Myrthe in Japan

 This morning we started our day with an amazing breakfast at the ryokan. They literally had every single breakfast dish you could imagine.  We then started our journey to Kyoto, it was about 3 hours by express train but since we had booked our seats in advance it was very comfortable. We arrived around 2p.m. and went to leave our luggage at the hotel and go for lunch. Kyoto station is gigantic and had a full underground food market so we had some lunch there.  After lunch, we checked in to the hotel and basically just rested for the rest of the day. Around 6p.m. I got bored so I went for a walk by myself and picked up some dinner. We ate dinner in bed while watching some TV and relaxed for the rest of the evening. I'm so exited to go and explore Kyoto in the morning! Goodnight :) 

 Today we wanted to do some things with our Hakone-pass. We set our alarm early since the hotel breakfast was from 7a.m. until 8:45 a.m and somehow we slept right trough it.😂 We headed to the bus station, struggled a bit to find it and eventually took the bus up the mountain. Hakone is known for having a very good view over Mount Fuji but since it was very clouded we didn't see anything.  They have a very popular dish up this mountain, a black egg that has turned black because of vulcanic smoke. But since you could only buy a pack of 4 eggs and I wasn't going to eat 4 eggs by myself I got some vacuum sealed ones to take home and try with my family.  After having a quick bathroom break I forgot my phone in there. We realized right before we got on a cable-car that was going down. Grandma was freaking out but knowing Japanese people I wasn't too worried. And when I went to the reception to ask them someone had already brought it in and they put a note on it saying 'found...

 This morning, we were meeting up with Joy, Angie and Aris for brunch. We met up in Sjinjuku since thats where grandma and I needed to catch our train to Hakone. We went to a pancake house and had some good food. It was so nice to see them once more before our trip started and chat with them. I missed them already by just not talking to them for 1 day haha.  After breakfast, they helped us get our Hakone-passes that would get us to and around Hakone. We said our goodbyes for now and got on the train. The trainride was about 1,5 hours and pretty chill.  Once we got to Hakone, we walked to our hotel. I was so mesmerized by Hakone's peace and nature. After being in a big city for a long time, this felt like a fresh breath of air.  After checking in and resting for a bit I went to have a look around the hotel. It was huge and had an amazing private garden with 2 waterfalls, ducks and koi fish, a hot spring footbath... I was so impressed by the garden, you could never ima...

 We only have 1 full day in Tokyo before leaving for our trip, so I wanted to make the most of it. We visited all of the very touristy things today since it will be golden week when we get back to Tokyo. Golden week is the busiest week of the year and Japanese people don't even leave their house during this week because it is too busy.  We started our day at Teamlabs planet. Officially it's a museum but it's so much more then that. It's an experience with all your senses. It was incredible! The different rooms where a suprise over and over again and so beautifull. My favourites have to be the flower room and the 'rain' room where thousands of lights changed on the beat of music. It's hard to explain the experience but the pictures give you an idea.  After the museum it was time for Asakusa and it's pretty temples. We had lunch first and grandma wanted to go to either Burger King or an Italian restaurant. So we ended up eating Italian food and it was very...

 This morning I headed to the airport quite early. My grandma was arriving and I was going to pick her up. I was very exited to see her again and show her my life here. She had some trouble with her flights but got here around 11:30a.m.  When she arrived we took the metro to Nerima, for these first few days she would be staying in a hotel close to the school and my dorm. It was funny because the moment we got on the metro she started talking very loud and I was like 'ssst, oma! people don't talk on the metro here' and she was so confused haha. She ended up learning a lot more weird rules Japanese people have that day like standing left on the elevator, no eating/drinking while walking, no shaking hands when you meet someone... We checked in her luggage at the hotel and headed to Aoba. They had spring carnival going on and I was expected to be there so I asked if grandma could come along. Spring carnival is basically a big festival in the school: kids perform, foodtrucks, fa...

 This week will be the last week of my internship. It breaks my heart to think about it so I wanted to enjoy this week as much as possible. And I sure did exactly that! We were still doing the badges unit this week and it was so much fun! During the week the kids started building shapes in math and they got some really challenging ones done to earn the badges!  For UOI we had kerbal space program, a game where you have to build your own rocket and make it fly. It takes a whole lot of skills to build the perfect rocket and even more to make sure it doesn't crash. The kids were so motivated to make it work and they loved playing a videogame in class. And ofcourse we loved it too because they were motivated to learn an work! I try to make my own rocket and make it fly but lets say I still have some learning to do...maybe one day when I use it in my own classroom I might figure it out? 😅 The other option for UOI badges was making actual rockets, we started with learning how to ai...