Conquering the Mountain

On Saturday,  all the immersion teachers went on a sledding trip to a nearby mountain with the students. Sledding down a mountain seems safe enough right? Actually, the hill we were on though up on a mountain was not super steep. At first, the teacher spent time going down the mountain in the morning to pack down the snow. It literally felt like sledding on a glue bottle. You start going and boom you're stuck. As more people got going, we started to speed it up. Once we got the 200 students from 1st to 3rd grade down the hill it'd be super fast.

Random side note warning:
On the way there, I was the lucky one to drive teachers to the mountain. I could probably make a blog on driving in Japan but I'll just give the quick version right now. In Japan the roads are very narrow and they drive on the opposite side of the road. It definitely takes some getting used to. Anyway, getting to the hill I had never seen so such tight corners. You could barely fit one vehicle let alone two. Luckily, we made it safe.

After the teachers packed down all the snow, we went back to get the kids. I was really excited for the fact that I'd get to ride the bus with my kids on the 2nd grade bus (next years 3rd grade for you math geniuses). Its amazing what you can tell about a kids personality and demeanor just through a 45 minute bus ride. A few things I learned through the bus ride:

They never heard of Justin Bieber (great news!)
They dont understand the word cartoon and its really hard to explain what a cartoon is.
They dont know Bugs Bunny.
The girls love this pop group called AKB48. One of the boys told me that boys don't like them but some boys like to look at them!
The kids love to play this game with your fingers, its hard to explain but easy to learn.
Rock Paper Scissors solves all the worlds problems.

Once at the hill, it was a bit awkward. The new teachers kinda figured that kids would just naturally want to go sledding with us. The problem is they all had their own teachers and we were these strangers they didn't know. Also, the kids love throwing snowballs at teachers. Its not like in the states where that kind of stuff is frowned up with school. The teachers are allowed to throw them back. Its fun going up the hill and randomly getting pelted in the face.

The area we sledded is on the left. Its deceptively steep and fast. The right side is a skiing area.

The view from the top of the sledding hill

After a few times of being that boy at dance who sits by the punch bowl, I decided to go back to the bus for my snack. Luckily, quite a few of my students were all eating their snacks on the bus. After a few minutes of sharing our snacks and learning each others names, we became really good friends. We all decided to make a train with our sleds and go down together.

Japanese people think of everything. I had never thought of linking sleds together to make a long train. I wish I could show pictures of it because it looks pretty cool to have 4 or 5 sleds together with about 12 kids. You start flying and the sleds on the back get whipped around. One time this little girl was hooked on behind my sled as we were flying down the hill. All of a sudden, we hit a bump and she did a flip off sled. Luckily, Japanese people always land on their feet ;). Every time I hit the bottom of the hill, the kids kept yelling "one more time." One more time kept turning into 10 more times until I was completely exhausted. It was a great time though and I'm really excited to get to know my students better in the next couple of weeks!