Summer Workshop, The Perfect Swimming Hole, and MONKEYS!

It's been an action packed few days. A couple of blog-worthy things happened, so I'll start with the coolest: Dave and I saw monkeys! I've been living in Neo for over a year, and I've heard stories about the vegetable farm pillaging, sometimes aggressive, always entertaining Neo monkeys, but yesterday, I finally got to see some in the flesh. It went down like this: Dave and I went exploring on a lazy Sunday afternoon. We drove for a little while until we found a place in the river that seemed swimmable. We got out and found that there were people, including some unidentifiable Eastern Europeons camping and barbecuing. We were getting ready to walk in the water when someone yelled out "monkeys" and lo and behold, there was a family of them. It was one of the coolest things I've seen in Japan. We walked around for a bit and found the most perfect definition of a swimming hole. It was so lovely but we didn't have our swimsuits, so we'll test it out next weekend. I can hardly wait.

On Thursday and Friday, Gifu JETs new and old headed to the city for a summer workshop. It was a little crazy, but it was a fab chance to hook up with Japanese people who could speak English. I love my kids, but lord help me, English study is not where their passion lies. But these kids at the workshop were nothing short of amazing. And some of them just sounded like native speakers, which totally blew my mind. This girl, Mai, is a 4th grader, so she is maybe 9 years old. She nearly gave me a heart attack because she was reading an English newspaper that was put on the desk for crafts. When she got to a word she didn't recognize, she sounded it out. Shit on a stick, I don't think I could have been surprised. She was absolutely lovely.

There were a lot of games and opportunities to chat with the kids but it was also cool to meet some of the newbies. I was very happy to see that quite a few were Canadian, including a Black girl from Toronto. Damn, Christina and I made a beeline for her. I believe that brings our female population to 4. Can I get a woot?!


After the workshop on the first day, a bunch of us went to a Turkish restaurant, and it was my first time at this place. I picked a winner of a dish (lamb stew - lamb, how I've missed you), and Aiden got some meat on a sword. Fantastic photo op.


And that's about it. I came to school on Monday to find the head teacher there with her three gigantic dogs - Terra, Alpha and Lord. P.S. She's a science teacher.

Alright, I'll be off to Tottori ken tomorrow for the next couple of days for a bus tour and I'll be seeing the famous sand dunes. After that, I'll have a jammed weekend featuring the swimming hole, an ocarina concert and a movie. After that is an orientation for Gifu JETs primarily for the newbies which is an overnight thing, then I'll be hanging out with my surrogate parents. Mata ne!