February 04, 2010

 February 2010 Newsletter: Yumi's Monthly Note

Hello, everyone!

Pangaea Activities have begun this year, early January, in Kyoto at the Kyoto International School(KIS for short). This new Pangaea village will have children with diversified backgrounds, families from foreign countries, or Japanese families who came back from living in foreign countries. Pangaea will be held as a part of after-school activities weekly. There are also many unique nicknames for everyone to get to know, out of which the most interesting is Miso (means bean paste in Japanese) who will be one of the FL. Miso is an American who is a teacher at the KIS's Kindergarten, and because I myself was the same, I sensed a closeness to her. She is a person full of energy and has plenty of humour. It looks like the Pangaea Activities will be very lively.

I will be in Bario, Malaysia, from Jan 28th. I am quite well prepared, with shampoo that doesn't need water, insect repellent, anti-itch cream, and various medicines. Due to it's being the jungle and therefore a very high possibility of lots of rain, I had bought a 100yen rain coat and rain pants(water repellent pants) as well. I have also brought 3 flashlights. However... I think I will be too afraid to use them, after having experienced what happened when turning on a flashlight in Cambodia where there was no electricity. More than anything I am afraid of moths. They are my number fear, even more than snakes. When I turned on a flashlight in Cambodia, a frightening number of moths started to appear. I seriously nearly fainted. As a result, Toshi and I had had nights where we ate dinner in darkness while not even being able to see what we were eating. This time there are a lot of living things here that will probably have some of the kids participating in the Pangaea Activities going, "Wow, nice." But for me, moths and eating potatoes are a definite 'NO'. How am I going to hold out... I'll keep you updated on the blog. Malaysia's second base for the Pangaea activities will be up and running on the 30th of January in Bario.

Sophia, the FL from Seoul, came and visited Japan on the night before I departed for Malaysia, and we could meet up because she was coming to Kyoto. To be honest, I wanted to take her around and show her a lot of places, but due to need to be up and depart from Kyoto at about 7am the next day, we ended up having our meeting while eating dinner.

Also, on February 6th the first Pangaea base in Malaysia, UNIMAS, will be connecting with Mie University via the Webcam. We will be executing the menu with the use of the Language Grid. The menu is called Nazoren, however this time it will be coordinated with Wikipedia.
I'm looking forward to it!

So I am off and I will be careful and be back soon.


Yumi


Posted by: kumakinoko | 3. Newsletter