It's Christmas Time in Oita

As it would turn out, the JET community has the ability to come together for a purpose other than getting completely blitzed together on the weekend. It seems that on occasion we can come together for real, honest, purposeful activites. Take for example, last Sunday. A fellow Oita JET arranged for a fairly large group to go to a local orphanage for the day and spread some Christmas cheer in the form of crafts, games, and Christmas carols. And, because no Christmas cheer-spreading would be complete without it, Santa paid the kids a visit.

To facilitate our merrymaking, the kids were divided up into age groups.When I found out I was placed with a group of kids ranging from 0-6 years old, I will confess that I was more than a little bit nervous. What if I accidentally stepped on one? What if they peed on me? Do I look like the kind of guy who is good with young children? NOOO. However, two second after meeting them, I learned the joy of becoming a human jungle gym. For the next 4 hours I had kids crawling all over me. I must admit that although I'm not a huge fan of kids, these were some of the cutest kids I had ever seen (please see the pictures of my two favorite munchkins).

As for the orphanage itself, I was surprised at how immaculate it was. I do believe that if they started renting out rooms, I would be the first in line. When I hear the word orphanage I conjure up images of Annie and showed up there expecting to see shackles and whipping posts scattered about the grounds. Much to the contrary, the facilities were, in a word, lux. The orphanage had a full size gymnasium, a video/computer room, and dorm-style bedrooms that were way nicer that the dorms at SLU. Though it is still sad to think that these kids don't have families it is comforting to know that they are so well taken care of.

In other Oita christmas news, the Burger-chan and I have bought a most gorgeous fake Christmas tree. We lucked out because we were able to snag the last 60cm model in the store, which happened to be the display model. Rather than boxing it up, the clerk took the more Japanese route and put are pre-decorated tree and put in a bag and gave us the box to take home seperately. The decorations that came with the tree were very... interesting. It appears that the tree was decorated in the motif of Early White Trash. Only pictures can tell the whole story:

Before
(straight out of an Arkansas trailer park)

After

(If it were a little bigger, it would proabably
be making its way to Rockefeller Center)

Until next time... I hope you are having a wonderful holiday season!