I'm back and boy has time flown by quickly. It's been six days since I last posted and I've experienced so much. I am situated in the dormitory of a school by the name of Hyogo University School of Teacher Education or HUTE. The University of Hyogo aims to conducts education and research with a particular focus on interdisciplinary pursuits as well as promote unique and new knowledge. People from all over the world come here to study how to educate others.

My temporary home is the international house dormitory where the international students are housed. Can you believe I'm actually considered an international student. Way too funny! I now have friends from Indonesia, Laos, El Salvador, Samoa, Uzbekistan, China, Japan, Philippines, and others I can't even pronounce much less keep track of yet. I really need to brush up on my geography. It's amazing how beautifully each person represents their country. It's hard to believe how quickly I've fallen in love with them. They've demonstrated that we may all come from different parts of the globe but we all long to love, give love, learn, enjoy and share who and what we are with those around us. I wish our world leaders could learn this nugget of truth. Wouldn't it be wonderful if each country could share the knowledge of their failures and successes with each other and learn to use this knowledge for the betterment of their own respective countries. It may seem like a pipe dream but I choose to believe that change happens one person at a time. I hope that I have represented both my countries the U.S and Mexico well while in Japan.

So you may be wondering what the point of my being in Japan so I'll try and sum it up in as few sentences as possible. My group is researching what methods of teaching English as a foreign language or EFL work well within the Japanese culture as well as those that don't. We are doing this by observing teachers instructing EFL classes to their children, primarily in the lower grades first through fifth grade as well as conducting interviews of the teachers themselves off of the HUTE campus. My team (can you believe I have one?) is also sitting in on some of the lectures given to undergrad students by professors at HUTE. We've also had the opportunity to meet a great deal of wonderful students on and off the campus. It is a real eye opener to me. 

So you might ask yourself why wouldn't U.S EFL teaching methods work within the Japanese culture? Good question, thanks for leading me into my segue. The Japanese culture is very different from that of most Americans or the rest of the world. Japan as an archipelago of islands has been relatively isolated and has a complex language as well as hierarchical society. They have their own way of doing things. Not wrong but different from what you or I are used to. It is in my opinion impossible to teach English to Japanese without understanding their culture because it defines who they are. As you can tell I am learning a lot and am excited to learn everything I possibly can before I return home. 

My team has visited an after school education center twice. We did an hour of activities to teach English in conjunction to a group of about thirty two children of the age five with two native speaker teachers. Wow, was I not ready for that. These children were eager and full of energy and loved the novelty of six women from America. We ended up corrupting these beautiful children by teaching them    Red Light green Light - Simon Says - The Hokey Pokey and The Chicken Dance... Needless to say their favorite was The Chicken Dance. I'm sure their parents were thoroughly confused when their kids performed it for them at home at days end. 

Today we had the pleasure of visiting a middle school and had lunch with the children in their class room. I'm so glad that I've been practicing the use of chopsticks (I've yet to use regular utensils since arriving to Japan) as I was able to eat my meal of red rice (not commonly served) fish with veggies and soup without dropping anything. The kids were pretty impressed. We then had the opportunity to join them on the playground. Once again I managed to impress the kids by performing on the monkey bars, as well as the other play equipment. Thank God I managed to survive it gracefully and intact. My favorite part was when one girl jumped into my arms and a friend snapped our photo. Who knew that monkey bars where still in my future? Not me that's for sure.

It hasn't all been work and I've had many opportunities to visit some beautiful spots in Japan. So far I have visited Osaka, Namba ( a suburb of Osaka) Kobe and Hyogo. I've visited a 400 year old castle, beautiful gardens with gorgeous hued koi fish, and enjoyed a traditional tea ceremony, all while in the company of my global friends. 

There is so much more that I would love to share with you but time is short and I really should get some of my reading and journaling done before I fall too far behind. I will continue to post pictures on Facebook as often as I can (I've actually done pretty good so far) and I will add more to the blog when time allows. I miss my family, friends and yes even good ol Wisconsin. 

Sayonara  :)

Araceli 

Oh boy, keeping up with this blog is going to be much harder than I anticipated. We are continually on the move and there always seems to be a lot of things happening. My group which consists of five lovely young ladies by the names of Amy, Elyssa, Kate, Samara, and Paris made it into Osaka, figured out which bus to board( I thankfully didn't have much to do with this or we'd still be there) to get us into Nambi which is the center for shopping and dining in Osaka. I think it was about a forty five minute ride. We had a bit of trouble locating our hotel but after a bit of a trek while lugging our luggage behind us ( I looked pretty pitiful) we made it safely. The hotel staff was very friendly and I was impressed to find a comfy jammy waiting for me on my bed.. such sweetness! I quickly freshened up (not easy to do because the plumbing, toilets, and showers are very different here) and met the girls for dinner. We'd passed a restaurant on our way in and we proceeded to check it out. It was super confusing but funny at the same time because it's very common here to simply select dishes from a counter and fill your tray and then pay on your way out according to how many empty dishes you have yet when we tried this the attendant appeared to admonish us and motioned us back to our seats. She said "wait ten minutes for rice" but we waited and waited. People came and were served and still we waited. It turns out that they were preparing fresh dishes as well as rice for us! Such great care, I felt special. The food was delicious but I was a bit frustrated (okay lots) because I don't know how to use chopsticks and that 's all they had at the table. My travel buddies are all experts and made it seem easy. Truth be told I didn't look to graceful using mine but I somehow managed to eat my chicken, veggies and rice. It's amazing what you can accomplish when you're hungry. Looking back on it I'm amazed we didn't fall into our soup bowls from sheer exhaustion. By this point we'd been up and traveling for about twenty four hours.
Back at the hotel my bed was super hard and my bed was filled with what appeared or felt to be a type of bean but I was so exhausted it didn't take long for me to fall asleep. I woke up the next morning feeling much better. But now it was time to try and figure out the shower and toilet thing. First of all the toilets are  low to the ground so you have to squat to use it so I will either have great glutes when arrive back in WI or I will have fallen and can't get up! But there are also toilets that are more like ours except that they have the lovely baday options as well as the option of musical selections that you can play to drown certain things out and give you more privacy. I love this :) As for the shower there really isn't one. The toilet is kept in one room and a bathtub is kept in another room but it's not used to bathe in but rather to soak yourself in nice hot water. They're super tiny but deep.You have to bathe before you sit in this tub. Anywho, in order to bathe you sit on a little bench (naked of course) and you use a hand help shower spigot to wash yourself. There is a special nob that you use to shut the water off while you suds up to conserve water. The floor has a drain that allows the water to drain away. It's really a very efficient way of doing things. I'll explain more this topic later.
I'm super tired right now because although it's 9:50 am Friday WI time it is almost 1:00 am Saturday here in Japan. I will try and catch you up as soon as I can and post more pics too.
Sayonara from Japan
Araceli 

Here we go!

Here we go!

Life is funny I'm a Latin American Studies major, yet I find myself in Japan ready to embark on a research project with five other UWEC students. We're studying teaching congruent EFL (English As A Foreign Language) within the Japanese culture. I don't intend on teaching or living in an Asian country but God asked me to add the TEFOL (Teaching English As A Foreign Language) certificate to my academic endeavors during my time in Nicaragua and Costa Rica last summer. I wasn't too happy with His (suggestion) because I really didn't care to add more time in school to "my plans" but God made it clear (in a nice way) that He didn't want me to cheat the people I'd some day advocate for by sending me without all the necessary tools. It would take me way too long to catch you up on how I ended up part of this research group (five beautiful young women) but I have chosen to believe that my heavenly daddy will use it for good. 

I got into Osaka after almost 24 of traveling and I'm grateful for a safe and uneventful trip. My group arrived in Hyoto today and I am spending my first night in our little dorm apartment with two of my roomies. Needless to say we are already dear friends and have shared from our hearts to the point of tears but don't worry they're good tears. Earlier today we explored a mall (yes, I know big surprise huh?) and shopped for our food at a grocery store. It was great fun because we didn't know what half the things we bought were but we're all ready and willing to explore new things which makes for a great segue.

The bathrooms in Japan are very different from the ones we're familiar with back home. I am going to have great glutes when I get back home because the toilets here are very low and to the ground which means that a person has to squat in order to use them. Most of them also have a baday feature ( this I like) 

The toilet is also kept separate from the room you shower in (more on that later) but my fave thing is that most of the toilet seats are heated :)

Anywho, it's super late here because they're is a fifteen hour time difference. Most of us were in danger of falling asleep in our dinner ( and yes I do mean it literally) on our first night here. I will do my best to keep you posted (for those of you that are up for some entertainment) as much as possible and hopefully I will post some pictures too. I'll be away from my family from the 2nd through the 20th so please feel free to lay lots of luvin on my family while I'm away. Sayonara : 0

Araceli