2012年4月19日木曜日

Welcome! and welcome back!

Hello TGH International fans of all ages and shapes. It's another year of fun and frivolity with the students and teachers of Tokiwagi Gakuen's international class program. In this post, I'll introduce you to some of the fresh new faces in the first year- 19 of them!
This year's new girls have chosen the International course for a number of reasons. Many of them are interested in extended homestays overseas, while others have told us that they are excited about hosting students visiting from our sister schools this year. Some of them entered the course because of our focus on multi-cultural learning, while others joined because they hate math! (just kidding)
We have a lot of Brass band girls (clarinet, sax and trumpet), sporty girls (volleyball, badminton, basketball and a track & field star that is 2nd in Miyagi in the 100meter), and artistic girls (calligraphy and animation). Of course, our class wouldn't be complete without a prima-ballerina, so we've got one of those too- who I have already chained to her desk so she doesn't fly away to Europe and never come back (just joking again, I only handcuffed her).

Anyways, as you can see everyone had a blast at our annual Cherry Blossom Party, once we got over the unfortunate fact that there weren't any cherry blossoms. We ate dangos, which are mashed rice covered in Bean, Walnut, Sesame seed and some other flavours that were snatched up and engulfed by the 3rd years before I could check them out. Our girls introduced themselves and a few popular facts came to light- many of them are interested in Korea, many of them like animation, one of them hates eggplant and one of them loves eggplant, and I'm guessing all of them are wondering/worrying about when they'll be able to understand me; just like their predecessors did.

Don't worry girls- patience and time, patience and time.
By the way, our motto for this year is
“Our thoughts today will be our achievements tomorrow.”

Not bad eh? I sort of came up with that on my own after going through a bunch of inspirational quotes that I felt weren't satisfactorily inspirational. I'm looking forward to checking out this blog a year from now and seeing how many of these girls will have had their thoughts blossom like the cherry trees above have yet to do, into achievements. I'm hoping all of them.