Point and Guess!

Me and some 8th grade girls at the Festival of Nations

Yes, I know I'm tardy on the post.  :)  Better late than never, right!?  Guess where I just paid my cell phone bill?  You are probably thinking...the bank, online transfer, wrote a check.  WRONG!  I just paid it...at a convenience store!  Yes, I paid not only my cell phone bill, but also my water bill, and electricity bill at your normal 7-11!  Who would have thought!?  You can pay your bill at any convenience store, which are all open 24 hours, and are EVERYWHERE!  All you do is take your bill to the store, hand it to them, they scan it, you pay it, you get a receipt, and you are done...just like that, no Japanese needed!  Online bank transfers aren't as common here, not to mention my bank doesn't even have an online English website!  

Tiako-Japanese drumming performance that is quite impressive!

The gym was turned into a store!

The first weekend in October my school hosted an event called Festival of Nations, and that's exactly what it was!  It was a big fundraising event for our school and there were not only food booths from 30 different countries, there were games for kids and a main stage with many different performances.  For those of you living in Luxembourg, the food booths were VERY similar to the International Bazaar...you can eat your way around the world!  The students' parents run the food booths with help from the kids, but each grade is in charge of running a game, much like a carnival.  It makes for a fun day for everyone!  One other part of this festival is something called a White Elephant sale, where people donate EVERYTHING from clothes to household items, books, toys, etc and then they resell the items for a profit.  Let me tell you, I found things for a steal of a deal.  For less than $60 I got a vacuum, iron, ironing board, humidifier, blender, a ghetto convection oven (there is no oven in my apt!), DVD's, and a few travel books!  

What do I order!?!

Couldn't resist the craving!

I had the pleasure of having my good friends from Lux, Micah and Jess come for a visit before their baby arrived.  The weekend was highlighted with a lunch that almost came down to "point and guess"...what Micah names a menu that you cannot decipher one thing!   There were no pictures on the menu and it was all in Kanji, which we really couldn't make out at all...you've heard the saying, "That looks Greek to me!"...while that's what I feel like 90% of the time here!  Luckily for us, an English menu came to the rescue, but Micah still wanted us to try some pretty interesting stuff.  We ate at a Yakitori restaurant which I thought was just skewers of grilled chicken.  What I didn't know was that its not just your typical chicken wing, or chicken breast...they have options such as: chicken liver, neck, gizzards, bum, heart, cartilage, etc.  This place also had some other grilled meat, veggies, and rice.  Micah likes to be adventurous and insisted we order outside of our comfort zone, so for round two, we ordered: chicken bum, dried stingray fin, and beef intestine!  The chicken bum and dried stingray fin weren't bad, but the intestine was a texture and taste I'd like to forget! :)  We of course splurged and got some Krispy Kreme doughnuts as well...I like to say that we gave into Jess'  pregnancy craving, but they were delicious!  It's been so fun having friends visit and them being able to get a little taste of what life is like for me here!  I've got space to host you, so come on over! :)  

Jessica super preggo!  Congrats to her  and Micah and their new baby girl, Kairi!

Things at school are continuing to go well, I love my kids and the one colleague I work so closely with is awesome!  Coaching volleyball continues to be fun and my girls are improving so much!  We have our last game before the tournament this weekend.  We are 4-3 right now, but all of the games we lost could have easily been won either game.  That's the joy of coaching middle school...its UNPREDICTABLE!  :)