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Mori no Ike veteran and friend Kikai (aka “The Machine”) scanned his copy of the 1996 Mori no Ike songbook distributed to villagers and staff:

Long long ago, in the tiny po-dunk town of Dent, Minnesota, population 156, where a rag-tag bunch of gaijin (guy-jean) lived hippy lives while wearing hapi clothes, spending their summer speaking, living, learning, eating and singing Japanese.

From those years past I now resurrect the sacred song book for anyone who is interested, to share, educate, or practice their Nihongo no Uta’s during what has come to be known as “the off season” for many villagers.

Catalogued and printed over 10 years ago, the 1996 song book for Mori No Ike, the Japanese language village of the Concordia Language Villages, is just as timely today as it was in years past. Hopefully, this online publication will help bring back songs that have dissappeared with the passing of sensei through the ranks, out of the camping life and on to wider and greater adventures.

Talk about kicking it old school. My question: what the heck is トンバイ?

Every day at school they play some music over the PA after lunch and during cleaning time. Today I really enjoyed the music, which was not the usual classical or opera (our orchestra teacher normally chooses from “the classics”), and asked some teachers for the artist name. I then found a couple CD’s by the artist, 王宏恩 (Wáng Hóng’ēn), on the way to Chinese class in Yilan. The CD’s are solid overall. 王宏恩 is a Bunun aboriginal whose aboriginal name is biung tak-banuaz, and half his songs are in the Bunun language. To my pleasant surprise one CD also included a song we dance to at Nanao Elementary every week. The song is called “Buklavu,” written about his hometown and sung in Bunun. it’s beautiful, incredibly catchy, and encapsulates the aborigines’ energy. I found the song online and have embedded it here:

In addition, here’s a YouTube video of someone who’s figured out another one of my favorite songs of his: a beautiful song called “Ana tupa tu” (“moon”). I may try to learn parts of it, but simplified… it’s a little intense.

Today was the ROC Year 96 Yilan county English Easy Go! competition. There are two parts to the fall competition: a song competition (song and dance, costumes, sets, the whole nine-yards) and a reader-theater. I think the competition is a great idea, getting kids all over the county excited about English through performance.

A group of 11 6th graders from Penglai have been practicing for the song competition for the past month or so under my co-teacher Jennifer’s direction. They sang and danced to the Fiona Fung song “Proud of You.”

The military guy and I met the kids at the train station at 7AM.

The kids liked playing with my camera and abusing me.

The competition was held at 凱旋國小, a huge elementary school.

We first practiced downstairs a few times and hung out. They were all wearing little angel crown-ish things, black t-shirt with a gold “belt” of tape, and bells on their wrists.

Our school was the third group in the later-morning performance group. They were not at all nervous and did fabulously!

All of us ETA’s were of course all there with our respective teams. In the photo below Katie is videotaping another school’s choreographer standing in the back of the crowd dancing with/directing the kids. He had this whole face, haircut, and outfit that screamed “I am a choreographer.”

Then we came home. A great time was had by all. ^^