Pictures of our first few weeks

Well, this time I took longer than a week to update this. Still no internet in our appartment. But, I now have pictures to give you. And we were finally able to call home because we went to church early on Sunday morning and brought our laptops so we could use the church's wireless and use Skype on our computer to call our parents. That was really nice. By the way, to all the mothers, Happy Mother's Day!!

Ok, now for some pictures.

This first picture is at a pottery place in a town called Kasama. Kasama is apparently very famous for its pottery. There are a ton of pottery galleries. A lot of it is very cool and unique, however we also learned that its very expensive.

Here we are walking up Azaelea Mountain in Kasama with Leah. Unfortunately we came about a week or two too late to see new and perfect spring blossoms, but it was still very beautiful. This is Leah. We've been having fun getting to know her.
Here we are at a church activity: Yakisoba and games! Yakisoba basically means grilled noodles. They mix cabbage, meat, noodles and a packaged spice mix together to create a wonderful meal.
Here our friend Shizuka and other church members are making our group's yakisoba. There were four different groups so it would go faster. Here some of our own boys (gaijin = foreigners) are attempting to create this delicious meal. To Derrick's left is John Smith and to his right is Jon Nossaman.Here is the main missionary couple in the church: Mark and Mayumi Hancock. Here they are explaining the rules to and leading the games to go along with the Yakisoba party.This game is called Janken. In English we call it "rock, paper, scissors". This is probably one of the most popular games here and also a very popular way to decide who has to do something...or who gets to. I never really got into it as a child. Japan might change this part of me.

This is one of my classes at Tsumasato elementary schools. This room is my English room, so I get to teach in a really big carpeted room where there is plenty of space for fun and games!It is comment time. At the end of the class the students all write down their impresssion about the class in their little booklet. The teacher picks out some students (or I do)who will stand up and say their comments out loud. Its pretty cool, but unfortunately I never understand very much because they do it all in Japanese. Sometimes the teachers will try to translate for me, but that probably only happens not quite half of the time. And when they do, they probably on get about half of the comment translated. Ahwell.Hey! Its recess time! Let's play! These girls tend to look me up before recess and say "let's play?" and then they pick a game, like "jumping rope" or "dodgeball". Then I play with them. That is about the extent of our communication, lol. I still have yet to completely figure out the rules they use in dodgeball.