Homework has ruined my life

Today I have so much to do. I need to do this (blog) for a start, and English, and Social Studies, and a math program called ALEKS, and study for the Science test, study for the JSS (Japanese Social Studies) test, do my JSS project, and a Science concept to do. And I have to go to an acting school in Japanese for 2 and 1/2 hours. And weekends were meant to be a day off.

This makes me feel sad. It makes me feel sad because it feels like I have no relaxing time. It also makes me feel tired because, as I said  above, I have no rest time and I stay up late to do homework. It also makes me mad because school is supposed to be 7 hours for 5 days, not 9 hours plus weekends. I was wondering who 'invented' homework and if they were evil. The history of homework actually goes back to the year 1095 in the city of Venice where Roberto Nevilis is credited with being the first to teach with homework.  I and mad at this guy for inventing homework.

Homework is much due to middle school. Middle school is worse than elementary school because the teachers assign more homework. It is more because it is harder work, more work and longer term projects along with everything else like daily homework. The longer term projects are hard to manage. Sometimes it seems that teachers think you don't take holidays. I think this because they assign a lot of homework on a week with a school trips or school wide events.

If the world was perfect ( it's not ) then a weekend would look like maybe, 20 minutes of work and the rest of the time would be fun stuff like playing with friends instead of 20 minutes of fun and the rest work. 

I'd better go now to get some more work done. ( sarcastic yay ).

Minamisanriku trip

Last Sunday and Monday, I went on a school trip to Minamisanriku. This was not the whole school, or grade trip, but an exploratory trip. I am in the Minamisanriku friendship club. 10 kids and 4 teachers went to Minamisanriku. Minamisanriku-cho is a city that is on the coast. It was heavily hit in the 2011 Tohoku earthquake and tsunami. The club went to Minamisanriku to try to make everyone happy and to make them not give up. We did a lot of volunteer work.

My favourite volunteer work was at the green onion farm. We first harvested the green onions or naganegi (in Japanese). The field was really muddy because it was raining slightly. The harvesting was a lot like goldilocks. If you pulled too hard, then either  the stalk would snap, or the leaf would come off. If you pull too lightly, then nothing will happen. But after a while, we all got the hang of it. It was still really hard because if the plants are grouped, then the roots might be connected and it is nearly impossible to pull out. After harvesting, we helped process the green onions. My job, along with many others, was to pull off the dead leaves. Other jobs were, box folding, sticker cutting. leaf cutting and air blasting. Air blasting is when you put the naganegi in to a place and you blast of the dirty played of skin. Some people ate the broken naganegi that couldn't be sold. 

The first thing we did was visit some temporary houses. The first one we visited was inhabited by an older man. He told us about how he escaped the tsunami and how his relatives did not. He said, that don't get anything and don't wait for anyone but just run. The house was really small. The whole building was about the size of a small hotel room. There was one tiny kitchen, one tiny bathroom and two bedrooms. But one bedroom belonged to a complete stranger that he had to share the rest of the house with. I thought that if this was me then I would be sad, but he seemed really happy.

The second house we visited was a bit less temporary. It was actually an apartment building. The family of four was first living in a house like the one described above, but it a lottery, won the right to a new house.  The house was still small, but it was much better then living in the prior one. One of the kids actually did an activity with the Minamisanriku club last year and remembered someone on our trip. These people seemed so happy and I am happy for them because they won the newer, bigger house.

One other interesting thing that we did was take a tour of the affected area. We got to see the only building that was standing after the tsunami. It was an old fire tower that was a very simple design (see right). The stair railings were all crooked and it looked wrecked.

 The story is that 42 people went up to the top of the building but the water went over higher than the building. Another interesting thing was that there were neat piles of dirt like, big piles of dirt all over the place. I asked why they were there and the guide, Sato-san said that that is were the people are going to build new houses. So the water won't reach. But the water went 2 meters over the top and that is really scary. I think that it is interesting that everyone is already thinking about the next tsunami. 

The Minamisanriku trip was really interesting and informative at the same time. I really hope I can go again. This has been really fun for me.

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Phuket

First of all, sorry for not writing a blog in a long time. I think middle school is catching up with me. (Lots of homework!)

For fall break, my family and I went to Thailand. My favorite activity was the elephant riding in Phuket. Surprisingly, my mom's friend that has kids at Nishimachi, Max and Miles, were also in Phuket and so we did the elephant riding together. The elephant camp was about a 20 minute car ride from our hotel and was really big. The people had set up a camp that was really nice there, clean and not sad. When I say "they" I mean the native people of the Thai mountains that implanted on the elephants, like in nature the first person the babies see they think is their mother. 

I rode on one elephant that's name was Namsai. The driver was really cool. He had no seat belt and sat on the elephant's neck. He basically just controlled Namsai with his feet, adding pressure behind the ears. We sat on a bench-like thing that was on the elephant's back, attached by ropes. The ride was so cool and scary. It was scary because Namsai's foot steps were really slow and the seat in the back was really wobbly and it was so scary. My dad said "The seat didn't look so professionally attached." Another scary thing was when the elephant went really close to the edge and I thought we were going to fall off and then get crushed by Namsai. But I am safe at home now and writing my blog. (Video is below, if it works...)

After the ride, we went to the baby elephant area. There were two baby elephants. One was a kid and one was a teen. Surprisingly, the elephants did not smell. At the feeding area, you could buy food for the elephants. In the basket were a lot of mini bananas, a whole pineapple, and a whole ear of corn. The pineapple was sort of pre cut into 4ths. The baby elephants ate the bananas whole (skin included). The same goes for the pineapple fourth. The elephants like bananas more than anything. If you are holding out corn, they would grab it and then throw it close to the cage.

Thailand was really fun. The elephants were so cool. I hope I can go again sometime. Remember to put your email at the top of the page to get a notice whenever a new post has arrived.