My computer broke on me. I was minding my own business, watching Unleased starring Jet Li on DVD, and it suddenly shuts off. Power Outage? No, the lights and fan were still on. Not good. I try plugging it in to different outlets, checking out the cords, but no dice. Fortunately Ryan was to the rescue, he had Zack's old laptop laying around so I've been using that. Thanks guys.
The National Sports Games are almost here. Sort of like a national yearly olympics, it's a pretty bug production and this year is Oita's turn to host the games. There's a big opening ceremony at the "Big Eye" stadium and sports events will be held all over the prefecture. Locally, we've got Canoeing, Kendo, and Equestrian competitions; Ono is hosting some softball games so there has been a lot of work getting ready, and crews have been cleaning up and landscaping the town all week. Next Monday everyone from the middle school will go and check it out and cheer on the teams.
And I can't forget to mention Mejiron. Mejiron is the mascot of the Sports Games and is loved and adored throughout the land. Mejiron is a very round, very bright green bird that has been litterally everywhere in the Prefecture since I got here two years ago. Mejiron even has his own song. And what's great is, everyone from kids to old folks just loves Mejiron. Mejiron has become a real symbol of Oita and I wouldn't be surprised to see him sticking around even after the conclusion of the games.
Tuesday I went to Hita, a city in Oita that's actually much closer to Fukuoka. I was invited there by some students that I met at Yufuin Summer Seminar. Overall, things went well. Hita is a good smaller-sized city, there are things to do but it's not too big that you can't walk around. We checked out an old sake factory and went to one of the local shrine festivals. It was good to get out of town for a little bit and see some new things, and the kids were really great, trying out their English and being good guides.
Last week, one of my middle school students had her English speech contest. We had practiced that a lot and made a lot of improvements, but still I knew that the competition was going to be really tough. Well, two speakers before she was going to go on, this poor girl fainted right on stage after missing some lines and going over the time limit. Not a good sign, but Miyuki was tough and didn't let it get to her. She had a fairly good speech, unfortunately in areas such as intonation she made a lot of the same mistakes we had tried to eliminate previously. In the end she didn't win a prize but I think her English improved a lot and her self-confidence also increased as well, so I think that it was definitely worthwhile.