hokkaido snow festival

ok so heres a problem to start my post. my blogger webpage is now in japanese and i cant figure out how to change it to english....so lets hope i can get this posted. if youre reading this, feel free to congratulate me for figuring it out.

so last weekend i spent sunday and monday in sapporo, hokkaido. hokkaido is the north island of japan. its cold there. lots of snow. there was a snow festival with huge snow and ice sculptures. it was awesome. sunday afternoon we (my friend anna and her roommate) arrived at the hostel. it was so nice and comfortable. well worth the $34 a night. we dropped off our stuff and went to lunch at a ramen restaurant. so good. then we went into town and walked along the streets of the snow festival. look at the pictures. it was incredible how big some of these were and how detailed they were.

then we went souvenir shopping... i cant come back empty handed in this country. then we walked along a street with ice sculptures and stopped at an ice karaoke building. annas roommate, katie, and i decided to sing a little song. i sang a song in japanese... between me being so stinkin nervous and so stinking cold, my song left much to be desired. however, i impressed the socks off all the japanese people watching me by singing a japanese song decently.

then we had a gourmet meal at a local crab restaurant. so many types of crap and such good food. it was a really quiet restaurant though... after we stuffed ourselved full, we walked back to the station an headed back to the hostel.

monday morning, we woke up and ate and relaxed a bit, then we headed out to satoland, which was a huge field coverend in snow, consisting of sled rides, snow maze and food vendors. its was also snowing like crazy and freezing cold. i sucked it up and was a trooper. then we went back into town and went to starbucks and wandered around hat shopping for a little while. then we headed back to the hostel and relaxed and read for a bit then we went to dinner, had some good japanese beer made in sapporo, and then off to karaoke we went. so much fun just being crazy.

we came back tot he hostel and i went to bed shortly after because i had to leave at the crack of dawn the next morning to catch my plane at 8. (i woke up at 5-i think i have seen 5am about 2 times in the past 2 years...) i got back and went to work.

work has been a little crazy this week with all the trial class parent wanting to see the foreign teacher.. im putting on quite the show. i had approx 4 or 5 extra classes this week. tomorrow however, we dont have our regular classes till 7pm and we do trial lessons from 2-7. bring it on.

valentines day was nice. i ate chocolate. one of my students brought me chocolate. so cute.

tonight i had one of my favorite classes, they are 4 boys (but only 3 were there tonight.) heres one reason why they are my favorite:

before they left, i told them they had to say one sentence in english (thinkign they would use the form of what they learned today)) heres what i got.

1. Jen is a good teacher
2. jen is beautiful
3. jen is a great teacher.

haha i gave them chocolate. yeah for 7th grade japanese boys knowing how to be a good suckup.

tonight, i am trying to be productive as i am leaving again for the weekend. this time i am going to mie prefecture (preffectures are like small states ) and its the one next to mine (aichi) i will go to an onsen (public bath...in japan-if you dont know- the public baths, or onsens, are separated into men and women, and then you pretty much go into the hot water and soak. no bathing suit. only a birthday suit. )

well im off to try to post ome pictures.