, we had karaoke and lunch. After that, my class took a hike with Mr. Gibson through Nogawa Park.  After 1 mile of walking, we got to a statue of some sort and he told us that he has a story about it that he will tell us later when we get to a good spot.  So we walked some more and Mr.Gibson (a different story) told us about how in the 1900's, a farmer looking for young bamboo shoots was digging and then the ground started to cave in.  So he dug some more.  Then the farmer found a tomb and he contacted the nearest place where scientists were.  They found out that 12 thousand years ago, there had been people living in Japan.  So Japan built a little museum and Mr.Gibson brought the girls in for us to see first. He pointed out four skulls and he said see those 2?  And that one that is split in half?  And also that one that seems to be looking right at . . . Then he scares all the girls, well except for me and 2 others, by grabbing us all and screaming.  You should have seen it!  All the girls were screaming their heads off and the boys looked in the door and started laughing!  Well, it was funny.  So we started walking back to the school and we stopped at a pile of ashes in the middle of a rice farm, where Mr. Gibson told us another story (the one about the statue).  Everyone believed it until he said "Before you go to bed tonight, pray that Mr. Gibson will never tell you such a stupid story again."  (He has been telling this made-up story for 12 years.)


The next day, as soon as we arrived at school, we re-boarded the bus.  This time in color groups so that we could have groups at Chofu-Daiichi and there would be no confusion.  When we arrived, we were greeted by a Chofu-Daiichi student with a sign.  We put on slippers and followed them inside to the gym.  Their gym was freezing!  But after greetings, a game of dodgeball was organized.  Chofu-Daiichi aganist ASIJ!  Well, we took it easy on them the first game, but they beat us!  But on the second game we beat them!  But it was very close. . . . Next we got back organized in our color groups and we went to different activities.  The first one was where we drew japanese symbols.  I chose the symbol for sushi.  After that, we did some traditional Japanese games.  One of them was a game where you have 8 desks for each team.  There are 2 teams, 1 girl team and 1 boy team.  (The girls always won.)  Each team would stand on top of the desks and they would play rock, paper, scissors.  Every time a team lost, they would take away a desk.  You have to fit your whole team on the desks; if a person fell off or your team had 2 desks left, you lost.  It was really fun.  After part of the day with Chofu-Daiichi, we headed home on the buses with a partner from Chofu-Daiichi.  I got a quiet girl named Yume.  She tried to talk to me in Japanese, but after a few minutes she finally understood me when I said "I'm new, I don't speak Japanese."  So she asked me a question in English. "Do you swim?"  I said yes and she said she did too.  That was pretty much our whole conversation for 30 minutes.  Once we got to the school, I took her to the lunch room and put her stuff down by our table. I showed her the different options and made sure she got the one she wanted.  Once she was seated, I got shredded beef with bell peppers which in fact was very good.  After lunch, our group led the Japanese to many activities, including kickball, pictionary, and flag football.  Then we said goodbye and they took the train home!  End of story, ta da! Well, I finally remembered to take home my art stuff.