My schedule this year consists mostly of visiting Asahikawa Commerical High and Shibetsu Commercial High School, with montly visits to the School for the Deaf and a hospital school. However, some schools only request ALT visits a few times a year, such as Asahikawa Nishi High School, where I went today. Nishi is a very nice school with high academic students. However, I feel it is unfortunate for them that they rarely get the chance to practice spoken English because they have to practice so much for college entrance examinations, which include only reading and grammar on its English section.

    Regardless, I still had a good time at the school. Most of the students were very friendly and some had decent English speaking skills. This were pictures taken of me with one of the classes I visited that day.

One of these things is not like the other...

Many students in the city think that the girls...

...at this school have the cutest uniforms.

Um...

    The Asahikawa International Committee organized a cooking day where parents and children together could make Christmas cookies and learn about Christmas in America. My friend Lavonda and I served as instructors. We taught them how to make sugar cookies and peanut butter cookies. It was a lot of fun and I think the children enjoyed it as well. There's a newspaper article below with my picture on it. I also included a very rough translation. (If you are fluent in Japanese, please don't make too m uch fun of me...)

Parents and children worked together

Here is a copy of the article from the Hokkaido Newspaper (Hokkaido Shimbun).