P.E. swimming

This and next week, 5th graders are going swimming. We went on Friday and are going again on Monday, Tuesday and Thursday. I am in the middle level skill group and I think it is just right. There are 5 groups and I am in three. I am with, Ryo, Liam, William, Angus, Kaz and more. We go swimming at Homura elementary school. That's a Japanese school 15 minutes walking away from NIS.

We had to wear swimming caps and I was really mad. At first, my swimming cap was horrid. Luckily for me, someone lent me more comfortable ones. I thought I was really bad at swimming because I don't do "real" swimming. But I was fine. The swimming was really fun, better then I expected. The only bad thing is we missed recess.

We walked for 15 minutes including the 5 minute quiet zone. The quiet zone was just a little stretch of road were Hotta-San, a NIS staff member, held up a sign that said"Quiet zone" but I don't know why. We saw lots of kids in the school and they were doing lessons like P.E. and recess. We got into the changing rooms and changed for 5 minutes. We had a swimsuit, swimming cap, towel (in a plastic bag) and goggles.
Once we had changed, we got in our groups. I was really happy to be in Ryo's group but Liam couldn't make it so that was a bit sad.

My group was just my level. We are working on breast stroke and that is tricky for me. The coaches are really good. They spoke Japanese and also Japanese English. Our group had two coaches, one told people when to start swimming and the other was about halfway in to give help. They have really good advice but sometimes the 2 of them say different things so that is hard.

First, we did testing on freestyle. A few people went down and 2 people went up levels. Then we did a quick review of backstroke that took 5 minutes. The rest of the lesson was dedicated to breast stroke.  One student was really good at the feet but their hands were troubling them. The coach told him, "your hands do breast stroke but your feets do dolphin kicks." He did really good and he is staying in our class (I think). I was the opposite of him. My hands were good but my feet weren't good enough. But I continued do full breast stroke. I think that the coaches might demote me.

After the lessons, we had free time waiting for the highest group. They were doing a dolphin kick race, boys against girls. The girls won but the boys accused them of cheating (typical).

The swimming was really fun. I find it funny that I was dreading it, dreading it, dreading it and then it was fun. I can't wait till tomorrow.

Nerf-gun party

Yesterday I went to a Nerf birthday party.

The 8 bullet fight.
Before most of the people got to the birthday boy's house, we had an 8 bullet fight to pass the time before lunch. That means that you were only allowed to start with 8 bullets each. We never got to finish it because our reservation was early. 

Lunch.
Right before lunch, we picked teams. The birthday boy picked names out of a hat, team grandparents, and team parents (and they were our mascots). I was on team grandparents with lots of my friends. Then we sat with our team for lunch and talked strategy. The lunch place was so good. Everyone gets all you can eat salad bar and dessert bar. Then, waiters and waitresses come around with big hunks of meat and you get some (if you want.) They also have a soft serve machine. Thomas and I each dared each other to try a chile pepper and it was SPICEY! Then we dared someone else and they couldn't do it. At dessert time some people were putting chiles in cake and giving it to people and it didn't work, except one of the prankers thought a spiked one was normal and ate it. HA!

The fights.
Then when we were going back to the house, one person on the parents team had to leave and the birthday boy's younger sister went on the team. The games were held in the apartment building garage. There were cars and people but the birthday boy's dad was calling "cease fire!" so we had to stop. The first game was team v.s. team. You all have 3 lives and the birthday boy's dad was ref.  My team had the unfair advantage because we had all 10 and 11 year olds on our team. The enemy had 3 younger teammates. This game was not that exciting because not many people were shooting at me. We won. No one on our team got out.

The next game we played was capture the flag. The rules are: you can get shot anywhere on the court. If you get hit, you must run ( or walk) to your teams side of the garage and touch the wall. If you grab the flag you must run all the way to your side's wall. If you are hit with the flag, you bring it all the way back to the enemy wall and go out. The birthday boy's little sister's gun was so good. I would be on defense right up against the wall so I could just stay there and I had the birthday boy's sister's gun. It didn't look that good, it was really tiny, it could only hold one bullet etc. But it shot extremely accurately and straight. If someone got past the first line of defense, I would get them. But it can't hold off 3 people at the same time. So I thought we had really good teamwork. When I was on offense, we had a really good plan. Team mate A and team mate B went in first, A as a distraction and B got the flag. The defenders shot them both. They thought the threat was over so they started reloading. Only, I was hiding close by and got the flag. Another example of good teamwork. We won!!!!

Next we did capture the flag again, on different sides. The birthday boy's dad said that someone from our team had to switch for one game. I was on defense most of this game. We never got to finish because it was decided there was too much running.

So we went to the Hunger games. Last man standing wins, no teams, the only person you can trust is yourself.  The first game was very interesting. I was in an alliance with lots of people and we took out all those that weren't in. Well, we thought that. Then the alliance split up and I got out. Then when it was down to two people a person who was out came and said "aren't you missing someone?" It turns out that one of the players survived the first attack and now both boys were chasing the surprise survivor. That is, until one of them betrayed the other and also shot the last guy. We did one more loooooong game of Hunger games and then it was time to go.

This birthday party was really fun. I think the birthday boy enjoyed his party very much. 

Sorry

As someone commented, the actual author that came was Kate Klise and she wrote the books, the "regarding" series, Letters from Camp and many more. I am very sorry about the misinformation.