International Teaching: We Are All in the Same Place

I distinctly remember when John and I were about the head to Peru and thinking... this is going to be weird, working together.

Now, not working together seems even stranger.  There are so many perks of being all at the same place.  Once and a while, John and I have lunch together which is a nice treat.

But best of all, we get to participate in the kids' activities.  Last week John got to go to Kande Farms with Maximo as a part of their Farm to Table and Systems Unit and I was lucky enough to make bread with 36 second graders.

What They Want to Be When They Grow Up - 2015

Quotes...

"Um, Mom, do you know where soap comes from? [pause] Starfish blood."  - Lola

"Mom, I love you more when you are away." - Maximo 

[after I came back from two nights away, I hope it's his take on 'absence makes the heart grow fonder']

What We're Up to These Days

I love blogging and I hate that I am not blogging more here.  I am blogging a lot professionally and always sharing through social media, but I like the sharing of this space...

The sharing of our family, our life as expats...  I have hopes to write in this space more frequently... and I hope to make it happen soon.

For now, here are to little snapshots of life for us right now with Mo and Lo.

Maximo's First Presentation - Family Book

Maximo has a presentation tomorrow.  He brought his notes home to practice this weekend.  I think this may be the first oral presentation he has ever really done... and it's in Japanese.

Maximo is 7!

Maximo's Birthday dinner at the sushi go round.

We've had a busy 3 weeks back in Japan.

The first week was spent getting over jetlag.

The second week was spent going back to work.

This week was the first full week we had with students... and Maximo's 7th birthday.

Maximo's First Day of 1st Grade & Lola's first day of Pre-K3.

Here are pictures of his birthday party at the bowling alley...  and I've started a new album on the right - our autumn folder.

Maximo is 7 - Birthday Bowling Bash

Summer Photos

From Summer 2014

Where are you from?

Maximo is learning about Journeys for his Unit of Inquiry at school.  It has been great, because we have been able to participate in this unit quite a bit.  John went into Maximo's class last week to share with the class his journey to Aomori on the 8th grade ski trip.  They've had a lot of guest speakers who have shared their journeys with them, and they also had a travel agent come in as well.

Next week, they have their final "assessment"/action for the unit.  All the students will be travel agents and I get to be a prospective client.  Where do you think I want to go?  Definitely somewhere warm.

This unit has also opened a lot of discussions lately at our dinner table about journeys and why people take them and we've talked about different places around the world.

Today, Maximo started to scratch off places he's been on the map that Nana sent him.

After scratching off countries he's been to, he said, "Mom, I've been to eight places."

"Eight Countries."

"Yeah, eight countries.  I want to go to all the countries in the world.  I want to go to Antarctica and play with penguins and ski EVERYDAY."

"That sounds like fun, Maximo.  We'll go to a lot of countries together."

"Mom, where's Korea?"

"It's right there, Maximo."

"Yoonseo is from Korea."

"That's cool, Maximo."

"Maximo, where are you from?"

Pause.

"Peru."

"Yes, you were born there, but you aren't Peruvian."

"Are you Japanese?"

"Yes, a little bit."

The Dregs of Winter

It's cold.  We are inundated with work.
Sorry we haven't posted since the first of the year, but I think another (real) post will have to wait a bit longer.

So for now, enjoy snippets of the Little Lemleys.  Lola's getting big so fast, and we haven't been as good at documenting what's going on in her world and Maximo is doing well and becoming more and more independent every day.

We're also regularly posting on Instagram, so can checkout those pictures, too.

Hakuba, Japan - In Review

We went to Hakuba (which is part of Nagano Prefecture where Japan has hosted the Winter Olympics twice) for about a week over break.  While I wasn't begging to go skiing for our winter holiday, the moment the kids stepped into the snow, I knew John had made the right decision.

Growing up in Connecticut, I had always been around snow.  Not big beautiful, mountainous, there-is-snow-on the ground for five months kind of snow, but still, I definitely had many experiences in the snow as a kid.

Maximo in lessons using his "idgy widgy" or "pizza maker"

Lola catching snow on her tongue

We find that beach vacations are really easy with the kids, they love to swim and play all day and all four of us are content.  But, with only a tiny annoyance of having to pull a newly potty trained kid out of all of her ski gear, this ski trip maybe was just as easy.

"This is going to be the best day ever"

We stayed at Alpine Ski Chalet which was great for our family.  We always appreciate a place that we can make simple breakfast and/or snacks and a place that the kids can go to sleep and we are not stuck in the dark at 8 pm.  The owner, Kevin, really helped us out in planning for our trip and recommended that we ski at Iimori and take lessons at Hakuba Snow Sports School.  They had MANY English instructors which was great for us.

Maximo took three mornings of lessons and was skiing semi-independently by the end of the three days, John's skiing level improved greatly over the three days.  After the first day of lessons (and my third time skiing), I decided to not put Lola into daycare again and hang out with her and sled and play in the snow.  I really don't love skiing.  It does not come naturally to me and as an (has -been) athlete, it is frustrating.  I don't love the sensation of going down the hill, although it is beautiful.  So, I'll try again some other time when Lola is older and in her own lessons.

Hakuba, to a foreigner living in Japan, is kind of Bizarroland.  There are SO MANY foreigners, especially Australians.  There are many direct flights from Australia straight to Hakuba and it's definitely a destination vacation.  There were many times we didn't even feel like we were in Japan.  There was English everywhere, even taxi drivers spoke good English, everyone around us could actually understand everything we were saying and I only saw chopsticks at one of the restaurants we went to (or they just automatically offered us forks and knives).

Dinner with the Welbes Family every night.

That being said, it was a great family holiday.  John may even convince me to go on another ski holiday while we are living in Japan.  He is taking my place on the middle school ski trip in a few weeks, and I know he's excited about being able to go skiing again soon.

Christmas 2013

Maximo prepared a snack and wrote a letter to Santa this year...

Maximo's note and snack for Santa
He even colored his stocking, so Santa would know which one is his and which one is Lola's.
He also wrote his whole name because there "may be other Maximo's in the world".

I enjoyed baking this month - but now I'm done for a few months!

Opening up her stocking!

 Maximo asked Santa for fruit for his stocking.  This is due to the fact that he doesn't see commercials and has been watching some of our old Christmas specials where good kids get fruit in their stockings.  At least Santa was fancy and brought him a dragonfruit and a persimmon.

'Tis the Season

The weather is now cold.

We've eaten some delicious turkey for Thanksgiving.

...And now it is time to start the holiday cheer at Casa de Los Lemleys.

I've started a new photo album for Winter 2013-2014:  (Here is the completed Fall 2013 folder).

Today, we've also started the Christmas Countdown with Christmas stuffed animals and Snowman pancakes.  Maximo has the extra special treat of the Lego Star Wars Christmas Advent Calendar to open every morning too!

Christmas countdown activities2013 from Julie Lemley

Halloween 2013: Cross Cultural Holidays

A German candy (like gummy bears) made in Japan
 with the common R for an L mistake

Tonight we went to a faculty kids' Halloween party in "the backyard" at school.  It was supposed to be two weeks ago, but we have had a crazy fall of typhoons and rain, so it the first date was cancelled due to rain.  Since we had Fall Break last week, it was rescheduled until tonight. Maximo and Lola didn't know any difference.  I think they'd dress up every day of the year with or without the promise of candy anyways.

The kids had a great time.  Before we went to the party, I did a role play with Lola to make sure she remembered what she had to do to trick or treat.  She seemed to remember the "trick or treat" party and I loved her Japanese response of "arigato" at the end. (So of course, I had her repeat it for the camera).  She got a little confused during the actual trick-or-treating tonight because most everyone was sitting with their doors open, so she didn't have a chance to knock.

Halloween is a holiday that is definitely recognized in Japan.  In general, Japanese people like to dress up and there is always Halloween-like displays at the stores, including candy and costumes. But, it is not common for Japanese kids to trick-or-treat like John and I did growing up. However, there is a huge festival on our island for Halloween where kids dress up, but it's mostly eating great street food and doing other festival games (which our family got to enjoy this year). There is a kids' costume parade at the Rokko Island Halloween Festival, but the line/wait is always horrendous, so we've never participated.  The kids are happy to just dress up and munch on food on sticks for two days (the adults are too!).

Saddling up for the Halloween Party

Going to Trick-or-Treating
(John went as "Old Spice")

Maximo's Halloween Bag.   I labeled it in English and he did it in Japanese.

We love it that Maximo and Lola have some of the same traditions we had as kids, especially with interesting Japanese or Peruvian (or where ever is next) spin on holidays and traditions.

Maximo's 6th Birthday

The boys!

It's always a busy week and an extra stress to celebrate Maximo's birthday the first full week of school, but in the end, we're always happy we do something.

Yusei and Maximo cracking up at Sean

After much deliberation, we decided to just have 5 of his friends over for a small party.  There was a typhoon looming, but luckily it lost steam and we got to have the party - and even made it outside for some water balloon fun.

Happy Boys!

We had a great day.   Here's the album of photos.

What's a party without tears?
Maximo fell off the bed when the boys were rough housing - but he was fine.

First Day of School 2013

This picture looks a lot more joyous than our morning really was, but we did get a nice first day of school picture.

Comparing it to last year...  

Our babies are getting big!

Summer is Here!!!

We finished a busy week and a crazy school year.

Lola making sushi with Masa at the Anpanman Museum.

Maximo's class party on Wednesday

Maximo's Swim Report 

Last Day of KA with Ms. Maiko and his friends

Celebrating the end of year at Kochan's with Kobe Beef

On the Rokko Liner with Dad

We're spending the weekend relaxing and tying up loose ends before we head "home".  Maximo is fighting a fever, that we hope he doesn't give to the rest of us.

Here is the end of the Spring 2013 Photo Album.

And some highlights of Maximo's school work this year.

June 2: A fortnight and more of silence

Hi, my name is Julie and I've been a really bad blogger.

Our life has been full of work, play and end of the school year craziness.

We've had a few weeks of gorgeous weather, so we've been outside a lot with the kids.

The Hamburger Sling at East Court 4 Matsuri

Lola Pushing John

We're counting down, really:

We have a Christmas Countdown - why not create one for summer?

 Maximo hosted his first sleep over and it was great fun.  Gaizka and Eguzki spent the night and Lola even got to tag along a bit.

 All this outside play has made us very tired:

In less than 15 days, we'll be in Savannah and we can't wait.  We just have 101 things to do before then.

We've updated the photo album to include a couple more.

Hamamatsu Kite Festival - May 2013

If you are a FB friend, I already summarized this trip:  "Best Festival... Ever".

This festival is held in Hamamatsu, Japan in the Shizuoka prefecture.  Here is more information about the festival.

For us, it was an EASY two hour Shinkansen ride to reach Hamamatsu.  We stayed at Sorriso Hotel Hamamatsu - which our friend, Trish, found.  It was perfect - a block from the train station, so it was easy to get to with our luggage.  It was clean and really reasonably priced for a Japanese hotel.   Unfortunately, I didn't book a family-sized room, so we were a bit packed.  But, that was totally my fault, not the hotel's.

After we checked in on Friday, we meandered around the hotel and saw food stalls being set up, and some examples of the wooden sculpture floats set up near the mall right near the hotel.  Our friends, the Carrothers, were returning to the festival for their fourth year, so we let them tell us what we should see and do.  They did not steer us wrong.

We then caught up with them at the International Food Festival.  There was a DJ playing 70s and 80s dance rock and the kids loved running around.  We got a bit of food to eat.  When it started to get dark, we headed up to the road to find a place to watch the parade.  Hundreds?  of neighborhoods were donning matching happi coats and pulling their beautiful floats through town, while women and young girls would play music from the float.  It had such a nice community atmosphere.

After a while, we headed back to the hotel, for a not-so-restful night sleep and John and Pat headed out for a night on the town.

The next day, we headed out to the Nakatajimi Dunes.  The city provided buses for ¥500 to get out there.  As soon as we got there, we were blown away.  There were over 100 (very large - 3 meters long) kites in the air.  It was a really windy day, so there seemed to be a lot more "kite fighting" that day.  It was a little unnerving sometimes and in some areas as these large kites were coming down.  But, there were always people from the "neighborhood" who were running after the kites - to reduce damage to their kites and I think protect bystanders.

We went to the beach, but it was really windy and the sand was blowing everywhere, so it was hard to stay out there for two long.  Lola was fighting a cold and a nasty fever blister on her tongue, so she was a bit fussy.  Around lunch time, we headed back to the hotel for an afternoon rest.

After that, we ventured out again for some (more!) street food for dinner and to watch the parades.  First the parades started out as more traditional parades with bands and baton twirlers and then the floats came back out.  It was great to see little kids walking by their town elders and just thinking that these kids will be participating in these events for the next 70 years or so.

On the last day, we went back out to the dunes.  It wasn't as windy, so there wasn't as much fighting, but there were still many, many kites in the air.  We spent a lot more time at the beach and the kids had fun playing in the sand.  When we went back up to the field, we just hung out on a tarp with the Carrothers and let the kids play while we picnicked.

Soon we were back on the Shinkansen heading home.  It was an amazing trip.  We will definitely return next year!

Here are more pictures of our trip.

Maximo's Conference - KA 2013

In the Spring of each school year, students share their work and learning with their parents.  It is a nice conference time as it is totally led by students.  It's amazing what a 5 year old can share and all the amazing things they did this year!

Sharing work with Dad

Showing off his class's bean plants

Showing his class's Very Busy Spider presentation on an iPad

His "animated" spider debut

Here's the actual video made by @shigetasensei (Ms. Shigeta, the AMAZING ES Tech Teacher):

The Very Busy Spider from KA-B on Vimeo.

Maximo showing off his class's garden