2011年10月27日木曜日

INTERBALLS!

Last week the TGH first year International course took to the courts for the 1st Year Ball Games Tournament. The annual event in which the entire grade's classes (minus the music students) compete for Eternal Glory! (and small certificates of achievement)

Here are the girls during the warm-up stretches, gesturing as to our ambitious aims: 2nd place all the way! I guess now is the time to confess that, as coach, I didn't exactly have high hopes before the tournament since International classes have posted notoriously bad results in previous years. But wait!...
Those classes were all lacking in something very much present and accounted for in our small but spunky gang of girls: jocks! Yep, past InterClasses are usually wiped out in the Dodgeball competition but this year, although we didn't place, we hung with the best- going to overtime in a flurry of dodging, ducking, diving and... err... dodging!

On to volleyball- "Hey Narumi, do you know the name of Snoopy's cousin and Buffy's boyfriend?"
Narumi: "Yes. I think they're both named SPIKE!
We made it to the finals in volleyball but lost in the deciding set; not bad!
I thought Basketball would be as painful to watch as it is for me to play since two of our girls are on the TGH Basketball team and therefore banned from this portion of the games (they helped referee instead).  We were down to only 9 players, but one of those players happened to be the diminutive yet feisty Mizuki, who changed her sport from Bball in Junior High School to Track & Field at Tokiwagi. She tore up and down the court like a whirling dervish and had stamina to spare, but of course there is no `I` in `TEAM` and the other girls gave their all as well, supporting and striking when the chances came. We went all the way to the finals again and got even closer than in volleyball. In fact, I would say we were at least equal, if not slightly better than the eventual champions- we just had less luck on our side. Oh well, we'll get `em next year! 



2011年10月13日木曜日

Dancing Out Our Door...

So last time I told you that one of our Inter1 girls has left for Jolly Old England to attend a prestigious ballet school, the name of which has slipped my mind. She's not the only TGH-international-class ballerina to leave for fame and fortune; we have a long line of them who go on to dance on the great stages around the world.  But before she left, she helped our troupe of light-footed young ladies bust a move at the Green Festival.
Here's Kaede trying to "get in the zone" in preparation for the dance.

Backstage, our new French exchange student Marine tells Mizuki to "Get your head in the game!"
Yep. They take they're dancing pretty seriously here. If I can work my video upload I'll show you the performance sometime. Anyways, shortly after that we had a goodbye party for Momoka: many speeches were given, tears were shed and pizza was eaten.
speeches...tears...


And Momoka has promised us she'll be back for Christmas holidays to help us conquer the 1st Year Chorus competition.

2011年10月3日月曜日

Odyssey Appreciation

Hey folks. Off-line for a long while but now we're back. I've got a lot of stuff to tell you about but today let's focus on a visit from Odessey that happened just before the summer.
Steve and Imase Sensei came by to give us some words of encouragement and check out how the clean-up is going (the clean-up is the main reason I've been gone for so long). All three International classes got together in the Strauss Hall to show our gratitude. Here are some pics:
Our 1st year class leader Nonoka addressing our guests.

The gentlemen from California accepting a small token of our appreciation.

A choral performance by our 3rd year girls.
Ballet dancing from some 2nd year girls...
...and our 1st year girl- Momoka. Isn't she lovely? In early September she pranced off to London town on a ballet-themed homestay. Much tears were shed at her goodbye party and much pizza eaten, but that's a story for next time.