Ocha + July 4th!

I didn't really do much yesterday, so I will only talk about today. Today, for our ususal Advanced Ladies' Class, we went to a tea museum. Machiko is a tea ceremony teacher, so she took all of us (plus her daughter in law) to the museum where we got to sit in on a pretty casual tea ceremony. It was a lot of fun.

First, a lady brought us a Japanese sweet that we were to eat before the tea. The tea, or ocha, is supposed to be pretty bitter, so they give you the sweet to sweeten your mouth before the tea. Another lady was making the tea. We were each served tea in a bowl like cup. Each of the cups are around 500 years old. They even change the cups according to the seasons. The cups we used? Today was the last day they were used this season. They are changed out tomorrow.

I was complimented on my sitting by both the man telling us about the museum and the ceremony and the lady who served us. Machiko also said that I was very good at the ceremony, and in 3 weeks she is going to teach me how to actually make the tea! I am way excited!




The museum is built in a very large, beautiful Japanese garden! Oh man! I want to live there! The place was gorgeous! We walked around a bit after the tea ceremony.




If you would like to see more pics of the garden and tea ceremony (courtesy of Laura! :D):

http://www.facebook.com/karissa.dennis?cropsuccess=#/album.php?aid=276712&id=814700376&ref=mf

After we got back from the tea museum, I hurried on over to ECS. I was kinda in charge of the kid's classes today :S. I was to teach them a little about July 4th and then do some activities. for the first class, it was only the one girl. We read a book together called The Fourth of July Mice....I found it to be kind of ridiculous. haha. After that, we colored a US flag and made a flag Japanese fan. The second class, we colored flags, counted stars, and then made pinwheels. They really seemed to like it. We also ate watermelon popsicles. The looked like watermelon slices and tasted pretty much just like a watermelon...only with chocolate seeds. mmm.

The last class of the night was the Intermediate class with Takako and Misaki. We talked about too and enough. After the class was over, Misaki gave me a present. She gave me two packages of paper balloons, one pufferfish and one strawberry and a takoyaki (octopus ball) key chain. It was so sweet. :)

Arigatoo Gozaimasu!

This is one of two blogs I will be doing today. This one is going to be a quick note about Sunday and a quick thank you for those who supported me financially.

Ok. Sunday was church. Then there was lunch at the church. I cannot tell you what all I ate, but it was all Oishi! (delicious!) And it was all Japanese. :)

After church, we went shoe shopping. This is the quick thanks to the supporters. Thanks to your support I was able to reach enough money so that I had a lot of extra spending money. About $50 went to buying me some decent waterproof hiking shoes for when I climb Fuji. Another $100 or so will help pay for the Fuji trip. Thanks everyone for allowing me the opportunity to experience so many awesome things while I am over here in Japan. Arigatoo gozaimasu! (Thank you very much!)

Man vs Mountain, Season 1

Yoni-yama

Today we climbed Yoni-yama. It is 1/3 the size of Fuji, and the average time getting up the mountain is about 3 1/2 hours.

We left for the trip at about 10. The trek was pretty hard; the trail being mostly stairs. We ended stopping for a quick breather every couple of minutes. When we reached the half way mark, we were able to see our destination: a little house on the top of the mountain. The above picture is a pic from half way.

We passed a bunch of people on their way back down the mountain. They were really nice and some even chatted with us for a bit. One man who was stopped talked to me in English :). About 400 meters from the top, there was a little trail that led down to a well. Jerry and Rebekah filled up our water bottles while Robin and I stayed on the original trail. I cannot tell you how good cool water tasted on a day like today.

Like I said, most of the trail was stairs or stair like parts, but there was this one glorious stretch of mostly flat, slightly up and down trail. It was soooo beautiful in more ways than one. Haha. There were also parts on the trail that were so steep they put up ropes on the side of the trail to help you climb it. Yoru-chan, a man who works at number coffee, invited me to climb with him sometime. Jerry told me he goes fast and he goes at night. :S I don't think that that will happen anytime soon. haha.

When we reached the top of the mountain, you could see the ocean! There was a little rest house where we stopped, ate lunch, and played Euchre. Rebekah and I won... but just barely!

The trek down was easier, but at the same time, for me at least, really hard. I have a terrible sense of balance as well as gravity.... the earth likes to suck me down to its surface when I'm going down hill. My legs were shaky, and I was taking it pretty slow. Jerry and I decided that my dad is thankful for the trail ropes today. If it weren't for said ropes, Jerry might have fell down, running into me and making us both tumble down.....well, stairs!

Thankfully we all made it up and down the mountain in one piece and then we all went and got cappachino shakes and donuts at Mr. Donut!

Prayers:

I think praying for those of us who climbed the mountain today would be a good idea. We will all be really sore tomorrow.

Prayers for the 4th of July BBQ next Saturday

This next week at ECS, we will do some culture learning. I will learn about Japanese tea ceremonies, and the students will be learning about the 4th of July and maybe make matchstick rockets? (like we did at home in the kitchen, dad :D)

Laura's back is doing better

Thanks for all your prayers. God bless!

P.S. If you would like to see more pictures of our trip visit this site (provided you haven't already seen these on facebook :P)

http://www.facebook.com/photo.php?pid=7542253&id=814700376&saved#/album.php?page=1&aid=275200&id=814700376

Your strength, his steal, and my brains against 60 men, and you think a little head jiggle's supposed to make me happy? hmmm?

Ok. Update.
Last I wrote was Sunday... so I have about 3 days to catch up on.... No problem!

Money
I mean Monday.....
Soooooooo, yeah. Mondays are days off, basically, for everyone but Jerry. Haha. I mean... sorry Jerry. Before we shipped Jerry off to work, we all drove out to Yomiyama to figure out where the trail is at. On Saturday, Jerry, Rebekah, Robin from Sanjo and I will be climbing Yomiyama. It's a practice run. haha. In July we are planning on hiking up Mt. Fuji!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! That's right!! Wooohooo! But we decided to climb a smaller mountain to see if Rebekah, for one, can handle the whole Fuji climb and just for practice to build up some strength. Yoniyama is about one third the size of Fuji.
Anywho, after we found the trail, we drove Jerry to work at the University and then went summer clothes shopping. I didn't buy anything, but the girls needed shoes and Bekah needed shorts and stuff. I did SEE some pretty interesting clothes, though.
After supper, I went out for a walk. I was going to go to Number 1 coffee, but they were going to close soon, so I just went over to 7-11 and bought some ice cream. Mmmm.... ice cream. I was really hoping that it was going to rain on me while I was walking. It didn't. Kinda made me feel silly carrying around an umbrella. :S
It DID rain later at night though. I put on my shoes and went outside and stood in the rain. No umbrella, that would have wasted ... i dunno, something. I'm used to rain being cold, but the rain here is not really that cold. I stood outside for almost 10 minutes before I felt silly standing in the street outside the house in the rain.
I apparently locked the door on the wrong side when I came back in also. :S haha
Oh well. At least it was locked!

TUESDAY
Didn't do much Tuesday morning....I lounged about. But Laura had to go to the chiropractor this day because she had twisted her back or something. So I got to lead Laura's advanced ladies class by myself! It was fun! One lady, Tomomi, is expecting a baby in September. We talked about what she was going to name the baby, and we also talked about how the other ladies in the group, Noboko and Machiko, named their kids. I really love these ladies. They are so much fun. Machiko's oldest son's name is Dai (pronounced die). She was saying how in Japanese it means Great, but in English die means die. ahaha... they both named their kids easy names. :D
After we were done talking for the most part, we were talking about Japanese culture, and Machiko is a tea ceremony instructor. We all decided, without Laura (haha), that next week for class we would go to this tea museum. We would also get to participate in the tea ceremony. Jerry told me the cups we will be using their are really really old. I think it was either 6 generations or 6 centuries old. Either way, they're pretty old.
Machiko even taught us the basics of what we would be doing in the tea ceremony. I am WAY excited!!!
I helped Jerry out with his ECS classes today. In the first class, I helped the only student who showed up, Rae, with some flash cards. She is a very bright girl. The next class was the giggly girls class. They were doing a review of the alphabet and counting. The last class we had for the night was the intermediate class. Only Takako came to class. We talked about the difference between hope and wish. In the book the class is using, there is a dialogue that uses hope and wish. It is between a princess and a frog. Takako and I were supposed to read it. It made us laugh really hard. She was the princess and I was the frog. She started off by wishing she could meet a handsome prince and go somewhere romantic. I, the frog, chirped in that I was a handsome prince. Now that made me giggle a little, but when Takako read "Oooo, may I kiss you?" I lost it and she started laughing as well.
The advanced class was canceled because neither of the students showed up.

Wednesday..... (that's today)
I was slow going this morning too. Have been every day this week. But after I finally got up, Laura and I went to the birdie store (once again, i don't know the name. It's Ma...something something). We found a coat for Josh, since they are going to the States for Christmas. A coat might come in handy.
After the birdie store, we went to ECS. After playing around with cute little kids for the first two classes and talking with some girls for the third, we ate supper (mine included speghetti and melon ice cream.... mmmmm....) and then made hamburger patties. For the 4th of July, ECS puts on a bbq on the beach. I can't wait. I believe there are fireworks also, so I can be patriotic and light things on fire to celebrate our independance even abroad!!!
For the last class, we played a little bit of scattegories...only, we just wrote down as many ___ words we could think of. It was fun. And now here I am, blogging for the knowledge and enjoyment of YOU, my reader. :D

Prayers:
Please pray for Laura's back. She got it checked, but she was still hurting today.
Please also pray over our 4th of July BBQ coming up, that it will be a great ministering opportunity.

My name is Inigo Montoya. You killed my father, prepare to die!

Welcome, fair maidens, to our fair village. I would like to start off this blog with an ode to a very special person, near and dear to my heart: my daddy!

I would like to say, "Thank you, daddy, for being so supportive of me and always being an encouragement. You are so sweet and loving. You are uplifting and I always enjoy talking with you....even if it takes five unanswered phone calls. ;) But it's ok, because you bought that webcam and mic just to be able to chat with me online. I love you soooo much, daddy. Thanks for always being there for me. Happy Father's Day!"

TODAY!!!!! =FATHER'S DAY!!!!

Today was a pretty fun, simple day. We went to church.... i didn't sit by Jerry this time, so I ended up writing out sounds to the hiragana that I knew in the bulletin and reading about 4-5 chapters of Genesis. I read about Joseph :). I was proud of myself, though. I kept up on most of the Japanese hymns they sang written in hiragana! Woot, Woot!

After church service, they took a church photo. Their church photo includes everyone who was at the church at the time of the photo, so I am in the church photo! It was fun because Keiko and Aki were getting me to do silly things in the pictures with them. :D

We stayed for lunch at the church and this week was bento week. A bento is basically a box lunch.... and they bought bentos for everyone. It was pretty tasty. The only thing I knew for sure that I ate was bamboo rice. haha

When we got home, we played a couple games of euchre, then me and the girls walked down to the 7-11 and the birdie shop and explored. After we got back, Laura, Kei, and I walked down to the river. On the way back, I almost stepped on a little crab. It kinda freaked me out cause all of a sudden this little rock was moving. ahaha

We had pizza and then finished off the night with some Princess Bride, which makes my title doubly relevent today. Father and Princess Bride. It fits! I actually didn't need to watch the movie. I was sitting in the back mouthing the whole thing. I've seen it enough to know all the lines in it.

Have fun storming the castle!

What to say, what to say. I've learned a couple things about myself the last couple days. Hot showers don't tend to melt away my grumpiness, a day without any form of caffiene is like a day at sea with no wind, and I cannot eat a whole bowl of ramen. Nope. Can't do it.

Let's begin. Once upon a time, there was.... me. Friday, if you haven't begun to notice a pattern, is lunch and bible study with the ladies. Friday's lunch was egg salad and tuna salad sandwiches....mmmmmm. I was given the task of going down to the birdie shop (yeah, I don't know the name of the store. But there is a bird on the sign, so.....) and buying some butter rolls for the salads to be put on. Easy enough, right? But apparently they have some butter rolls here that come with butter in them....that would not be all that great for a sandwich. Luckily another growing trend on my Fridays is Japanese class, so I happened to have my Hiragana and Katakana alphabet worksheets on me. That was lucky!! All of the signs at the bakery were basically in Katakana.....I'm struggling to remember Hiragana right now...and sooooo....trying to remember Katakana at the spur of the moment to find bata-ro was not happenin'. Another lucky occurance...the sign actually said bata-ro, well, in katakana of course, and not some Japanese word that I didn't know the meaning of. If you still don't get it say ba-ta-ro slowly.
Ba-ta-ro=-bu-tter-roll :D. I managed, thankfully, and the rolls I bought? DELICIOUS!!! They were sooooo good.

After bible study, (we learned about Moses and the Red Sea, if you were wondering) I headed on over to Japanese class. Again, lucky moment. I walked into the building right after a girl that was in my group and followed her to where the class was. Why is this lucky? They had class in a different room than last week. I would have been soooo lost. We learned about seasons and a few other things like weather and the difference between "o" and "oh" in speaking and writing. I still like the class alot....even though I'm pretty sure I'm behind everyone else in my group. haha.

I chilled for a bit when we got back to the house. For some reason, I was kinda in a grumpy mood. I went and took a hot shower, putting on some coffee before I went. Nice long hot shower+ hot cup of coffee+ the added bonus of peanut butter popcorn apparently did not = good mood. I didn't snap at anyone or anything like that. I just took my coffee and popcorn back to my room to get away from it all. After the chillins went to bed, I hiked downstairs to have my weekly meeting with Laura. And then we started talking about a bunch of other things.....for like 2 hours. It was really nice though, and I appreciated it greatly.

Today!
I woke up this morning at about 9 or so, stumbled downstairs, took a shower and then went to get my usual cup of coffee and.....bum, bum, bummmmmmmmm! There was hardly anything in the pot! I felt pretty awake anyway so I thought I'd go without. I hurried up and finished getting ready just in time to head out the door to take Kei to her friend Ami's to study science and then go grocery shopping with Laura. I was feeling fine....until we actually got to Ami's house and Laura went inside for a few moments. I was stranded at the drive-in, branded a fool, what will they..... wait.... that's not right at all.... I was just left in the car for a bit and then that lack of morning coffee hit me hard. I almost fell asleep in the car. I dunno what it is about Saturdays and no coffee lately, but it's really starting to bum me out. Laura noticed my distress and said we could get coffee at the grocery store, which is what I did last week. We both forgot. How I forgot, I do not know.

After we got back to the house and put groceries away, I hung out for a bit before Keiko came over. We had planned about a week ago to go to a ramen shop today. So she came over about 11:30. We walked over to the ramen shop and then waited outside for about 10-15 minutes because it was so busy. I was told to just order ramen, which is kinda a soy sauce ramen. Keiko was going to order miso ramen and then let me try it. I didn't get a picture, but those bowls were huge! Like huge huge! I also learned that Naruto, you know the ninja? Naruto is actually this white thing with a pink swirl that they put in ramen..... that's all I know. Keiko didn't know how to describe it. I think it tasted funny. The ramen was pretty good, the miso ramen tasted a bit better, though. I didn't eat all of my ramen.... but that turned out to be ok cause Keiko finished it off. :D

Keiko hung out around the house with me and Rebekah til about 2-2:30. Rebekah showed us how to make this.... flower looking thing with origami... it was pretty fun. We also played spoons. I told Laura about SCC games of Extreme Spoons. It very well may be an English camp activity. She was warned about the hazards, though. Like violence over a spoon. haha.

By the time Keiko left, the fact that STILL no caffiene had been added to my body was hitting me hard. I fell asleep for 3 hours before waking up for supper. I will definately have to make sure to get my coffee tomorrow because between this cold and no caffiene, I am really tired at the writing of this blog, only 4 hours after my 3 hour nap. Plus I have a withdrawal headache. haha.

Oh! In case you were wondering, Kids' Club was canceled this week due to a lack of people signed up for it. That's why there are no little paragraphs about kids' club in this blog. Well, except for this one. :)

There's a big difference between mostly dead and all dead

Sorry all my readers. I kinda made myself a liar by not posting yesterday as I had promised. I didn't count on the fact that I would be completely exhausted and barely functioning as a living organism the past two days. I really don't have anything exciting to report from the last two days, as I really didn't do anything but wander around the house looking for the brain I had lost. Laura was in the same boat as me. Hopefully we are both up to snuff tomorrow, or it's going to be an extremely long day. :S

Oh yeah, that reminds me. I would appreciate prayers for both me and Laura because we are pretty sure this slight brush with mostly deadness is caused by an ambush by the cold. So far, we have done our best to fight it off, but it's a tough advisary.