Trips to Japan

Day 8 – field trip, nose bleeding…

As I was folding the futon to be put up, I noticed Evan’s sheets had some brown spots. I thought maybe some chocolate got in the bed. Later, Evan told us that she had bloody nose during the night. Uh oh… As far as I know, sheets etc got washed pretty clean, including my white under tee shirt that she used to hold her nose.

The class that Evan is visiting went on a field trip.

The whole of second grade have about 135 students, which are split into four class rooms. Two of those were combined, then split into 12 separate groups to visit different places. Evan’s class visited a supermarket and a bakery.

We arrived at the super market at around 9:50AM, and the place does not open until 10AM. Coming from the area where the grocery store is open 24/7, this felt a bit strange. Also, there were shoppers arriving at the store before the store opening hours. So as soon as the doors opened at 10AM square, there was a rush of human traffic going into the store, including two groups of students. (Another group was supposed to visit the veterinarian’s office first, but there was an emergency patient, so they had to visit the supermarket first.)

One store clerk was there to greet the students, take questions from the students, and take the students to the tour of the store, mainly the back rooms. Bulk of big chores were already done, so the workers didn’t have too much to show. The students could still visit the fish cutting and packaging room, and they probably had some fun there.

When we arrived at the small bakery on foot, another group was just getting done, coming out of the store with a piece of bread in their hand. Evan’s group got excited when they heard that those students made those bread themselves. It was a small bread wrapped around a small hotdog. That part was already done before the kids got there. The kids did some of the finishing touch – basting eggs, spread ketchup and mayo. Bread got baked in 15 minutes. The bakers showed the kids how to make a clean, round ball of dough while they were baking.

Maybe all those excitement got to Evan’s head. Once we all got back to the classroom, and started writing down the day’s experience along with a drawing, she had another bloody nose. What amazed me is that just about every kid has a small packet of kleenex. As soon as they found it out, a mountain of kleenex was built on Evan’s desk. It was rather amusing.

Before coming home, Evan stayed at the school a bit longer so she could eat lunch together with kids, the play with them during lunch recess.

Once we got home after those, she bled again. Feeling a bit concerned, we took her temperature quickly – 36 degrees C. Quite normal. We still don’t know what’s causing her frequent bleeding from nose.

Evan’s day was over (except for playing at home with Kasumi), but my day continued. I was tasked with fixing the sliding screen doors to the back porch. Before I could do the repair, we had to get the parts. Our shopping tour wasn’t short though. We made 4 stops, buying all kinds of goods, including some under shirts, groceries, and a new camera. (Almost all of the photos on the gallery are taken with this camera, which I’ve been borrowing from Myung Joo. Yes, I bought the same thing, since I’m liking it so much, and I really needed a new one anyway.)

As I was doing the repair (one screen door only needed the wheels swapped, but the second one needed the whole thing re-screened.), it started raining quite hard, and I was getting wet from it, even with the shade above the porch. That screen door is still out there, with some excess screen dangling around. Quite ugly. I still have some more work left for tomorrow evening.

Hopefully this rain won’t linger for tomorrow. We have another big day planned.

No Comments yet »

RSS feed for comments on this post. TrackBack URI