- Megumi, Michael, Mei and I all staying basically healthy and having fun from day to day! We were blessed again with a year of no serious illnesses or injuries. The photo above is from our snow trip to Nobeyama just after Christmas, where Michael tried snowboarding for the first time (and found it takes a lot of practice) and Mei enjoyed a two hour ski lesson for preschool kids.
- Enjoying my final year of teaching at ICU. I can't emphasize enough how wonderful it have been to be work with these students over the past seven years. ICU has a tradition of high expectations for the students to make efforts and engage in rigorous intellectual work, and the students (almost all) come with the motivation to challenge themselves to become better learners and communicators. In particular, the amount of research paper writing in English that each student is required to do is very important, and I find it the most rewarding part of my job along with teaching skills for reading, research, discussion and presentations. When I leave in April, I will greatly miss the teaching I do here.
- In relation to the above, successfully finding my next position, an exciting new project with Keio to start in April 2013. Much of my energy in the first half of 2012 was spent preparing paperwork, going to interviews, pondering decisions about my future, and launching preparations for my new position. As much as I'll miss ICU, I'm looking forward to meeting the challenges of creating and running a completely new English program from April.
- Making presentations at the INTED Conference in Valencia, Spain in March (See Report), and being able to visit Barcelona and Madrid in short trips before and after.
- Coordinating "Leadership English" for the Global Leadership Studies Program at ICU for the 2nd year. It was a great pleasure working with the Japanese professionals who came for the month-long intensive training.
- Refreshing my skills for teaching English to young kids at the ASIJ Summer Day Camp in July-August (See Report). I got through a month of teaching 2nd graders full-time...and actually enjoyed it. I really appreciated the support I got from my colleagues and administrators in SDC. It is amazing how actively and cheerfully the students learn once a positive, cooperative atmosphere is created.
- Continuing to run and stay healthy. My time for the Tokyo Marathon in Feb. 2012 was 4 hr 40 min, and a half-marathon in October was 2 hr. 8 min.
- Being able to take a family trip to Guam in June (See Report). A treasured luxury...and only affordable because off-season rates in June for going to Guam from Tokyo are extremely, extremely low.
- Becoming an iPhone user, finally! Being able to connect to wifi at home, on campus, and other places (with the Otosan dog sticker) around Tokyo is sooooo nice, and very useful for taking and managing photos, researching things on the net, updating things on Facebook (the main reason why my blog is slowing down), and listening to things such as my daily dose of Chinese news podcasts, music, and audio books. My current challenge is keeping my password secret from my kids who want to use my phone for watching their favorite videos, drawing pictures, and playing games. They are constantly peeking at my fingers logging in trying to steal my code...
- Volunteering in Tokyo to clean up tsunami debris: I had wanted to do this earlier in 2011, but finally I was able to join volunteer bus that went to Minami-Sanriku in November and learned that there is still a lot of work to do. The group I joined is the Ossan Volunteers who support an NGO called DSP. Website is here. I strongly recommend going. There are still many areas that need cleaning, and some areas still need to be searched for bodies of victims.
I think I can say 2012 was a very good year, and I realize that my happiness is based on the invaluable support I get from my family, friends, colleagues, students, and members of the community. Thank you everyone!
Note: I hope to add more photos and links when I get a chance!
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