It was an interesting week...

Boy am I glad God had weekends put into the weekly routines.  The past couple of weeks have been busy, with a number of different things going on at school.  Much of the activity was good, but by the time I came to Friday evening, I was glad and my body responded by taking the opportunity to sleep.  Yup, got in almost 10 hours of sleep!  
This week the CAJ Middle School standards-based reporting went online, meaning parents would be able to see their child's progress based on the standards we are teaching and assessing.  If you want to know more about that feel free to comment and I will send you an email.  It was a lot of work for our Tech folks, and for the teachers to have their reporting uploaded online, so parents could view the progress.  It is a lot of information to put online.  
Every Wednesday CAJ has chapel.  Aaron is in charge of arranging the chapel band and lining up speakers.  This past Wednesday, we had Alfie Silas and Lena Marie Klingvall come sing and speak at chapel. It was inspiring.  If you want more information you can click on these links:  Lena Marie and Alfie Silas.  Here are some pictures after chapel.  

I know you can't really see them because they both are actually not very tall in stature.  A number of students did go up to Lena Marie and Alfie to talk with them.  
The gingko nuts have arrived again.  We have a gingko tree beside the auditorium along the path to the cafeteria.  If you know anything about gingko nuts, they really give an unpleasant odor when stepped on.  This week the gingko nuts were falling quite plentifully and they were getting stepped on, really they can be hard to miss.  :)  

See how many there are!  

Close up of a couple

Friday morning I went down to the Asabu area in Tokyo for the Kanto Plain Area Middle School Principal's meeting.  It was my first meeting with other Middle School Principals.  I did come last May to be introduced as the new CAJ Middle School Principal.  The meeting was at the New Sanno Hotel, which actually is somehow related to the US Naval Joint Services.  It was an interesting meeting, introducing ourselves and talking about electives and scheduling classes.  
After the meeting, I took a 15 minute walk from the hotel to the Chinese Embassy to pick up my passport and Jacquie's passport that had our Chinese visas.  Later this month, we will be traveling to Guongzhou, China to attend a Standards-Based Reporting Summit at the American International School.  I hopped on the train to go back to CAJ, when on the Seibu line going to Higashi-Kurume, an old man saw me sat next to me and started talking to me in broken English, French and Japanese.  He seemed fairly happy, but I couldn't be 100% sure.  One of the things he mentioned was World War 2, MacArthur, and how nice Canadians were.  I was glad when Higashi-Kurume station had arrived.  Our interaction did draw the attention of others in the car.  He also kept patting me on my arm and apologizing.  :)  
Wednesday was a nice enough day and I went over to the VanderHaak's to take Hana for a walk.  I usually take her along the river and back, although some parts we walk on a road where there are a lot of garden plots.  Many times when Hana and I walk past, there are people working in the gardens. 

Not a great picture taken through mesh, but these are pretty large plants.  I don't know what they are called.

This time I was struck by how bent over this one lady was.  I snuck a picture of her as we were walking by.  

I have to admit, she was working and this may not be the way she stands all the time.  

Yes it was busy, but God did give me a good night of sleep and a restful Saturday.  Since is was raining, I did not bicycle to Tama to help out at the cross country meet, so I stayed home and did some relaxing.  What is nice is that tomorrow is Sunday and I am getting ready for a spiritual boost for the new work week!