Happy 21st birthday....

Today is Hannah's 21st birthday. For any Japanese people who are reading this blog - in New Zealand turrning 21 is a big event. Usually people have big parties and it is traditionally on this day that your parents give you a big key.... to what I'm not totally sure, but it is tradition to receive a key!
Anyway, as Hannah is not in New Zealand right now she got to have a really exciting birthday at a Japanese primary school... I had to teach all morning so she came along and was a good sport joining in with the kids. The school we went to is a rural one - with an average of 2 or 3 children in each class.... one class only has one student, but they have their own classroom and their own teacher - it is about a 10 minute drive from there to another bigger school...... crazy, but true!
I am teaching them about traditional New Zealand christmas stuff at the moment as well as English conversation so among other things today we made popcorn strings (not that I've ever actually made them in NZ....) and played "Guess Who" - what better way to reinforce the grammar structure "Do you have"!
After the exciting classes we got to eat school lunch with the kids before coming home to the nice warm fire - no heating in the schools makes a jacket essential inside wear!
We were planning to go out for dinner tonight, but as Tom's great uncle died last night it looks like Hannah will be on babysitting duties again while Tom and I go to the memorial service.... things have definately not been going to plan for Hannah's trip so far!
Tomorrow we are off to meet my mother in Kyoto (the ancient capital of Japan) for a few days so there will be no blog updates until at least Monday. Thanks for all the comments etc. lately - its good to know some people are reading my dribble!