(**See last years YOKOHAMA post HERE)
Every year, at the beginning of the school term, the students all have a class field trip!
1st year students - Overnight camping trip in Nagano
2nd year students- Day trip to Yokohama
3rd year students- Univeristy campus tours
Lucky for me, every year I get to tag along with the 2nd year students to Yokohama for a fun day! The homeroom teachers stay with their class all throughout high school, meaning the group of homeroom teachers who planned this year's trip is different from the last...so even though we had the same exact schedule and procedure as last year, the vibe felt different. This group of teachers has a very relaxed, go with the flow vibe and it made the day so chill that I kept having to ask myself, "wait, am I working right now?"
First order of business...everyone (300+ students and teachers) met at Haneda airport at 8:45am sharp! The main purpose of this field trip is for the students to practice getting to the airport from Kashiwa (over an hour by train) for their upcoming trip to Okinawa. Haneda is conveniently on the way to Yokohama so after meeting at the airport, students are given a free day to explore around the city before they have to meet back at Yokohama stadium at 3pm!
Our job, as teachers, is to check off all the students when they get to the airport and then spend the day cruising around the various areas to loosely keep an eye on our students. The group of teachers I was with went straight to China town for hot soup dumplings!!! YES YES YES PLSSSSS.
We cruised around ...the weather was amazing...we grubbed on some chinese food...Midorikawa kept us all laughing with his legit oldschool camera and fashionable hats...and this groups of old grandpas was too cute not to take a photo of.
I spent the day with Steph, Midorikawa (Music teacher), Yano (Japanese teacher), Tamaoki (English teacher), and Iizuka (IT teacher) and we had such a fun time together. Yano and Iizuka are new to the school this year so it was a fun chance to get to know them.
This is one of my favorite spots in Yokohama...a cool shop called Blue next to the cutest coffee shop called Lotus.
Yamashita Park and the area right outside Yokohama baseball stadium are famous for having incredible displays of flowers around this time of year. They had perfectly lined tulips in the most amazing colors!!
We took this funny family photos to cap off our day...and waited back at the stadium for all the students to return by 3:00p.m
Once all 300 students were successfully back at the stadium, we sent them all off their separate ways and then had a teachers meeting to coordinate our next stop. We all took the train 1.5hr back to Chiba to go to Tamaoki's family restaurant for a dinner party!!
Tamaoki's family runs a Nepali restaurant in Chiba (Makuhari) and they were kind enough to host a dinner party for all the 2nd year teachers. We grubbed on some amazing curry, fresh made bread, chicken, beef, all you can drink mango lassis (amazing), and just had a blast all night. After dinner, there was this moment when Tama's mom pulled three of us ladies aside and had us dress in Sarees and come out dancing with her. Nothing like dancing with your corowkers mom while wearing a blue saree at a Nepai restaurant in the middle of Chiba Japan!!
Yanagibashi, head of the 2nd year class, gave a lovely toast...made Steph and I give a speech in Japanese...and we all chatted and enjoyed our evening until 10pm or so! What a day!!
Truly truly blessed to call this my job and to have the chance to work along side these awesome people. Yokohama 2nd year trip 2017 in the books!