Some flowers

It's not often you receive flowers so I thought I should celebrate it by posting it here. These were given to me by the kindy kids at the end of their graduation party. It's a pretty odd mix of flowers I think - but then not having received bunches of flowers in the past I guess I wouldn't really be the one to judge! Anyway, they are currently brightening up the kitchen in a way that dirty dishes can't.

Today I have my last English class in Japan. Year 5s. That means that of the 9 hours I am at school I will only be actually working 45 minutes! Wacky-do. And next week I am here for a grand total of 45 hours without actually working a single one. Might have to visit the library in Okayama and get a fair few reading materials out I reckon. On Wednesday my year 3 class gave me letters they had written thanking me for teaching them through the semester. Some of them were heaps vanilla and probably copied off each other, but others were heaps funny. It's good to get feedback from the kids on paper I think because they aren't standing up in front of the class and thus are more likely to say what they are actually thinking about it all. One kid said that she hated English last year but now she loves it and will work harder next year so she can get really good. A lot of them noted that in the beginning they couldn't say "ambulance" but by the end they could and they were happy about that - but they all wrote the word "ambulance" in Japanese script, so spelt phonetically, and they all had obviously heard a different pronunciation because they all spelt it differently which was interesting.