All the teachers have disappeared. I think all the first year teachers went to a concert with the students. I found out they're not coming back for lunch, so I get to eat with some of the older students. They are often better at talking, so it's a little more fun.

I've entered speech contest time. For some reason, every single English speech contest is scheduled for the same time. Last Thursday was a really big speech contest. Two of my girls entered it. It was during school, so I left at 11, and went with them to a building next to the art museum. There were about 5 other ALTs there with their students, and many Japanese English teachers. There were 32 students who made speeches. Each one had a limit of 5 minutes to talk. It went on until 4 or so. It was very long. I started drifting off during some of the speeches. My girls did well, but not well enough to win. The top three winners earn a place in the national English speech contest in Tokyo.

I also went to a speech contest with Victoria on Sunday morning. I went to this same contest last year, too. It is sponsored by the Toyama University of International Studies. The guy who yelled at me about English club when I first came to my school was the chief judge at the contest and is an English professor at the University. In the junior high school division, they only accept 5 students (22 applied this year), so it was great that one of mine got in. She did well, and tied for second place. I think she could've gotten first if she had practiced with me, but she is really busy right now.

Also, there is an English skit competition this Saturday that two of my girls are in. I am getting a little overwhelmed by speech contests!

I did other things around Toyama this weekend, besides speech contests. On Friday, Victoria organized a dinner at a Chinese restaurant, with karaoke afterwards. I organized a dinner for the new JETs at this restaurant back in August, and I typed up an English translation of the menu for the new JETs. When I left, I gave the restaurant a copy. Well, it turns out that they made a whole nice looking English menu based on the translation I did. It was almost word for word what I had written. It really made my day that they put it to such good use. Karaoke was a lot of fun, but several people who were going to come chickened out instead.

Saturday Victoria and I got up early and went to Oyama town, where a friend of ours lives. Erin rounded up some JETs for an Oyama international event (they always do cool stuff). Last year they had soba-making, but this year they had a glass blowing workshop. A woman in the town has a large workshop where she makes the stuff. She showed us how to do it, then helped us to realize our designs. It was really cool, but it took a long time for all 13 of us to make what we wanted. I was number 11, so I had a really long wait. I ended up making a cool looking blue flower vase. I was really happy with the way it came out. We didn't get home until 5ish, though, so it was a tiring day.