Wednesday, August 16, 2006

Cliff Jumping in the Neo

What a wonderful day! To beat the heat we went to the mountains for a picnic with some friends. We spent the afternoon cliff jumping and "swimming" upstream on the Neo (Nay-oh) River and then BBQ-ing supper. The Japanese sure know how to picnic! Yatta! When it got to be dusk, we finished the picnic with the children smashing a watermelon like a pinata, blindfolded and all just with the watermelon on the ground. Then we at huge chunks! After that we roasted some marshmallows and set off some small fireworks.

Exercise(4/6): Swimming/cliff jumping (which includes climbing)
Time: all afternoon

4 comments:

Laurel-Anne said...

Sounds like a great day! How far was it from home? How high was the cliff?

This must be a school holiday? When does school start again?

Colin Madland said...

The drive was about 45 minutes from where we live. It was beautiful there! Colin said it reminded him of the Fraser Canyon. The cliff had several different height of outcrops that you could choose from, depending on your amount of bravery (stupidity?)

School has been out on Summer Holidays since July 20th-ish. But in Japan it is very different. The children have almost the same amount of work to do...just at home. They go back Sept 1. Today we all went to school (Sunday AM) to have a "volunteer" cleaning bee to get it ready for classes. We pulled weeds outside and cleaned classrooms and windows inside. Everyone was there...parents and children...and some grandparents too.

Laurel-Anne said...

I was just reading something comparing North American schools to schools around the world, and they talked about Japan. I already knew that they take school very seriously, but was nonetheless surprised to read that if a child has to miss school due to illness, a parent will often go to class for them to take notes. Have you seen this?

Colin Madland said...

No, but that is probably because I teach at a "low academic" high school. At the high academic and super high schools I would not be at all surprised. High School is SO stressful and it all leads to one exam at the end for university entrance. Once in Univ. it is almost a free ride right into lifetime employment with a company pertaining to your career choice.