SAYONARA SHUKUNOHE-CHU!

Today was my last official day of 'teaching'. It was a really lovely and emotional day. After the usual farewell ceremony happenings, the students sang a song which sounded really sad, and unfortunately they gave me a copy of the english translation...which brought an immediate rush of tears. what you don't know can't hurt you....o well, after the tears, we spent the rest of the shortened day taking some pictures, saying goodbyes and signing autographs. gonna miss the celebrity status and the most kind, respectful students i will probably ever meet in my life. shu-chu wasn't exactly the 'noisiest' bunch, but they taught me a side of japanese culture that i will never forget. THANK YOU & GOODBYE!

一年生： Airi & Yuusaku above, and the rest of the troops below. these were the GREATEST kids. SO willing to learn and try. a teacher's dream.

二年生: Above- Satomi, Shouko & Kanami

Below- the special elective class i taught. i LOVE these girls! we had so much fun this year and i was able to learn so much from them. thanks to Yonezawa-sensei for giving me the entire class each day. they were my EFL guinea pigs and they did a FABULOUS job! thanks for the great (teaching) memories! ;)
more ni-nenseis: Ryo & Shouji are the studliest guys, above.

三年生： quiet, but diligent. again, the work ethic at this school is unreal. special thanks to chisumi and natsumi, eriko and yoshitsugu for making the extra effort to communicate. i really enjoyed getting a real dose of japanesey culture each week with you all!

After saying our goodbyes, we took to the school grounds to snap some school pictures. Here we are making the Kanji characters for "Shukunohe-chu". This was a photo of a photo, sorry it didn't turn out that well..but that red blurb is me!