Prep

Konnichiwa! Hello there.
Today I was in charge of getting lunch for Bible study. Laura needed to be with Josh at his school swim time, so she sent me ahead to buy baked goods at the Birdie store bakery. I was told to buy for 7 or 8 people. So I bought quite a bit of bread. 4 tuna loaves, 2 cheese buns, 2 ham pull-aparts, and a raisin loaf. Because I bought so much, the ladies at the bakery gave me a gift of samples. So I ended up with 2 butter rolls and a cresant plus two yogurt drinks! Wow!
We ended up with only 5 ladies for lunch, but we ate quite a bit of the food. haha
We had a new lady join us for Bible study. She is the mom of one of the 5 year old students, Yuto. And she brought her youngest (my guess is about 1 year old), Uri. Kawaii!!!!
We talked about the 12 spies going into Canaan. And yes, the whole time I was singing, "12 men went to spy on Canaan, 10 were bad and 2 were good!" in my head. :S

Afterwords, I went to Japanese class. I had intended to invite Dong, my Chinese friend, to English camp today. However, she was not there. The only other student was a guy named Michael, a life guard from Australia. I told him, since he is only in Japan for 5 weeks, that he came to class at the wrong time since there were only 2 classes left til summer break. Also, when he was introducing himself, I thought he said his name was Marco because he had such a thick accent. I honestly, though I felt really bad, couldn't understand some of the things he said and made him repeat himself. It actually took the teacher calling him Michael that I understood his name! haha. I helped him out with everything the best I could since I know more than he does. (not by much though).

After class, I got to walk in the rain back to ECS. It was nice, though. Unlike Nebraska rain, the rain here is quite warm and very enjoyable to walk in. I bought some drinks over at 7-11 and then enjoyed some soda and left over bread with Laura, Keiko, Rie Sasaki and her two boys. Then I helped Laura with her last class of the day, the 5 year olds Ayane and Masuto. They were learning the letter P and made paint pallettes for their alphabet book. Masuto beat me 3 times in Memory :'(.

Then I came right back to the house to watch the girls and Josh while Jerry went to ECS and Laura ran some essential Fuji related errands. Now, after cleaning my room a bit and finishing packing my hiking bag, I am waiting up for Jerry, and possibly even Laura who went to pick up Robin and Nathan from Sanjo.

Tomorrow morning, at about 5 am, we are shipping off to Mount Fuji! So....no blog for the next few days. But I hope to have awesome pictures when I get back! Please keep us in your prayers so we will come back safely and have a good time. GANBARO!

Ok, sports fans.
In case you were wondering, the translations from last time are:

McDonalds - Class -Hamburger - Restaraunt - Video - Juice - Coffee

There ya go.
OK
Tuesday
For Tuesday, I was up by 7:30! Goodness! Joshy had to go to the hospital in Nagoaka to get some check up stuff done. Hopefully in August, he will be having his tonsils out. This is really good because he will (hopefully) breathe better at night and be less suseptable to colds and the like. Well, he was getting stuff done for that. I was in charge of watching Kei and Bekah while we were there. We went to the park next to the hospital, but the playground area was roped off. For some reason, that's happening a lot in this area. So we were at the park for all of 10 minutes before they started wanting to go to the mall. I got them to walk around the park with me, stalling for time, because i knew that we would be in the mall for maybe 1/2 hour before that got bored there, too. So we walked around, and then finally walked over to the mall. We walked around for a bit, and just as predicted....the girls got bored really fast. So we waited for Laura, met up with her and had lunch. Then we headed back to Kashiwazaki so Laura and I could go to class.

Today!
Not too much to report on today. We had our regular kids classes. In one of the classes, they were learning the letter Q, so for their alphabet book, we made quilts out of paper and drew queens. The boys in the class, I think, actually drew kings. But it's ok.
The last class of the night was kinda fun. We played the "I can bring.... to the picnic" game. Ya know, the one where you say I can bring....... to the picnic, and the thing you bring starts with the same letter as your name. But you don't tell anyone else the rules, you just let them figure it out. I was bringing king crab, kick balls, and kites. I was also going to dance and play dodgeball at the sports day. (D-Dennis). It was fun. Poor Keiko, though. She figured it out, but called out cake because it sounds like it should start with K.
Anywho....that's my day!

Please continue to pray for Fuji and for more sign-ups for English Camp in two weeks!
Pray for my sanity....I'm watching the girls tomorrow, too. :S

Hello friends. I know what I said in earlier blogs, but I do have a good excuse for the lateness of this blog. I was out of town with no wireless access. That and I was exhausted yesterday. ^~^'

So here's my weekend for ya. I honestly cannot tell you much about Friday, I was hardly awake. And yes, I did have coffee....just not enough of it apparently. I do remember a bit from Japanese class, so I've prepared a little Mad Gab version game for ya. Here's some phonetic spellings of Japanese words. Tell me what they are in English!

Makudonarudo Kurasu Hanbaagaa Resutoran Bideo Ju-su Ko-hi

Alright! You can play this on your own, or if you wanna actually find out, comment and tell me what you think they are! I'll let you know tomorrow plus, perhaps, an honorable mention for whoever guesses the most right? You may see this as a desperate attempt to see how many people actually read my blog......and you may be half right. :P'

Ok....so.... Saturday!
Jerry took me down to the train station, put me on the nearest train and shipped me to Equador. Not really, though I was stuck on a train to Sanjo. Robin met me at the Sanjo station and then we went out to eat with Nathan (Sanjo intern) and Mamiko (a student, I believe). We had tonkatsu, which is basically breaded fried pork. But it was delicious. Nathan ate some Korean dish, and as soon as we left the restaraunt, he requested to go to the bakery to get some sweet buns. It was kinda funny, considering how much he had already eaten. Even funnier was the fact that he bought this one sweet roll that had an adorable panda cookie on top of it. I wanted to get a picture of it before he ate it, but according to him, he had thrown up his backpack in the air, and the bun flew out and unwrapped itself. Just then a laser blasted it into a million pieces and he was so in awe about it that his mouth was open and the cookie bun pieces landed perfectly in his mouth. Uh huh. Sure.
Anywho, after the bakery, we all hopped on a train to Niigata City. As soon as we got to Niigata City, we hopped on a bus that took us to Aeon, which was basically a mall. They had some interesting things, but Nathan is the only person that bought anything.....and it was just headphones.
After Aeon, we walked to Big Swan, the Niigata soccor stadium. We met up with Mamiko's husband and Nathan's homestay brother +2 of their friends. We got lunch outside the stadium, and then walked around for awhile looking for somewhere where we could all sit together. Before the game, there was basically a huge cheer off between the Niigata cheering section and the opposing team's section. They also were using sprinklers to water the field, and the water reached to the opposing cheering section. It was pretty funny. When the teams came out, each section sang a song for their team. The home team's ballad of choice? Elvis' "Can't Help Falling in Love with You". Robin and I found it to be quite funny. Because of a technicality, the game ended in a tie, 2-2.
After the game, we waited in line with fans for a bus. Then we headed down to the train station. We just barely missed the earlier train, so we had to wait an hour for the next one. Word to the wise....find a restroom before getting on a 45 min train. I was about to burst by the time we got the Sanjo. :S
Robin and I , back at the farm...I mean the apartment, watched a little bit of celebrity apprentice (IN ENGLISH :O!) And then went to sleep at 1. I woke up at 6! And I was wide awake. I didn't need to be up til 9 :S. So I tried to go back to sleep. Somewhere, someone was already up, listening to classical music and making something that smelled DELICIOUS! Ugg.... I actually found myself wishing to be back sleeping in my old futon. haha.

SUNDAY!!!
After sleeping a bit longer, I woke up, got ready and then Robin, Nathan and I walked down to the grocery store to buy ice and iced coffee before getting picked up and taken to the church in Kamo. Nathan was preaching and I was doing Sunday School :S. After communion, I took the chillens upstairs. We were learning about baby Moses, so we read the story and then played find the baby. We also made baskets to put our akachans (babies) in.
After the lesson, the kids went back downstairs to help Robin make ice cream which we enjoyed after lunch. The Morts and I then hustled back to Kashiwazaki so the girls could get back for a church thing.
Laura and I went shopping. I bought a waterproof track suit for our Fuji trip and a Yukata for Gyon Matsuri! (that's a cotton kimono).

Today!
Not too much happened on my end today. After lunch, we played some euchre, then I took the girls to Number 1 coffee. Don't worry, they got tea...i got coffee. And we all had cheesecake!
Right at the moment, I'm hurrying to finish this blog so I can join Jerry and Laura in watching 007 Quantam of Solace!

Please keep praying for English camp, coming up in 2 weeks.
Also, please pray for our safety at Fuji this weekend!

She turned me into a newt!

Yeah, that's right. I'm switching from one ridiculous movie to the next on my titles. Kudos to you if you know what movies I've been quoting. If you don't know.....sigh......you have not truly lived my friend.
Like I mentioned in my last blog, I'm going to try and give you a little tidbit of daily activities. So for your entertainment and pleasure..... we are proud to present......your dinner, I mean, my day.
So Thursdays are my days off. I don't really do much of anything except hang out with the girls and watch movies. Today's snack and movie combo of choice? Space Jam and cookies, gummies for the girls. It was raining pretty well earlier, so Kei and I shared a casa (umbrella AND a Spanish house/castle!) but really.... just the umbrella, to the birdie store where we bought our supplies. Bekah wasn't feeling too good, so she stayed behind. Josh, whom I normally babysit for a bit, was off with his mama at the hospital doing tests.
Laura, Kei and I also hoofed it back to the birdie store to grab dinner. And later I went to Senenkai (?) with Keiko. It's an adult bible study. Though, today I felt like I was just holding things up because no one spoke or thought they spoke very good english and they were trying to translate stuff for me. I did prove to be an excellent source of entertainment for Ami, Noboru and Maki Sasaki's daughter, as she kept stealing my slipper while hiding under the table. :S haha

Prayers:
Kota, the Sasaki's son, has been sick the past few days with asthema problems and a fever.
English Camp! We need more people to come!
Maki asked me to see if my friend Dong from Japanese class wanted to come to English camp...prayers for courage. I almost choked when I asked her to come to the bbq. :S
I am teaching Sunday School at Kamo this Sunday...Prayers please! I'm already freaking out about it.

Laminating dyed whales with intonation....they are yucky. Lemur Stickers can look like raccoons.

Ok, childrens, gather 'round. I would like to have a lil heart to heart chat with you. (That's why I threw up a picture of me). I would like to take this short introduction and turn it into a quick apology. This is for all of you who check my page daily hoping for a new scoop only to be disappointed by my lack of new material. Though feeding my swimming fish may help calm the storm a bit, it doesn't change that fact that I have not been diligent with my blogs. Gomenasai. I seem to have fallen victim to 2 classic blunders.... and i don't mean asian land wars or Sicilians. What I mean is I have found myself falling to laziness and the all too easy cop out of labeling my days and tasks as monotonous or uninteresting to my readers. But I could be completely wrong. Maybe you want to hear about the little laughs and giggles we share in class, or the little surprises each day brings which don't really seem all too special... but it's better than nothing. Maybe you would like to here that I struggled with the laminating machine because it mysteriously switched to low heat instead of high. Maybe you would like to hear of the seemingly ridiculous words I have been teaching our students and little habits/sayings of mine some have picked up. I've decided to throw monotony out the window, and to kick myself in the butt to at least give you a paragraph of hopefully enjoyable reading. So whether you decide that my lil' paragraphs are a good chuckle or a waste of cyber space is completely up to you. I'm learning this summer that my all has yet to be tapped, and it's a good thing to put to use.

Ok, now, to get off my soapbox as Jerry would say. And to progress with this goal of daily rising to my potential as well as throwing proper grammatical rules out the window as I've seemed to have done with this sentence already. ^_^' Sorry Mr. Fielder.

To begin with, I'll let you in on some previous seemingly useless words that I've let slip out to the populace, i.e., Keiko. A few days ago it was raining, but between Jerry and I, we only had one umbrella. Well, I let Jerry use it for two reasons. 1) I like walking in the rain. Call me a romantic. haha 2) It was barely spitting. And I let him know that it was barely spitting, and Keiko overheard. So the three of us walked for a bit under the awning until the time came for Keiko to split off on another trail. Jerry asked if she would be ok with out an umbrella, and she just smiled and said "Dai jobu (it's ok). Spitting." I couldn't help but giggle and give her a thumbs up! I also let her in on wrinkly/pruney fingers at the swimming pool. Not really a useful adjective, but hey! it's a new word, right?
My biggest victory, I have to admit, came on Saturday at the bbq. I let Keiko in on my "nothing"ness. Those of you who have been around me recently will have noticed, or at least you should have (guilt stare), that if I drop something or make a big noise or something like that, I quickly fix the problem and say to those watching a quick and confident, "Nothing!"
I loved it when on Saturday, Keiko dropped a dish towel onto the sand, quickly picked it up and shook it out saying "Nothing!" Totally awesome, man.

One fun story to share was yesterday, in the intermediate class of Jerry's, we were talking about languages for a bit. Jerry brought up intonations in Chinese and how they mean different things. Mr. Go, one of the students asked me if I could speak any other language. I honestly cannot really speak any language other than English. I have a few phrases pulled from the pockets of other languages, but as for actually speaking? Janai! (That's a no!) But then Jerry made the comment that I can speak woman. All English speaking women, in his opinion, can speak a certain language between them. His example of said language was when his wife would ask me to grab the "thingy", I would know exactly what she is talking about and bring the right thingy. Where he, on the other hand, needed extra help figuring out what thingy was wanted. I cracked the joke that the reason we know which thingy another woman is talking about is because of intonation! haha

TODAY!!!!!
Today, today. What of today? In one of the younger kids classes, we learned bedtime words like bed, pillow, pajamas and the like. So to help put those words to use.....we played a little 10 in the bed...but with 6 people. Ya know, right? Six in the bed and the little one said, "Roll over, roll over." So they all rolled over and one fell off. That one. We put down a couple cushions on the floor and the kids immediatly SAT on them...because that's what they are for. So I had to squeeze myself in to show them how to "lay down". Then I somehow ended up being the little one 2 out of 3 times. Yes, I know I'm little, but I am still bigger than 5 year old Japanese kids. I assumed that postition because the kids weren't rolling when the song said to.


In another kids class, I was laminating some flashcards for future lessons. Then Laura called me in and I got this awesome Orca/Killer Whale tattoo, i.e. sticker. I put away a bunch of stickers to be used in the kiddies' alphabet books. But there was this one animal.....we couldn't decide if it was a lemur or a raccoon...? So instead of actually putting it away, we used it for the next class's homework as a "good-job" sticker.


The final class of the night was also pretty fun. We talked about the word can. Also, thanks to me and tangents, the class also got to learn about the words flirt, braggart (these 2 were slightly relevant to the lesson) and yucky. As well as the difference between die and dye. Aki, when asked what was new, said she dyed....meaning that she had dyed her hair. But it was kinda funny seeing as though she just said dyed. One of the fun parts of class was when Laura went around asking everybody if they could do certain things. Like... can you play an instrument? What sports can you play? What is something else you can do? Then Laura, giving an example, said, "I can cook!" to which I quickly responded with "I can eat!" The whole class bursted out laughing and they all said they could eat but their cooking was so-so.

So....yeah. There's my day in a nutshell for ya. Hope to have more fun things to share tomorrow, though it may be a special on cleaning and doing laundry. haha

Just a few pics from the bbq for ya.

Culture + Water Activites

Hello readers! Sorry it took me so long to post, the week's been kinda busy. And I've been kinda lazy.
This week during English classes, we talked to the kids about the 4th of July. I've done crosswords puzzles, word searches, pinwheels and fans this week. Friday was special, though.
FRIDAY
Friday started out normal, with bible study and lunch with the ladies. After study, I was to go to Japanese class, and then, after some schedule rearranging, Laura and I were going to have a half hour or so of free time of which to get coffee at #1 coffee.
Well, I went to class, and we started reviewing some verbs, but then......Urrrrch! We hit the brakes on the language learning to make ornaments for this festival that I can't remember the name of :S. But it's a fesitval on July 7th. The festival is from a chinese story. The story goes a like a this (again, like....not the exact story, only what I remember from what Jerry told me :D):
The King of Heaven had a daughter who was a weaver. She weaved this magnificent garment, and came down to earth. A fisherman saw her fell in love with her, and stole her garment. He then pretended to show up and comfort the weaver because she could not return to heaven without the garment. The weaver fell in love with the fisherman, but eventually found out he had taken her garment.
She returned to heaven with the garment, but she still loved the fisherman and asked her father for permission to marry him. Her father didn't like this, but gave the fisherman three tests. With help from the weaver, the fisherman was able to complete the first 2 seemingly impossible tasks. His third task was to watch the King's melon patch, but not eat or drink anything while he was guarding.
After a few days of no food or drink, the melons started looking pretty good, so the fisherman picked one out, and as soon as he bit into it, a river gushed forth from the melon, separating the fisherman and the weaver. The weaver complained to her father that he had cheated, knowing the fisherman could not resist the melons because he was mortal. So the father agreed to let them see each other once a year if there were no clouds in the sky.
The weaver and the fisherman are two stars separated by the milky way, and every year around this time, they come together. But you can only see them together when the sky is clear. The end.

Anyway, we made ornaments that went on bamboo stalks to celebrate this festival. We also tied papers with our wishes and dreams written on them to the bamboo.
The streets actually have lines and lines of this wish paper hung up...when they blow in the wind they sound like rain...so almost all day Friday, we couldn't tell if it was raining or if it was just the wish paper.
After Japanese class, a lady in my class, Dong Jing Hao from China, asked me if I had some free time, so I took about 10 minutes after class to help her correct an English paper she wrote. I then invited her to our bbq on Saturday and she said she would like to come. So we treked over to ECS, I gave her my phone number and then we went over to #1 coffee, catching Laura just as she was leaving. I don't have to be at ECS for Friday classes, so I stayed and had cake and coffee with Dong and we talked a bit. She is really nice. I like her a lot.
After coffee, though, I did stay for Jerry's classes...which is not normal for me. I taught 4th of July stuff in his kids class, and then just sat in on the rest of his classes.

SATURDAY~JULY 4th

Today was pretty busy. After a quick lunch, I helped Laura cut hamburger buns and veggies and make potato salad for the bbq. It was a lot of work, but we did get a 20 minute break before we had to load everything into the van, stop by ECS, and head to the beach. I was very happy that Dong was able to come to the bbq. We hung out and tried to find shells in the ocean. One of the students from ECS, Kanon, was finding big shells and even live clams. Dong and I, both ocean novices, only found really tiny ones. haha.
After eating some very much missed burgers and hot dogs, the kids lit sparklers, here called hanabi.

SUNDAY
Today was church. After church service, we split off into respectable Sunday school classes. I joined the young adults class. They were learning the books of the bible...and I was trying to follow along since no one in the class spoke or thought they spoke very much English.
After class we went and bought bentos (lunchs). I got corndogs! And then we went to Aqua park with Keiko, Aki, and Robin from Sanjo. It was pretty fun. i haven't been swimming in forever, so I was pretty exhausted when we were done. We also went to a ramen restaraunt after swimming...I ate almost my whole bowl of ramen this time!