My student Jeonghyeon isn't the most intellectual. The elementary third grader has a reputation for not ever even having mastered English phonics, for example. But today she gave me a picture – of a kangaroo eating "flower ice cream" that shows clear evidence of having understood the principles of phonics – look how she's decided to spell out her title, at the top: "forow iscrime." This shows some awareness, at least, of how English phonics works – it's not just a random agglomeration of letters, which I've known some students at her level of ability (including her, in the past) to do with any vocabulary they haven't memorized.
Today was "Teacher's Day." I'm not sure what this day is supposed to be for – unlike children during "Children's Day," teachers on Teacher's Day don't get the day off and no one takes them to the park. But I did get a few stray gifts from well-meaning students (or perhaps from the kids of well-meaning parents), including this pink box of Japanese sweets (well, I assume they're either Japanese or Japanese-style, since there's Japanese on the label).
[Daily log: walking, 3 km; running, 4 km]