{"id":192,"date":"2009-04-10T14:00:22","date_gmt":"2009-04-10T05:00:22","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.seanmisen.com\/?p=192&language=en"},"modified":"2009-04-10T14:00:22","modified_gmt":"2009-04-10T05:00:22","slug":"newsletter-articles","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/seanholland.net\/seanmisen\/alaska\/newsletter-articles\/","title":{"rendered":"Newsletter Articles"},"content":{"rendered":"

George Cart\u00e9, head of the Sister City Committee in Palmer and former AET, asked me to write a few short articles on recent events in Saroma for the newsletter that he puts out.\u00a0 I obliged him, and while I’ve written better, here they are.<\/p>\n

Final Classes at Saroma Elementary<\/strong><\/p>\n

In Japan the school year begins in April and ends in March.\u00a0 Last month the 5th and 6th graders at Saroma Elementary wrapped up the year\u2019s English activities with some fun projects.
\nThe two 5th grade classes spent the last three English classes designing their own countries.<\/p>\n

\"5thcountries\"<\/p>\n

In groups of four, they chose their country name, designed the flag, and thought of the president, currency, economy, geography, food, and laws.\u00a0 They used English as much as possible.\u00a0 It was a very open ended activity, so it took some time to get started, but in the end I was very pleased with the range and depth of student creativity.\u00a0 The imagined countries included Sports Land, Junior Kingdom, and Dog Island (pictured).\u00a0 I\u2019m looking forward to having these students in 6th grade!
\nThe 6th grade class spent their last two lessons writing and performing English skits.\u00a0 They used all of the English they’ve learned in elementary school and then some.\u00a0 The skits were performed in groups of about six students, so each student had only one or two lines, but they spoke with confidence, presenting some very funny material.\u00a0 Skit situations included a restaurant, convenience store, police station, and mortuary.\u00a0 Just this week, these students entered Saroma Junior High as 1st graders (7th graders).\u00a0 I hope I can help continue their enthusiasm for English in the coming school year.<\/p>\n

\"6thgraders\"<\/p>\n

Snowstorm in Saroma<\/strong><\/p>\n

Coming to live in Hokkaido after 20+ years living in Palmer, I did not expect to be surprised by the winters here.\u00a0 But the weekend of February 21st exceeded my expectations.\u00a0 I awoke on Saturday morning to three feet of new snow plastered across my front door, and a seven foot high drift wrapping around the back of the house.<\/p>\n

\"snowcar\"<\/p>\n

My car was similarly covered, although a kind neighbor used his front-end loader to clear me out.\u00a0 I had planned to drive to Abashiri City that Saturday, but a quick check on the Hokkaido road office website showed a \u201croad closed\u201d X on nearly every major highway in the area.\u00a0 So I stayed home and shoveled.\u00a0 In the afternoon, the sun came out.\u00a0 I braved the remaining wind and piled drifts to take a walk down the river levee toward the butter factory and back through town.\u00a0 Everyone in town was outside, clearing off cars, driveways and roofs.\u00a0 Those with snowblowers and loaders were helping out their neighbors, eager to get some use out of their expensive toys.\u00a0 I\u2019m glad the weather intervened that day.\u00a0 Walking around Saroma on that sunny, white afternoon I felt the sense of community in this small town.\u00a0 And I now have nothing to brag about concerning snowy winters.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

George Cart\u00e9, head of the Sister City Committee in Palmer and former AET, asked me to write a few short articles on recent events in Saroma for the newsletter that he puts out.\u00a0 I obliged him, and while I’ve written better, here they are. Final Classes at Saroma Elementary In Japan the school year begins […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3,6,10,22],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-192","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-alaska","category-car","category-elementary","category-saroma"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/seanholland.net\/seanmisen\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/192","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/seanholland.net\/seanmisen\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/seanholland.net\/seanmisen\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/seanholland.net\/seanmisen\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/seanholland.net\/seanmisen\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=192"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/seanholland.net\/seanmisen\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/192\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/seanholland.net\/seanmisen\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=192"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/seanholland.net\/seanmisen\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=192"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/seanholland.net\/seanmisen\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=192"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}