The Snowy World

Finally. These photos have been sitting on my desk top for weeks.

In early January the entire 7th grade took a 3-night, 4-day excursion to Nagano prefecture for Ski School. No kidding, that's how it translates directly and it's something the school has been doing for at least the past 20 years. Of course not all grades can participate; 4th, 5th and 7th grades only and usually sometime in January or February. Because I'm teaching the 7th grade I was able to go this year. My second time, in fact. I went once about 10 years ago when we were teaching at this school the first time around.

Anyway... we departed at the crack of dawn from school grounds in 7 tour buses. The original plan had us going by shinkansen (bullet train) but due to some new Japan Railways train rules, no single group or organization is allowed to purchase more than 100 tickets. Something like that. And as we had 256 students plus staff we quickly exceeded their limits so tour bus it was. Six long hours on the bus with 32 jr. high students, including some students from Hawaii as part of a sister school exchange & homestay program (the same school President Obama once attended as a youth). In fact, as the resident English speaker I was given the job of "taking care" of these guests from Hawaii. It was a real eye-opener for me as I haven't been around native English speaking teenagers in, well, ever! It was nice to be able to hold a fluent conversation with them and not have to "handicap" my vocabulary to ensure I'm understood. You get the idea.

I'm just going to wrap up here and put it all in a nutshell for you. The photos help tell the story.

It was snowing when we arrived and of the 4 days only 1 day was absolutely clear and crisp. Otherwise it was cold, windy and snowy. The food was good (a little short on the veggies) and the hot spring bath was splendid. As this was ski school and I haven't been on skiis since high school (I prefer snowboarding by far), I was a bit worried but much to my surprise and satisfaction, skiing is like riding a bike: once you learn you never forget and I had fun! Of course it took 1/2 a day to re-figure it out again but once I did I honestly enjoyed myself.

If I could sum it all up in 1 sentence?

I deeply and truly miss snow and snowy environments and I hope to one day share all that is the "snowy world" with my daughters.