Taking chances

It's Thanksgiving today. I usually associate this day with family, turkey dinner with all the trimmings, and fun. Several things have changed dramatically in my life over the past, oh, five years. Thanksgiving has been one of those things. It just isn't the big holiday that it had always been in the past. Family things have changed and I haven't had an actual Thanksgiving with my mom in at least three years. It's hard adjusting to things when it's always been one way for you. Three years ago, it was just me, my dad, and my brother for dinner, and the meal was a little short of the elaborate spread I had been used to. Plus, it didn't feel whole. Can't remember a Thanksgiving before then that had been less than at least seven people (extended family or friends). Two years ago, it was the just the three of us again (plus my ex) , but no turkey dinner. I know that there were quite a few people who were jealous of our prime rib but it wasn't the same (no matter how delicious it was). I don't mean to sound like I'm complaining. I am so thankful for my dad and my brother. And I'm so glad that we can get together every year to celebrate together. But it's hard to change things in the midst of so many other, more dramatic heart breaking changes.
This year again was different for us. We have the addition of my stepmom, Nancy. However, she had to be in Kentucky because of work issues. So the three of us headed up to my grandparents' house in Rapid City. We all ended up with turkey, stuffing, mashed potatoes, green bean casserole, yams, cranberries, and pie. The works, ya know? But we went out for it. We went to this fifties style diner for Thanksgiving. I will be honest and say my heart dropped when I found out. The food was delicious, don't get me wrong. But once again circumstances had trespassed onto the holy ground know as Thanksgiving that I had built up in the back of my mind. I sucked it up and ended up having a pretty good time. And I totally understand why we went out instead of staying in. But the inside me was still kicking and screaming and throwing a tantrum. Until...
While we were originally the only people in the restaraunt, we were soon joined by two more familys, and this one guy.
I saw the guy come in peripherally, and he ended up sitting in a booth behind where our table was. I thought maybe someone would show up to be with him, but as we continued our dinner, I heard him order his meal for just him. He was kind of a younger man and I think he was out of state, New York I think from the licence plate outside. When I heard him order for just him I felt sad. He sounded like he was in a pretty good mood and everything, but he was alone. The rest of the time we were there I kept staring at the empty chair across the table that, had any number of things been different, would've been filled. And I kept thinking, I should ask him if he wanted to eat with us. I should offer our extra chair. Nobody should be alone on a family oriented holiday, no matter the reason. But the whole time that was running through my head another line was racing at the exact same time, "He would probably say no". And that's that. I didn't ask him to join us, I didn't ask the waitress if I could pay for his meal (another thought of mine since I kinda chickened out on the other thought). I just sat there scared of being embarrassed of asking a guy alone on Thanksgiving to occupy our empty chair. After we left I've been feeling like someone punched me in the gut the whole time.
There are so many things I wish I had done or said but didn't because I was scared. Whether they were good things or just regular things, I've been scared of taking chances because I don't want to be hurt or embarrassed or whatever. All through today I've had this song stuck in my head by Celine Dion. Here's the chorus:
"What do you say to taking chances? What do you say to jumping off the edge? Never knowing if there's solid ground below or a hand to hold or hell to pay. What do you say?"

I am incredibly notorious for ridiculously long posts because I don't really blog often but I quite often go off on tangents. Actually tangents? All the time. Conversations, thoughts, writing, whatever. Here a tangent, there a tangent, everywhere a tangent, tangent. And since I am almost positive no one actually reads this blog any more I can feel free to say whatever I please in any tangent saturated way I deem fit. I just felt the need to pour out my thoughts and feelings in a way that might possibly be seen by someone but most likely won't. Like a journal but unlike a diary... I guess. It makes sense in my head anyway.

So now to splay my innards for the world of you.... whoever you maybe who is reading this. Which might possibly be myself months from now when I feel like popping onto this site again. This just makes me think that maybe they shouldn't let every Tom, Dick and Harry who wants to play on their keyboard have easy access to a blog. But I digress.

The reason for this particular piece of digitalized script is mainly about the past. I'm currently in my room at dad's and i like to rummage through my drawers of stuff that I have kept over the years. Junk drawers, you may call them, and I have a few. My collective habits have me worried that I'm a seedling hoarder. But then I just throw that thought away. Clever? Witty? No? Then we're in agreement, now let's move on. I found this little booklet in said drawer and thought to myself .... I'm stupid and why would I have ever have thought this was a good idea. It was a beginner's scrapbook so to say, that I had planned, I guess, on making into a "How I Met Your Father" kind of book. 'Cept after looking through the stuff that I had kept I just felt foolish and nostalgic and more foolish and stupid. One thing led to another and I am now convinced that I have screwed up on every level when it comes to pretty much everything in my life it seems. I also saw my insecurities spitting in my face.

This booklet contains pictures: My high school crush, one Jacob Parker with his unbelievably gorgeous blue eyes. My first technical boyfriend, Joe the body builder... And no, I'm not lying about the body builder thing to make myself look cool or something to that effect. My first real boyfriend, Matt. And then my musical ex, Gabe. I also have cards that came with roses, movie ticket stubs, Christmas cards and just because cards with little notes to remind me what they said they thought of me then. I also have bracelets given to me as presents hanging out on the binder like rings of yond scrapbook. I have heart stickers and cutouts. All the makings of a great scrapbook except the great idea part. I have no idea what I was thinking. I guess when I was putting together the idea and the book, I never thought that I would look back and just be racked with the ache that each item and picture carried with it either from regret, anger, hate, bitterness, or remorse. If any of my exs are reading this, I wouldn't pin any of those words on yourself. I am probably not feeling the way you think I am feeling about how things went. Needless to say, though, that my most recent ex and a few so and so's will not be making the cut to this menagerie of teenage stupid. I really just need to throw that stuff away and relieve myself of the stuffed animals or other boyfriend to girlfriend gifts that I have laying around.

I just hate how I let myself get into some of the situations. I honestly regret getting into a couple of the relationships I found myself in because I knew before they even started that I didn't want to be in them. Actually, that's the case with almost all of my relationships. I was stupid for getting into them for one, and ending them the way I did. I am actually a very perceptive person, but I think I'm also a little too sensitive sometimes, too. I never wanted to hurt anyone. Before I ever started dating, I actually readied myself to be the dumpee in all my relationships rather than the dumper.

There are only two guys that I have found myself in the situation of mutual like with and I really regret how things went. I'm really sorry that I am scared and insecure in the areas that I am because I'm positive that if I were even a fraction better in those areas then things would've gone a lot differently. And I know that I hurt them because of my own craziness and I would give anything to change how that went. But I can't. I guess my consolation is to see both of them happily moving on and letting myself imagine that they look back and wonder what it ever was that made them like me.... at all.

I know I'm a downer and I'm really harsh on myself blahdy, blahdy, blah. But the truth is is that I'm not happy with where my life is at at all. I'm not happy with the circumstances I've created for myself because I was scared, mean, spiteful, bitter, selfish, and whatever adjective you feel like throwing in there. I hate the way I've treated people, like my exs and my mom and my brother and my friends. I'm also terribly unhappy with the things in my life that seem like they were out of my control but that little creeper is stuck in the back of my head telling me that I did have something to do with it. I can't remember the last time that I actually liked myself. And it's not because I'm just being depressing, it's because I look back on my life and I was mean. I remember being mean but not thinking it was mean.

So this is my journal entry on how I don't know how I have any friends at all, on how I wish I could change the past. On how I don't know.... what else to say. I have trust issues, truth issues, self esteem issues, and crazy issues. I think I'm honestly crazy, not clinically or anything like that but I just think that it's going to take a strong, strong man to handle my crazy.

Well... I guess... thanks for reading if you were reading this... and managed to make it to the end of my rant.

A New Day

I did it. This is my first post-Japan blog. (We'll see how long this lasts). I have gotten a note that my blogs were perhaps a little long for the reading, so I will take that into consideration.

I have been thinking quite a bit lately about some of my biggest weaknesses and taking steps to change them.

1) Procrastination

2) Attitude

3) Timidity

I am proud to say that, to combat procrastination, I started my papers earlier. I completed a ten page paper nearly 24 hours ahead of time. This is quite odd for me since all-nighters are no strangers to me. This will hopefully be carried over into my next 3 big assignments especially since they are all due about the same time :S. I'm getting books for a ten-pager due the 22nd today, so yay!

With regard to attitude, I think this may be the one I am struggling with the most. To me, especially as of late, work has been extremely bad-attitude enducing....not because of the actual work, but because of the contagious bad-attitudes of the co-workers mixed with a lonliness that somewhat carried over from Japan and some what was due to change in school. Val graduated last year, so she has disappated...I mean ....isn't at the school. To Japan, it is somewhat lonely not having anyone your own age to hang out with mainly because you can't speak hardly any of their language and they don't like using their english much because they don't think their's is very good. But I have been thinking mainly on God and being a good model at work. It's hard to be in a bad mood when you are thinking on good things :). I have also been taking initiative in asking friends over.

And in regards to timidness, i have put myself out of my comfort zone and made myself do things i have been terrified for one reason or another to do in my past years. Case and point, I signed myself up not only for being a prayer leader in regular chapel, but also being an mc and signed up to be a singer for chapel praise bands. I was quite scared to discover that my signiture to become an mc for chapel, just welcoming and introducing, was placed onto the duty of becoming this semester's first prayer chapel leader. I was so scared and uncomfortable with this.... I am uncomfortable praying out loud. But I took that and threw it into my prayer chapel mix.

I began by removing all of the chairs from the chapel, with permission of course. And then continued by making everyone take their shoes off before they came into chapel. Ther main purpose of the chapel was to challenge everyone to do something they were uncomfortable doing because being comfortable thwarts growth. The main prayer topics, though, were on missions. We started with a free for all prayer of praise to God. It was AMAZING hearing all of those voices joined in prayer bouncing off of the very nice acoustic-y walls in the chapel. It resonated. Then we split into 3 groups depending on mission experience and prayed over certain areas of the world where missions are taking place or need to take place. We then prayed over Summit's part in the mission. Followed by a different kind of free-for-all circle prayer where each class prayed over their underclassmen. Concluding with another free-for-all prayer for the individual, it was awesome. I loved the free-for-all prayers because you had to get out of your comfort zone to pray out loud while dozens of other voices are going out. You really had to focus on God.

But, there you go. It feels good to get that out there. :)

la sange su la branche

This will most likely be my last post in Japan.....I may keep blogging...maybe just for updates for those who don't see me everyday. Or to be used as an excuse for Laura to come feed my fish. :P

I realize that I didn't blog yesterday after the party.........
So about 3 on Saturday afternoon we had kids club over at ECS. There were maybe 4 or 5 new kids that I have never met along with their mamas. It was pretty cool. The story was the parable of the fish in the net. Laura and Keiko conjointly (is that a word?) read it and then the kids went fishing for these little plastic fish, turtles, and ducks in a fridge drawer that was cleaned and pulled upstairs. Then Laura and I tore apart a laundry bag and stapled its netlike fabric onto some blue paper for kids to put their colored paper fish in. It was pretty fun. Part of the laundry bag was just this white strip of fabric which i found fit perfectly around my head.

And now we know that hippies actually originated from people coming to Japan. It took my last few days and a simple makeshift headband to transform me into.......a hippie! I pulled out some bongos and raved about peace in a stoned kinda movie-stereotyped hippie way. I also transformed Keiko into a hippie. We planned to do a sit-in before one little girl stole Keiko's headband thus stripping her of her power.

After kids club I quickly ran (and by ran I mean walked....and not all that quickly) over to the birdie store to buy butter rolls and some Pringles for the ice cream party. Because it was so close to dinner time, we also had sandwiches and stuff.

Nobuko from Tuesday classes stopped by just to say hi! I was happy to see her.

After the party, I just hung around ECS with Aki and Keiko for a bit. One of the funny things was they were marveling at my gold arm hair. It made me giggle.



Today, we went to Kamo for church. After lunch, we filled up water balloons so the kids could have a water balloon fight. I didn't want to get wet because A) I didn't bring extra clothes and B) I am leaving tomorrow and didn't really need the hassle of trying to dry clothes before packing them. (We don't have a dryer).
So I sat back and watched as the kids threw balloons at Nathan.......and they weren't breaking and NO one was getting wet. So I HAD to join in. I doused Kei...soaked Becka....and got myself wet in the process. :S Currently, my clothes are hanging in front of a fan.....and hoping to be dry by tomorrow morning (maybe?)

So now....I'm chilling out.....after finishing packing my main bags (which I might have to pay extra because of all the stuff packed in). ^~^'. Hopefully it all gets back in one piece.

So I will soon be seeing some of you readers.....please pray for my flight and also please pray for Joshy's surgery next week (tonsils and adnoids) and that he stays healthy up until then.

If you can't say anything nice......

That's not really the reason for my lack of blog this week. It has been CRAZY between packing and *cough cough* last minute papers and such. And for some reason my body decided that it was very tired, so when I had free time I would zonk out for a nice, long, 2 or so hour nap. ^~^'

So this is going to be my week in a nutshell. So.....I believe that I blogged about Monday a little, So I will start w/Tuesday.

TUESDAY
Tuesday morning, while I was havin' my coffee I was being harassed by a pop up box on my computer. Everytime I tried to do something....POP UP BOX! Laura and Jerry told me I was losing my mind because I was threatening to file for a restraining order against this pop up box.

Unfortunately, Machiko was the only one in the ladies class today. I knew Tomomi wouldn't be there, but I didn't know about Nobuko. But we had a really nice chat, and Machiko told me that if I come back to visit, I could homestay at her house! That made me so happy! She is such a sweet lady, I'm going to miss her a ton.


WEDNESDAY
Laura and I went a bit early to ECS today so that we could run over to #1 Coffee!!! for a last internship/plans for the future kind of meeting. We talked about what I needed to get done still.....which is like another paper... and what I wanted to do after school. Then we headed back to ECS for Wednesday classes. I helped a bit for the first 2 classes while at the same time juggled catchin' up on my daily log because of camp.
Then, for the girls' class, I took them on a bearhunt. Laura needed to talk to preschool mothers about Joshy's surgery date (he's getting his tonsils out). So I took the girls on a bearhunt because they were learning the words 'in', 'on', and 'under'. So I had them crawl on some pillows, under a table, and then in a fabricated cave. Then we read "Going on a Bearhunt." I don't really know if they enjoyed it, but Laura thought it was a neat idea.
For the last class, Chisa joined us and we played "Speaker Friendly". It was a lot of fun. After class, keiko, Aki, Chisa and I hung out at ECS. We just chatted and stuff...it was way fun. I'm going to miss them alot. Hopefully we will be able to hang out Today after the ice cream party.

THURSDAY
I'll pass on this one....I didn't do much at all. Went to lunch w/Joshy and Laura. Walked around and then took a nice long nap. The end.

FRIDAY
So, for Friday, Laura and I left a bit early so I could mail my Fuji Stick back to the states. Amazingly enough, it would NOT fit in my luggage. haha. Then we bought lunch from the bakery. Because it was my last bible study, we got my favorite sweet roll for dessert. It tastes like it has honey butter. It's WAY good.
I was very pleasantly surprised that Machiko came to lunch and bible study. I think the main reason she came was to see me, but I'm glad she came for the study and I think she'll be coming back for it.
After the study (Deut. 8-9), Machiko helped me put on my yukata! She taught me how to put it on and how to fold it when I am done! It was fun wearing my yukata. I also, because Japanese class was on summer vacation, was able to stay for the English class and all of Mommy & me. I also helped with the preschool class. Then Keiko and I went to the sweets shop on the corner and bought some sweets to bring back with me. Keiko bought a Japanese pickled suika (watermelon). It was small, don't worry.....like baseball size. She had me try it. Interesting, to say the least.



SATURDAY
You will be getting another blog today, because Saturday is NOT over here. We just went grocery shopping this morning!

She likes cloth. That would be a good band name.

Sooo.....yeah.
Saturday!!!
Since Drew and his interns were staying with us, I slept downstairs and was awaken a little after 7 by Kei who was anxious to watch Curious George......which wasn't on for another hour. O.o So she went into Joshy's room to play and came out a few minutes later with, "Mama, Joshy said he wants to come out to play." ..............Joshy can't really talk. Even with all he CAN say, 'Mama, I want to go play in the living room' is not something he can say. I was layin' in bed thinking "Please, no. Just 10 more minutes. PLEASE!" Thankfully Joshy wasn't brought out until about 8 when Curious George started. So I got myself a cup of nuked coffee, and sat down on my invaded bed, a.k.a. a sleeping bag and a thick blanket, and watched Curious George. Later on....like.....5 hours later, Laura took me and her oven (like a microwave oven) to the church for a cookie baking class put on by Chikako and Erica of California.
I didn't actually make anything.....I just took pictures and ate the samples ;) haha. The main reason for me going was that I was going to stay at Chisa's house as a homestay and she was going to the cooking class. It was fun though.
After the cooking class, Chisa and I , followed by Keiko, headed out to Niigata University for an okonomiyaki party....because Chisa's apartment is quite small. Once at the University, Chisa chopped veggies and Keiko and I took a little tour. Once we got to the medical mechanics (somethin' like that) part, we played in the wheelchairs and even took them for a cruise down the halls to see Chisa! haha It was soooooo fun!
After a while, Noboru Sasaki and his family + Rie-san and her sons+Erica came out to the University. Chisa made us okonomiyaki. It's pretty muc like a Japanese pancake with stuff in it.
First you poor the "pancake" batter, then you put stuff on it like cabbage, bean sprouts, and green onions. Then you put on some soba or udon noodles (soba is thin noodles and udon is thick) and then an egg. The fun part is flippin' the thing over. :S.
After the okonomiyaki, we all played around a bit and then cleaned up and headed out. On the way up the steps to Chisa's apartment (not at the University), there were a bunch of dead semis (cicadas). When we reached her floor, there was an espcially big one (these things are like 3 inches or so), so I touched it with my foot. The thing flew up at me screeching and I dropped everything I was carrying because it scared me so bad. haha Chisa just laughed at me.
We talked and hung out all night and then headed to bed so we could go to church.
I didn't really do anything but laze about the house and recover from the week on Sunday, so I'll pass.

Monday!
Today, the girls headed out to camp. I went out shopping and then came back to fix dinner. I made chicken parmesean and it was a big hit! Yay! See? I can cook. After dinner we watched some James Bond! Woot!

Prayers:
Joshy got knocked out for some tests today.
I'm prepping all my stuff, getting ready to leave next week. :'(

CAMP!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! 'n' stuff

Ok, so.... you may have noticed that I haven't blogged in almost a week. But then again....you may not. I dunno, I can't keep tabs on who continuously reads my blog or doesn't read it so I can go guilt tripping all over the place haha. But anywho, I have been at camp since Monday! So here's camp for you.

Monday!

So...Monday we loaded up, sorta, in the van and headed to the camp. We actually loaded up in waves. Nathan and I were the first battalion sent in. Laura took the two of us to the camp to help set stuff up, and then she stole Maki Sasaki and went shopping for food stuffs or something important like that. I made the schedule for the week into a poster with the help of Ami Sasaki, Amy, a girl from the California group, and Nathan. Actually.....Ami helped me draw lines and pick colors and Amy was questioning everything I was doing haha. Nathan helped me draw pictures to take up space. Then Nathan and I helped Noboru with registration and name tags for the campers. Kei and Ami were nice enough to help Nathan and me make the name tags.

Then we filed all the campers into the gym for orientation. We assigned them their study groups and let them chose their workshops.

We had pizza for dinner (mmmm) and then had music time. Then we whisked away the kids who wanted to be in our workshops to their respected areas. I was helping Daniel and Mitsu (technically pronounced Mee-tsoo or Mee-ts in the Japanese but since he is from California, he was called Mitts) with a skit. I actually ended up helping a whole lot more with that than I planned. We were doing a modern day prodigal son written by Daniel and Mitsu, so we were assigning parts. Two boys wanted to be the prodigal son, so we had sons. Two of the girls, including Kei, were cast as friends along with another boy. And the last girl was the policeman....yes, there was a policeman. Amy, mentioned earlier, was also in our group, but she wasn't feeling well and was seperated from the rest of the kids. When we were casting the parts, Mitsu asked who wanted to be the dad. We had three boys plus two male sponsers....no problem, right? When asked, all the boys pointed at.......ME! They wanted ME to be otousan! What the?! We let Mitsu be the dad, though. I was cast as the narrator.

We then sent the little kids and elementaries off to bed, and the adults and high schoolers had bath/social time.....which, for me and my campers ended up being just bath time. haha. The baths we used are called ofudon. There are shower heads and hoses lower on the wall. You sit on this little stool, use the shower head/hose to get wet, then you soap up, rinse off and then hop into this big community bath tub. Don't worry, though, folks. We did seperate guys and girls at this thing. We set different times for the genders and/or sent one to one ofudon and the other to the other. Does that make any sense? I hope so.

When we got back to our room, and by we I mean Keiko and I plus Erica from California and Lucie and Kiyomi (High School students), Erica crashed from jet lag. I was a bit tired, but not too bad, and the other girls weren't used to going to bed so early (maybe 10, 10:30?), so we stayed up and read or chatted a bit before turning off the lights and trying to sleep. We all (the 5 of us plus Junko from the kitchen staff) stayed in one small room and slept on futons (which, if you don't know already, is pretty much like the matress part of an american futon...only more soft and comfy) with little pillows that, I think, were filled with plastic beads.....it was interesting, needless to say.

Tuesday!

I actually had a dream Monday night that all of the girls in the room save Erica and Junko slept in til 4:00pm, so I woke up at 6 am, reached over and grabbed Keiko's phone to see what time it was, slightly waking everyone in the room, before apologizing and going back to sleep. Wow....that was quite the run-on-ish sentence...sorry Mr. Feilder.

When we all finally woke up, it was about 7:45 which left us 15 minutes to scramble before breakfast! Fred, from the California team, actually came down to the cabin and yelled to make sure everyone was up for breakfast. We had pancakes, by the way.

One of the things I was put in charge of was to make table markers and drawing pieces so we could have a drawing for who had to help with dishes. There was a sun table, a star table, and a moon table. Monday night, the Sun table had to help with dishes. I got some groans from that because Nathan, Jerry and one of the California guys were sitting at that table ^_^. This morning the Sun table drew the Star table for dishes.....I was....sitting at the star table :S.

After breakfast was study time. Keiko, Lucie and Kiyomi were in Nathan and mine's group. (Is that grammarically correct? I don't even know...wow, and I taught English this week :S). We played a little game of charades to help them think of English words, and also to help them start thinking on present continous verbs (-ing's). It was really fun. Everyone did really well and was really good with their English. Lucie, an exchange student from the Czech Republic, was especially good with her English. We had fun, and then we just chatted for a bit after the game.

Then there were crafts. I didn't really help or do anything with crafts but walk around. The kids were making wooden models or paper fans and the adults were starting on silk screen hangings and making cards.

For Lunch, we had bacon cheeseburger or ham n cheese roll ups. And the Star table drew the Moon table for dishes.....I, again, was sitting at that table.

Then we had a breif bible time with singing and a biblical skit + a short message from Fred. Then was study time again for the older campers and nap time for the younger ones. We played Sorry for our study time. The game lastest....forever! Everyone got down to having one pawn one space away from winning and we were all waiting for that right card.....we pretty much went through the whole deck twice to get that last card. Keiko won, and Nathan and I, who were teaming it, LOST! Lucie had to leave after group time...it was way sad.

Then was free time and bath. Noboru took almost all of the campers and staff to the beach. I opted not to go and played a quick game of Idiots (yes, dad, you will learn it when I get home) and Egyptian Rat Race with Jerry before zonking out at a table. haha

I woke up for dinner. We had fried chicken and mac 'n' cheese. I was asked to help feed Joshy, the Mort's handicapped little boy. He is such a cutie. Thankfully, he was eating quite nicely and not throwing his food, but he was being all floppy and sleepy, so I cleaned him up and put him down on the floor. The Moon table drew the sun table for dishes.... I was....NOT sitting at that table....but I somehow ended up helping clean up anyway. (Seeing a slight pattern here?....I don't mean me cleaning, either).

Then we had group time. I took the "friends" and helped them with their lines. Kei, who...ya know....speaks english, had no problems whatsoever with her lines. Keita (the boy) did have some trouble, so I shaved down his line to two words. The youngest in our group was named Hikari. Her line was "Drive fast!" She said it perfectly! It was so cute and funny.

Us girls went down to the seminary's ofudon, took baths, and then talked a bit in the cabin before we all crashed. It was funny, though, because when we were heading out of the cabin to head to the ofudon, this huge harlequin beetle flew in and everyone freaked out. Erica turned off the light hoping the outside light would attract it. haha Then we turned teh light back on and found it on the floor. We didn't want to squish it, so Kiyomi grabbed a broom and started to.... golf it outside, but after the first hit, she didn't want to hit it that way anymore because the genkan where all the shoes are was over there and she didn't want it in the shoes. So I grabbed the broom and flicked it out the door and onto the steps, then i flicked it from the steps onto the roof of the neighboring building. The thing was waiting by the door for us when we got back from the bath, so i used Erica's flashlight to shove it off the stairs again. haha.

Wednesday!!!

I woke up at 7:40 this time....now that I knew there was an alarm haha. Then went to breakfast which was bacon, eggs and toast. I was tired of doing dishes, so I sat at the exempt table. The sun table drew the star table for dishes (O.O).

For study time, Keiko and Kiyomi played a game where they had to use past tense verbs. Afterwards, we played spoons.....but with markers. We forgot the spoons. It was fun because Keiko and I were being really sneaky with our taking of the "spoons". Nathan almost got all the letters for spoons, but he lucked out cause we ran out of time. For crafts, I helped kids make pencil toppers. Word for future referance....googly eyes are difficult to glue to pipe cleaners. But I was happy because Moka and Tomomi from ECS classes came.

For lunch, we had speghetti! yay! The star table drew the moon table for dishes. (Are you getting it?)

Tomomi joined us for the next study session. We played a game like we did yesterday but with future tense verbs. This one was weirder, though, and was asking them about outer space and future houses and cars. It was really wierd. Then we played spoons! with real spoons! It was fun.

Then we played some sort of chair soccer game thing in the gym. I dunno.... but our team dominated by getting 7 goals! Then there was free time and bath. I played idiots with Jerry, Nathan and Amy (an adult...not the kid).

We had a bbq for supper, so no dishes. But we had a drawing for who went first....moon table drew moon table....but sun table didn't listen to directions and jumped into line. haha. We had burgers and hot dogs. Then we cleaned up a bit and had bible time followed by groups. Our group was unruly and I was completely ready to tear my hair out!

After groups, we had a mock camp fire in the gym because it was kinda rainy out. We sang songs, played a game, and then roasted marshmellows over propane hotplates for s'mores. For the game, everyone was split into 5 groups and were given strips of paper with red, blue or green words on them. Then, using those words, the campers made a silly sentence. One of the sentences resulted in me licking a porcupine. O.o

After the "fire" we took baths, and then Keiko and I talked about words in her dictionary for a while before going to bed.

Thursday!!

Woke up, and then put my futon away and packed my stuff. We went to breakfast and had muffins and fruit....plus two cups of coffee. For the drawing, sun table was drawn for dishes. One of the kids at sun table was wondering if i was putting all the papers for the tables in the cup. Know why? The drawing, not including placement for the bbq, went sun, star, moon, sun, star, moon, sun. Even some of the staff was thinking I was stacking the drawings. But I wasn't. I took all the pieces of paper out of my cup and showed the boy who asked that I did in fact have all the pieces of paper in the cup. I had been sitting at sun table, but I had to skip dishes to clean the bathroom in the dining hall.

After breakfast we had a quick time to practice with our workshop groups before a recital. There was our skit group, Erica and Fred's puppet group, Jerry and Nathan's pantomime group, and then Keiko and Kiyomi were in the music group. It was a fun recital.

After the recital was a short bible time, then we packed everything and cleaned up the cabins a bit before lunch. We had taco rice for lunch, and ........star table had to do dishes. Before the drawing, I took each piece of paper, showed the tables at the front of the room, and put them in the cup so everyone would know I wasn't cheating. haha

After lunch we said good bye to campers and had a final staff meeting to discuss how the camp went. A quiet time and some cushion time will be a must for next year.

Nathan and I went back breifly with Laura to clean up a bit before going back to the camp with Drew Glosson (the guy who helped me at the train station when I first arrived) and two interns with him for Senenkai, the young adults bible study.

It was so much fun. There was a Somen slide. It is the traditional way to eat somen. You fill your bowl with the somen soup (it's cold...so it's kinda more like sauce) and then stand by this slide and someone sends the somen noodles down this little waterslide and you have to pluck the noodles from the slide and then dip then into your soup for eating. I enjoyed it alot! Then Nathan and Aki/Chisako played janken (rock paper scissors) to decide if the girls or guys would do dishes. Girls lost ^_^' so I ended up with dish duty again. haha

We played a game afterwards and then Noboru gave a short devo and we took a picture. Then we hung out for a bit. Drew and his interns were staying at the Mort's, so to give them a bit more room, Nathan and I stayed at the camp again.

Friday!

So Nathan woke me up at 7 this morning. He had to be back to catch a 7:46 train, so Noboru was taking us back to the Mort's. I have honestly been awake since. Just hung out until about 11:30 or so before Laura and I went to get lunch for bible study.

My last Japanese class was after bible study, and unfortunately I wasn't able to go out for coffee with Dong afterward because she was busy. But we exchanged e-mail addresses. There was no after Japanese class class at ECS, so we went to McDonald's for supper, and I have been hanging out here at the Mort's ever since!

So there's my week. I know it's a bit long, and I apologize. I will also have a short break from blogging this weekend because I am doing another homestay, this time with Chisako! So enjoy and I will talk to you (figuratively) later!