Sports Day

Today was sports day at my school. Not the big one, the little post finals sports day where each class competes against each other in various activities. On today's line up was beach volleyball, volleyball, mini-soccer and soft-ball. It was hot and humid today both inside and out so I chose to be out. I watched softball all day and now I'm sun burned. Fun.

We also had a mini pep rally for the baseball team who will be competing in the prefecutural tounament this weekend. My kids are great, but they definitely lack cohesive school pride. They tried practicing a cheer and I could hardly hear them. I can yell louder than all my students put together!!

The day's almost over and I've got one more thing to do today...my farewell party. It's not really my farewell party...there's always a party after events like sports day, it just falls conveniently within the time that I'm leaving so now it has become my farewell party. Oh well. I would be looking forward to it a lot more except that I have to say a speech - in Japanese. I am still quite ashamed at my inability to pick up this language. I get better and better at understanding it, listening to it but to respond. To actually produce coherent sentences is still beyond my ability. I've written the speech out in English and have asked one of the English teachers to translate it for me. It's now 4:00, the party starts at 5:30. I don' t have the speach back yet...sigh. I'm going to have to drink a lot of beer tonight to get through this.