Talk About the Weather

I wasn’t really willing to believe what I was seeing when the weather report was calling for highs of 16.. what with last week having highs more like 8.
But I had six classes today, and in every one we ask “How is the weather today?” and the kids respond with varying degrees of proficiency in English depending on their age and temperament.
I try to get the older kids to use two adjectives. “Sunny and…?” sometimes in the past they would say “hot!” because they’d just come in from running. But today I felt it too. Today I wore two pairs of pants (as always) and was sorry I did it.
Seriously, sometimes I set my heater on 17 because that is the temperature I would like my room to be. And it’s doing that out there right now, with the sweet sunshine.
I know we do ‘weather’ (along with day and date and “how are you”) because they are daily conversation topics that kids should know how to say, and which change every day. And in my country, we ‘talk about the weather’ if we can’t be personal with someone.
But to me, and especially here, the weather is personal, and it really does affect my day. Today I wasn’t afraid Jermaine would last forever, because the spring is coming, and it feels today like the freeze is broken, and Jermaine as a winter burn cannot stay for the warming wind. Today I had six classes, six, that’s the max that there are in a day, and they were grades 1 through 4, that’s six to ten years of age, and I couldn’t stay inside and rest during recess.. I had to go outside and give piggyback rides to first graders who somehow had not got enough of me in first hour. Because I had to feel the sun and smell the water in the myriad water channels and find the rose-acorns (I have no idea what they are called for real).
JET of clearly Viking descent said something quite poetic the other day; he said people age year to year through the winters.. because they get all bent by the winter, and each spring they can’t quite stretch out to the reach they had the year before, as the years go on, we get older. I believe it.
But still, I’m never as old as I am in winter.
Tales from recess:

Cherry tree shade.

Storming the fortress.

Irrepressible ichinen and her pet gaijin.

Jump! Rope!

Seed pods that look like flowers.
[I really like this because I can't ever tell if this girl likes me or not; she doesn't respond well in class. But today after recess she presented me with a rose-lookin-seed-thingy. I asked her to hold it so I could take a photo or them both.]

(This is the one I'd picked up myself earlier.)