This is my third year on italki!! This is my third year since I started tutoring on this website. Luckily, I have been able to meet many students whose learning styles match with my teaching style and find my lessons useful. I have kept all lesson plans and teaching/learning records of students who took my professional lessons. Today, my first file became full filled and started the second file. This is amazing to see the students’ progress over the couple of years and I am very proud how much effort they put onto learning Japanese while they are having busy life. I am very lucky to meet very sincere and enthusiastic students. I could not continue such long time without those students’ support. いままで　どうも　ありがとう。そして、これからも　よろしく　おねがいします。

Dear my students I would like to inform you that I am going back to Japan early in May to mid-July. I am going to keep offering lessons. However, the available lesson time will be behind by one hour and may be shortened during this period. I am also planning to go for a 2-week trip sometime late in June to early in July. Thus, I cannot offer any lessons and I may request you to reschedule the current scheduled ones during this period. I apologise for any inconvenience that this may have caused you and I appreciate your kind understanding. Please do not hesitate to contact and/or to ask me if you have any further questions and/or concerns. Kara

Time has started revolving around me I am never good at calculating time differences. However, it is getting either warmer or cooler on the earth and more confusing season has arrived. So far, I have lived in a couple of countries, but neither of the country has the system of daylight savings. However, it seems they are rare and many places have introduced the system in the world. I have no idea how and when the daylight savings exactly start and/or end, but when I realised the time had changed in my surroundings. It was already very confusing, but yet simpler till I had started communicating with others on the internet although I learned working near the border was extremely inconvenient. People who I used to involve with were from NSW, VIC and SA, so once I learned the daylight savings started, I could set mind that they had become ahead of us. Now, it has become more complicated because it seems each region has their own timing to move their time. I think it takes a bit more time to use to the new time and I am sure I will whinge exactly the same time in half a year when time starts moving around again…

My Kitchen Rules I do not watch Australian TV show much, but currently I am absolutely hooked on "My Kitchen Rules". I have known this show is popular as many people were talking about it, but I was avoiding to watch it for a long time because I thought it is similar programme to "Master Chef". I did not quite like "Master Chef" and I am totally against "Junior Master Chef", which runs during the school terms and requires for the competitors away from their schools for the period of the competition. My husband was also not interested in "My Kitchen Rules" and he was often watching something else during the period, so I did not have a much chance to watch it till this year. Several weeks ago, we were doing some house work when we left the TV on. Then, we started watching bits of piecies of the show while we were doing something else. We found it was different from "Master Chef" and it was quite interesting. Since then, watching the TV show became my new habit. What is good for this show is, chefs are not professionals and sometimes they screw things up. However, they often make fabulous recovery and gain excellent feedbacks. I am hoping I can learn some of their techniques, so I can use them for my own cooking. The cynical ladies's turn tonight, so I am expecting they will make something good and I am looking forward to it. Hopefully, they do not things too complicated, so I can try myself later.

Writing Practice Recently, I have opportunities to look for newspaper articles for children both written in Japanese and English. During surfing on the net, I have realised that there are many writing cometitions in Japan, but not many in Australia (or at least I have not noticed them). Thinking back on my childhood, competitions with some sort of prize were always around me. I always loved reading, but sometimes what I wanted to read and what my paretents wanted me to read were different. Thus, they did not buy me some books/comics. However, they did not object me to buy them with book vouchers which I earned myself, either. I am not sure now, but the popular prizes back then were book vouchers and stationery vouchers because awarding cash to children were forbidden and it was converted into the vouchers even the case cash were awarded to the adults. Teachers were favourably support students and always willing to proof read our writing. They were flexible and let us choose the topics of writing, painting and research project for summer holiday homework, too. They even showed a booklet of competitions to students before the holiday and advised how to kill two birds with one stone: complete homework and enter the competition. I still remember at one stage, the deputy of primary school was looking after me and my sister who was more artistic was entering calligraphy and painting competitions. Lack of skills of literacy and numeracy of the primary and secondary students, are huge problems here. However, it seems there are not many opportunities for them to improve those skills here, either. I think students write and read more if schools show them the competitions which offer not only the top award, but also participation award.

Amazing! New year card with a vague address was delivered safely!! I found a website written written something like 'To a man in a red hat, who is selling "Big Issue" near Starbucks' is good enough to deliver a new year card in Japan. I found it was a quite amazing story as the Australian post is quite slack. No offence against them, but definitely they deliver mail without looking at the street names thoroughly at all. In fact, we receive a wrongly addressed letter at least once a month. Sometimes they are same street, but different numbers, other times they are on the same street but different suburbs, what are worse are when I cannot find any similarities... I do not know how to deal with those letters, so I deliver them if they are near by and bring them back to the post box if they are far away. I hope they are delivered properly at the second time because even only glance at the envelope, I can tell some of them are official letters and quite important. I am sure that our letters have been also delivered somewhere else because my last medicare card did not arrive here even the expire date was passed. I wonder if I am asking too much to read the address properly to deliver the mail to the right person and put them into the mail box instead of spread on the ground. http://ima.goo.ne.jp/column/article/535.html

Aftermath of the storm We had a couple of hours of heavy storm this afternoon. Trains were stopped and my husband, who usually comes home same time every day, did not come home till late, so I was a bit of worried. I had shut all of the doors and windows before the storm came, but the rain still managed to came into the house through the gaps. Floors were full of water and furniture by the windows was very wet. Several doonas and a matress were also very wet, so I put them out and hang them on the line as soon as the storm had gone. I hope it will not rain tomorrow and let them dry properly. At least, it made cool here down and we feel we can sleep well tonight, so it was not only a bad thing at the end.

A very hot day Last night's news warned us that today would be the hottest day ever. Thus, my husband and I decided to go to the shopping centres and the library to avoid the heat during the day. Obviously everyone was thinking the same, and the shopping centres and the library were full of people today. The library was ridiculous as it had become a play ground instead of the library. Kids were running everywhere and occupied computers, which clearly stated as only for the library catalogue, forever and playing games. The librarians seemed had given up with them because kids had kept ignoring them. We did not spend much time at the library and started wandering around the shopping centre. We had come across with several friends who were also wandering around, so we had morning tea, lunch, and after noon tea together before heading back home. At the end, I am not sure if it was as hot as the warning, but I had a quite good day with our friends and a pile of washing has done, so I am happy with the heat today.

Happy New Year! It is very hot and humid every day, and my husband's only day off was the first of the month. So, I do not feel I am having a new year at all. Yesterday was another very hot day, so I decided to go to the library to cool down. Then, I found a book teaching how to draw quick pictures with a 3-colours ball point pen. My drawing skill is shocking and my students said that "Australia is not a cat or rabbit" when I draw a map of it. Fortunately, I have a lot of time on my hands now, so I thought it was a time to practise drawing. There was another book translated into Chinese, so I thought I could learn drawing and Chinese at the same time with the book for a second. However, I also thought I might give up both of them. So, I borrowed the Japanese version at the end. As the nature of most of the how to books, this book is easy at the very beginning, but soon after it becomes very difficult and complicated... It still looks like something different from what I wanted to draw, but at least I am enjoying this (*^^*)