Second experience as a babysitter

I babysat 4 kids today for two of my good friends who needed to visit their kid's school to see their teacher at parents' night. The age of children are, 7, 6, 5 and 3, only 6 is a girl and others are boys.
Babysitting is not my job and I am not used to do it for any children. Furthermore, I tend to talk to kids just like I do to adults. But since I see them either at my house, our community pool, or their houses at times, I was not afraid of being left alone with them. Just in case, however, I came over with some ideas to use when the kids fretfully cry.

My unprofessional tactics are ...
1. to draw Thomas and Friends with my poor skill
2. to lay floor with Plarail
3. to make simple quizzes about, for instance, animals and insects
4. to ask them about dinosaurs
(when it comes to dinosaurs, they are connoisseurs)
5. to let them make a show and practice to play in front of their parents after they return

and if it still does not work, especially for a 3-year kid, my last resort was ...
to call their mom for help.

The result was quite different from what I had expected.
They merrily enjoyed their parents' absence and even asked me to leave the kid's room. Feeling a bit lonely, I myself started writing my free-writing in English, then kids came to notice what I was doing with a notebook and a pen, and surrounded me requesting a draw of their stuffed animals, Thomas and Friends and the like.
What made me feel content was the fact that the smallest child had been able to tell the name of the Thomas' friends from what I sketched :0 For me, though, they were all same and hard to distinguish their faces.
We enjoyed our time otherwise. They fought to kill a fly found in a living room with a flyswatter and succeeded to do away with.

Nothing precarious happened until the end, and instead of having made me fatigued with their bottomless power, the kids filled in my solitary night :)

I will be pleased to accept next time :)

New semester

Today, my first English class at college started. As I expected, all the students except probably three of us sounded native speakers. I thought I had been prepared to jump into that situation, but it is not an easy-going Spanish class I took this summer (and am taking fall too), and it is an all English class composed of English speaking people. I was extremely nervous when I first rushed into the room.

For one reason, one of my Japanese friends gave me a bit of information about the same class of another professor, and she said she would be dropping it because of the difficulty of all the assignments she needed to do inside & outside the class.

Fortunately, my professor who I met for the first time today and came across as a considerate and cheerful lady mitigated my concerns a little bit. Moreover, my ESL teacher whom I learned from for two semesters told me, in replying to my email message, that she knew my new teacher very, very well. It is so auspicious that I cannot help continuing the class ;)
Just wish me luck!

What American accent do you have?

I found an interesting page here.
It tells you which American accent you do have by answering only 13 questions.

The below is my result.

What American accent do you have? Your Result: The Northeast Judging by how you talk you are probably from north Jersey, New York City, Connecticut or Rhode Island. Chances are, if you are from New York City (and not those other places) people would probably be able to tell if they actually heard you speak.
Philadelphia
The Inland North
The Midland
The South
Boston
The West
North Central
What American accent do you have? Quiz Created on GoToQuiz

I've never been to the Northeast, but I know the reason.
My much-loved sitcom 'Sex and the City' is still on air and my addiction that kept me from going out and let me sit in front of the TV all day long turned to be a 30 min healthy daily routine, and I am absorbing their way of speaking (hopefully) without any consciousness, or at least I believe they speak in a correct and cool manner :)))

I'm aware I do not have any accent of notrheast and I have, for sure, Japanese accent. Yet it is not too bad that someone tells me I have 'their accent' ;)

Schulte-ufer

I fell in love with this stainless steel pot at first sight.This is the first pot I bought for myself since I got married about 8 years ago. Any pan, pot, skillet or Chinese frying pan I've used were either taken over from my partner's single life or given by my friends as a wedding gift.

Now that it poured a fresh air into my kitchen, I have to stir myself to get out of a rut and improve my culinary skills.

Afternoon tea in America

I'm a coffee person, yet it does not mean that I cannot enjoy a good cup of tea. But I never expected to have afternoon tea in San Diego; yes, there is a few restaurants where serve good tea.

Three of my good friends and I visited TEA-UPON-CHATSWORTH the other day. Since I've never been to the UK, I cannot tell the difference from the traditional British tea, and only I can give is the comparison between this restaurant and my meager afternoon tea experience in Japan.
The service here was great and their indoor ornament was just like what we usually imagine about. Their tea was selective from the ample choice. We were able to relax and chatted to our heart's content. Sounds like everything was perfect!
But unfortunately, the scone and sweets were a bit too sweet and it brought us back to reality. We are in America!

2007 Acura Classic

La Costa Resort and Spa is, as the name shows, a fabulous resort hotel with a spa in Carlsbad near San Diego. I badly wanted to visit there to get my dry skin healed, but this time my purpose was not a spa or a gorgeous restaurant, but tennis.
US open series Acura Classic was taken place there. I had some tennis class before, and hastily acquired a little knowledge of tennis, and about a month ago, my partner and I bought the ticket for our free weekend without even knowing who were going to play. Actually, we had not checked the result until late at night the day before, and were still believing the game we would watch should have been a semi final. (Our local Japanese magazine said the game on Aug 5th would be a semi final.)
When we checked the result the day before, however, the number of the remaining players for the singles tournament looked only two, Maria Sharapova and Patty Schnyder, and for doubles tournament, 2 teams. Our subtle expectation we might be able to see Sharapova turned out a fairly high possibility. Yet we still did not know if we could see the game of singles or doubles.

The result was below ;)
It was a final of Maria Sharapova vs. Patty Schnyder. In addition to that, we were able to see the doubles final if we still had an energy. Unfortunately, 4 hours of sun exposure discouraged us from sitting for next game.


Maria Sharapova won by beating Patty Schnyder 6-2, 3-6 and 6-0 :)

2007 San Diego Pride Prade

In my last post, I completely forgot to mention the most inciting event I've ever seen in San Diego. It's a Pride parade, i.e. gay parade! The majority in the parade was gay including the police officers and fire fighters. Even most spectators were gay. Being coward, my partner kept muttering, "Don't leave me alone! If I look I'm alone, everybody would gaze at me!!"
Don't worry. They know who their targets are and they like beautiful one ;)
Some guys were too good-looking to stay gay. Mottainai!

No comment in particular for each photos. Seeing is believing ;)

Hello again

I did not mean to stop posting my blog... but it's been almost 2 months and I was taking a long summer break from my blog.
What I did during these days are below. Nothing special, but everything was fun♪ except funeral....

1. Spanish class - summer semester - started and ended yesterday

3 hours a day 4 days a week for 6 weeks
I was completely overwhelmed by tremendous amount of homework. (This is one of the reasons I procrastinated my blog) The class mates were American teenagers or at oldest in their early 20's except one nice Romanian lady and myself, and it was like I was in a high school class. But it was fun and reminded me of Latin gaiety, so I cannot wait for the fall semester Spanish.

2. Went to Pacific Beach midnight to see the life of Grunion.

I am NOT an ecologist though ...

What is Gruinion? (source http://www.dfg.ca.gov/Mrd/gruschd.html)
California grunion are small silvery fish found only along the coast of southern California and northern Baja California. Most sportsmen would be unaware of their existence were it not for the unique spawning behavior of these fish. Unlike other fish, grunion come out of the water completely to lay their eggs in the wet sand of the beach. As if this behavior were not strange enough, grunion make these excursions only on particular nights, and with such regularity that the time of their arrival on the beach can be predicted a year in advance. This phenomenon can be seen on many beaches in southern California. Shortly after high tide, on certain nights, sections of these beaches sometimes are covered with thousands of grunion depositing their eggs in the sand.

3. Went back to Japan to attend a funeral of my granma-in-law.

She was 91 years old and it was a peaceful death.
I stayed in Japan only for 3 nights and ate Sashimi as much as I could, and got my hair cut.
After one year and 2 months away from Japan, my first impression was that girls were wearing beautiful makeup and they were very thin and white, not suntanned like me...

4. Went fishing again

Terrible seasick and no catch.
One of my friends who caught 3 big barracudas gave me one of his almost 3feet but not-fit-in-th-fridge barracudas. I cooked it on my own :)

5. Went to LA to see Akio Morita exhibition and ate Santoka Ramen

6. Bought new PC & theater system

My PC was more than 5 years old, and so I newly bought a nice one! Whatever the PC was in the store, it would be much much better, faster and more functional than my previous one.

All above are my latest news. I will update at my own pace. ;)