Sayonara Pauline
Today we had our last day of Japanese Immersion/I can speak Japanese. Some of us remember many of the Japanese words and phrases that we learnt this week. When our teachers asked us whether we were hungry for snack time, we all said “YES” in English. Then they asked us whether we remembered how we saw that we are hungry in Japanese and Zachary said: “Peko peko”.
At our activity tables, we had some ‘nendo’ which is play dough, ‘oekaki’ which is drawing and ‘itotoshi’ which means threading. At the threading table we used our names in Hiragana, that Hisami had made for us yesterday together with coloured shapes with holes in them. The different shapes were circle – maru, square – shikaku, triangle – sankaku, rectangle – nagashikaku and oval – da’en. There were many small holes in each shape. We first threaded a pipe cleaner through the small hole in the card with our name on and then we threaded some of
the coloured shapes onto it.
During circle time, we were introduced to some new animals in Japanese. Crocodile – wahnee, lion – lion, snake – hebi, elephant – zoh, giraffe – kirin. Hisami made up a story which was similar to the “Great Big Enormous Turnip” except she used the ‘teru teru bozu’ in stead of a turnip. And instead of grandma and grandpa pulling the turnip she used the different animals. This entire story was in Japanese and we understood everything, because it is repetitive and some of us already knew the names of the animals etc. Lanah knew 
many of the names of the animals in Japanese and when we went around the circle, singing our names for our Japanese good morning song, almost all of us sang our names. Today we had a visitor in our circle time and he too, sang his name. He was Pauline’s dad, Chris. It was so lovely to have him in our class as we don’t often have dads with us.
“Can you guess why Chris was with us today?” “No, it was not Pauline’s birthday”.“No, she was not feeling sick today”. “Do you give up?” “Okay, we will tell you”.
Today was, sadly for all of us, Pauline’s last day at Ohana. She and her mum, Britt and dad, Chris are leaving to go back to Denmark on Monday. We did a little farewell/sayonara party for her. We spoke about how we feel when someone leaves our class and we don’t see them again. Zachary said: “We feel sad”. So we sang “When you’re sad and you know it” and then it was also a happy time because we were still all together so we changed the words to, “When you’re 
happy and you know it”. We spoke about what we can do when we want to say goodbye to someone. We had ideas like hug, smile, kiss and so we gave Pauline a hug. Hisami made a beautiful card from all of us, with our photos and our teachers photos on it, so that Pauline will can see our faces, when she looks at the card. Then we sat down for snack time and Chris made us Danish bread, butter and banana sandwiches which were oh so yummy. Thanks Chris, Britt and Pauline for being a part of the Ohana family and good luck in Denmark. We will miss you all very much.
We went to a shrine, and learnt how to perform the rituals that people do in Japan. We clapped our hands twice, then bowed twice, prayed and then bowed again. The important rule in the shrine was to keep quiet and show our respect to Buddha. We each threw a coin into the offering box to show our “kanjiya kimochi” which means gratitude and thanks. There was a big statue inside the building and some small statues.
We sang Japanese songs before lunch and listened to the “Very Hungry Caterpillar” in Japanese too. “Otsukaresamadeshita”. Thanks Hisami, Ayaka and Nanako for a wonderful week of Japanese activities and learning.
Love always Shelley, Hisami, Nanako, Sharee, Liezel, Ayaka and Goh.