a genki woman, a photo booth and a Morioka-style eating contest

Last Sunday I took a bus to Sendai for an English Teachers' expo. Two of the sessions were taught by Carolyn Graham, an incredibly "genki" (energetic, enthusiastic) woman who has written many songs and chants (rhythmic language patterns) in the books we use in our classes. She taught us how to write our own to fit whatever material we are teaching. Basically, it was amazing experience!


Here we are demonstrating a days-of-the-week song.


Kirsten was the happy winner of one of Carolyn Graham's books.

In another session, I won this book while playing Bingo!

On Monday evening before leaving Sendai, Kirsten, Hannah and I had a little bit of photo booth fun.

Last week, some friends took me out for my "welcome party" at a wankosoba restaurant. It's quite an experience! Each person eats as many bowls/small servings of soba noodles as he or she possibly can, while keeping a tally with matches. I had 75... a little above average for females, but I was beat by Mifumi, Keiko and Nozomi. And the guys were way above all of us... the winner had around 170!

Nozomi had 98 bowls! It got a little painful toward the end...

Here's Keiko & me after we finished (with covers on our bowls so they wouldn't fill them anymore).

Some side dishes for between rounds of eating and the tallying matches - there's my final count of 75!

The whole group afterwards (looking a little full), and the "Love Panda" calendar - one of the prizes for the winners.