09.01.24 Jet Alumni Association Shinnenkai

On January 31st, Julian's Japan Club traveled downtown to volunteer for the second year in a row at JETAA's annual New Year's party. A great time was had by all, and even some work got done.

The kids participated in a chopsticks contest, shodo calligraphy art, gyotaku (Fish painting), kimono/yukata dress up, and Wii bowling. Students also helped sell raffle tickets and won a few prizes!

We ate tonkatsu, o-sushi, and other Japanese cuisine from a local Japanese-Hawaii restaurant.

It was great to see the Kelly and Julian kids working together and I think it was a good experience for the JETs to meet kids from our part of the city.

Much thanks to JetAA and especially Emi for reaching out to us!

Catching up

In a situation of a great writer quoting another, Oliver Wang profiles himself on Angry Asian Man by referencing James Baldwin. "I want to be an honest man and a good writer."

I'm relatively successful at being an honest man, and horrible ineffective as a writer. I'm too impatient, too manic and generally too immature to sit down and document everything that I ought to.

But my little experience in the area tells me two things:
1) Write from your weaknesses--I have a horrible weakness for attention and projecting as "the woman who does everything more beautifully than you do" so I think I'll get back in the game by documenting my schedule a bit.
2) Much more importantly, I believe that we are fighting the most critical battle in the history of public school education, so I hope that if I coldly document my weeks, I might slip in some of the joy and beautiful detail of these actions.

I'll probably fail as usual and be gone for a dozen weeks or more again, but I'm going to try, and even if it's just a couple things here or there, it's better than nothing.