Colleen's school Marathon, Pottery firing..

This week Colleen had her school marathon, Liam's will be on the 22. For Colleen's grade they run 800 meters which amounts to 2.5 laps around the school playground. She participated in this event last year after we arrived. To start the children do warm up exercises. This year Colleen was one of the leaders for the warm ups so she stood at the front to guide the others. She has really started to fit in with the other children and now even raises her hand to answer questions in class along with the other students. It is amazing to see the progression both children have made in just one year.

After the warm up the children line up and prepare for the start.

Once they get moving the children string out pretty quickly. Colleen said she was doing really well until her shoe fell off. She had to stop and put it back on before continuing and so she lost some time, she is the girl running in the left of the picture below.

In the end she was able to finish in 26th place, even with the shoe problem. She was very happy with the end result.

On Sunday we went back to the community center to finish up the pottery we started a few weeks back. The weather was perfect at about 50 degrees and sunny. To start the day a fire was started in a big fire pit lined with Oya stone. Once the fire was up and running the pottery we made a few weeks back that sat in a building to dry was placed on the perimeter of the fire pit on top of the Oya stone.

After about two hours with regular turning the pottery was warm to the touch and so it was moved inside the fire pit, but still on the Oya stone perimeter.

The pottery sat on the perimeter warming with regular turning for another 2 hours. They got to the point that you could not touch them by hand as they were too hot. Then they were placed on the coals of the fire, no longer on the fire pit perimeter.

Once all in the pit a large pile of pine branches were loaded on top of the potter, and then a huge pile of tall dried grass (like ornamental grass). The fire got pretty hot quickly as the pine and dry grass went up in flames. We could hear some popping noises under all of the brush as it burnt.

After all the brush burt down we could examine the pottery to see how the fire had affected it.

The end result was not so good, out of 20 pieces all but a few were damaged by the fire. Some so severely that they could not be saved. Apparently the popping noises we heard was the pottery exploding in the pile of burning brush. I think if air or moisture is trapped inside the pottery it expands under the heat and makes the popping noise, almost like fireworks.

Liam enjoyed helping to look for broken pieces within the coals. The men got a kick out of hearing him speak in Japanese to them.

In the end we faired pretty well. Colleen's piece had very little damage and our other pieces could be salvaged with a little glue. It was a great experience to see exactly what it took to make pottery so many years ago. To refresh your memory here is the pottery that was excavated that we modeled our pottery after.

I hope when they were making it they were able to get a little better success rate then we did. I snagged a picture of our finished pots and you can see them below.

For an afternoon snack we made Yaki Imo. That is the baked sweet potato that the truck drives around and sells. We used the same fire that the pottery was baking in to cook the potatoes. To start we took the potatoes and wrapped them in news paper.

Next the potato with news paper was dipped in water. This step keeps the potato nice and moist while it is cooking.

After they are dipped in water we wrapped them with aluminum foil to protect them from the direct heat.

Then threw them on the coals that the pottery was baking in..

Once finished the potatoes were broken in half and served to be eaten like an ice cream cone.

They are very tasty, the children love them, and they are good for you.....

That finishes this weeks post...have a good week.