Saturday, September 23, 2006

Sports Day #2

Exercise 6/6: Walking/Tugging/3-legged running ;-)
Time: 40 min (walking)/other stuff...throughout the day

Today was the kid's school sports day in the morning and the town one in the afternoon. For those of you faithful readers, last year we attended 4 seperate sports festivals. Our town merged with the closest big city in April, so some things have been restructered. This year, the town and the school shared the festival and it ran very smoothly...not much differently actually.
Last year, the Madlands loved this day...except Mixon, who was still in the throes of culture shock. He shed many tears last year and wouldn't let us out of his sight (it was very hard to participate in some things...) . Today, last year was barely a memory :-). We hardly saw both kids all day, except from afar, and then they were waving huge flags or organizing OTHER kids into groups for the next game. My neighbours were keenly watching the mouths of my children during the cheering contest to see if they knew the Japanese. They still can't get over the fact that our kids are fluent and have no accent! ;-)
We have come to learn, this past year, that this little town does very little changing in general. I think our presence here has been quite an experience, not just for us, but for many of them as well.
It was a good day.

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

Sounds like a wonderful way to celebrate one's 7th birthday! Selah will always remember this one:).
So great to see Mixon settled and happy. Such awesome memories for them.
Will there be some pics appearing on your blog?? Always love to see them.

rachel joy said...

Fluent? I didn't realize they were doing so well with the language. Are you, too? Crazy!

Colin Madland said...

The kids are at the same level as their friends in regards to talking. Selah reads Hiragana script better than English. She is at the same level as her friends in regards to Kanji (the stuff that looks like heiroglyphics ;-) They learn that exponentially throughout school. Mixon is doing some catch-up with the reading/writing of Japanese in regards to his peers. They translate for us all the time.
I am preparing for an international Japanese test in Dec., so in studying, my speaking has taken a giant leap forward in the last month and I am understanding much more...but I have a LONG way to go. Colin in simply no interested. ;-)
So the 3 of us will look to continue lessons in Japanese when we get back to Canada...

rachel joy said...

impressive!