Wednesday classes

Today I participated in a gym class at the junior high school. The kids were playing basketball. I joined them for warm-up and shooting practice, but stayed out of the actual games.

The girls split into two teams and played while the boys watched, then the boys did the same. After that, they gave each other advice based on what they saw, and they each played another game. That was an interesting change from the gym classes I remember from school.

Junior high school students are at that age when some of them are developing faster than others. The first-year class has some big bois that look like they're several years older than the others. That leads to some inherent inequality in basketball, but they were all very good about passing the ball to give everyone a chance to play.

I also got to lead a discussion in one of the English classes. The students were hesitant to answer the questions I asked, even though I kept them simple. That's understandable, of course.

School lunch was soup, salad, and a small omelette.

This time, I ate with the first-years. They did a lot of trading. I saw omelettes change hands, salads picked apart, and soup vegetables fished out.

One of the boys asked me the English word for momiage (sideburns). I suppose mine are quite distinctive.

For dinner I made a stew.

The easiest meals are the ones I can boil in a pot and then serve over rice.

Two things I've learned about cooking so far: 

1. The rice cooker takes longer to finish than what I'm used to. 

Probably because of the lower voltage here.

2. An important difference between a gas and electric stove is that when you have uncooked spaghetti sticking out of a pot, it can catch fire if the flame is too high.🔥