The Christmas Season

Everyday, I'm realizing how much I especially love being a teacher during the Christmas season! It's a hectic time but there is an array of creative Christmas activities to do with students in primary grades. The fact that I can talk to my students about God and the true meaning of Christmas, makes my job even better!

With the Christmas program, Polar Express Day and Christmas parties this week, Sarah and I decided to not teach our regular curriculum. Instead, we planned Christmas activities.

A few weeks ago, I sent home a gingerbread man to be decorated and brought back to class. Students practiced their oral language skills by sharing their gingerbread man with the class and explaining how they decorated it. I was very impressed with most of them. All of my students are very artsy! The gingerbread men are now displayed in the windows of my classroom. Students in other classes love walking by and admiring the 1st/2nd grade work!

Monday night was the 1st-3rd grade Christmas program. My students have been working very hard to prepare for the program. The past two weeks, they have had music class for 45 minutes, every single day! Sarah and I got them dressed in their gowns and halos.

Here they are walking up the stairs, about to walk on stage.

Some of them were a little nervous.

They all looked adorable!

Here they are when they first walked on stage...letting out their jitters.

The entire program lasted about 50 minutes. They did very well, I was so proud!

The day after the Christmas program, we had Polar Express day in class. Students came in their pajamas, we read the book Polar Express, watched the movie, drank hot chocolate with marshmallows and ate candy canes and popcorn. It was a fun, relaxing day and a nice reward to students after working so hard for their Christmas program.

They all looked adorable!

Class pajama photo.

While watching the movie at the end of the day, almost half of the students fell asleep! A few of them wouldn't wake up when it was intermission (snack time), so I let them keep sleeping.

I think this student got new shoes to wear for the Christmas program...then wanted to wear them the next day with his pajamas...too cute!

Last Saturday I went with Omar to a haunted hotel in Okinawa! I had been hearing about the hotel since moving here, so I thought I should brave it and check it out while I had the chance of going with a navy coreman.

The hotel was built in the 70's by a businessman, with no blueprints. He was warned by locals not to build on the grounds because it was a sacred site. He went on building anyway, until a number of workers had fatal accidents. They stopped building and the businessman went bankrupt, he is supposedly now in a mental hospital on the island. It is now said that a monk who built an alter to keep the spirits calm, lives in the abandoned hotel. Creepy! I didn't know this story before I went! We had to drive up a dark, windy road to reach the hotel. The parking lot was abandoned and dark...no lights! I thought we would just be walking around the outside of the hotel, but Omar informed me that we had to walk through it to get to a good picture spot. We had to hike up a steep hill for about 50 yards. The branches and plants were so thick, it was hard to see in front of us. Since there was no lighting, we had to use a flashlight.

Here we are in the parking lot, about to hike back to the hotel.

When we reached the hotel, we had to climb though a window to get inside...it was dark and I didn't want to be in there alone, so I let Omar go first. Once inside, we had to walk through various rooms full of old, rusty, metal scraps that the workers left behind when working on the hotel. There was even an old car inside! It was quiet, except for the sound of water drops and frogs from a nearby pond. Very creepy, I didn't get nervous until we were actually inside.

Since I was there at night, I didn't get any pictures inside but I found this one online.

We walked inside the hotel for about 5 minutes, which seemed like a lot longer at the time. The entire building is concrete and many of the walls are not completely finished. We couldn't see more than a few feet ahead of us, luckily Omar had been there before, so he knew where we were going. We finally reached the outside area and walked up 2 flights of stairs, which led us to an outside, panoramic view of Okinawa. It was beautiful! In the above picture, you can see the outside area where we took pictures. We were on the top floor, along the ledge.

The ferris wheel in the picture below is at American Village, the little area two miles from my apartment that has cute shops and yummy restaurants.

Trying not to look scared!

We stayed at the top taking pictures for about 20 minutes. I didn't want to go back through the hotel to exit since I now knew how creepy it was. We made our way out of the hotel, climbed back out the window and hiked down the hill. We heard movement in the bushes at one point, when we shined the flashlight in that direction, we both saw what looked like two eyes in the bushes. I told myself I was seeing things and we hurried out. We safely made it back to the car. It was a unique experience that I am glad I did once but will not do again!

Last night, I went on base to watch a Christmas program that had choirs from various churches singing. My church had their choir sing a few songs and the kindergarten students from my school performed. It was a nice little gathering to help celebrate the Christmas season.

Today is Friday and was my last day of teaching for the year! We had a busy/crazy day of reading Christmas books, watching a movie, eating tons of snacks and doing a gift exchange. I got to sample lots of Japanese candy, some of which was very good! Most of my students are sad that they won't be coming back to school for two whole weeks! I turned in my progress reports for the 2nd quarter today and I only have one student getting a D/F. The end of the 2nd quarter will be a few weeks after Christmas break! Time is flying by now.

I will miss my students over the next few weeks but am looking forward to a relaxing, long vacation.

Tomorrow I will finalize my packing and get ready to head home for Christmas =)

Jessica will drop me off at the airport Sunday at 6:15 am for my 8 am flight. I'll then fly to Tokyo where I will ride 1.5 hours in a shuttle limo to switch airports. Luckily, I have time to do this since I have a six hour layover in Tokyo. From Tokyo I fly directly to LAX, arriving at 9:15 Sunday morning. The flight from Okinawa to Tokyo is two hours. The flight from Tokyo to LAX is 9 hours...it's not 16 hours, so it shouldn't be too bad, right?

I'll be daydreaming about seeing you all while I'm in the air.

See you at home!

XOXO

Kristen