Last day's of school and off to Malaysia!

Well, summer vacation (in japanese: natsu yasumi) has finally come. We had our "closing ceremony" at school this past Tuesday and spent the rest of the week going to AET training.

I used the last few weeks of school to video some of my kids at school and to show you the English they are learning.

This first video is of some 6th grade kids at Kaminakazuma elementary. They just learned the question "What are you doing?" and a bunch of answers.

This second video is a group of 4th grade girls at Kaminakazuma. They learned the days of the week.

This last video is at Tsumasato elementary. The boy to the left is a first grader. His name is Ryo. As you can see, first graders still struggle with the question "What is your name?" and the answer "My name is ....". The others are 5th graders. Their recent lesson was "When is your birthday?" and of course the answer to that question. The boy in the middle is Shougo, the wild one running around is Kazuki and the one in the blue shirt who only makes a short appearance is Keichiro.

Well.....all that's over for about a month now. Summer has started and , as the post title suggests, we are heading for Malaysia tomorrow. But, not after a relaxing weekend with nothing to do. On Saturday, we went to some friends' wedding: Kristi Batten and Donni Thornton got married at Ikaraki Christian University. That was a very good day. We loved seeing Kristi and Donni and Benji and others that we knew, and it was great to get to meet the Batten and Thornton families.

Today we also went to Harris and Eloise Yves' house to celebrate Amy's belated birthday and just to have a good time with Amy. It was so fun to see her and spend time with her. (The picture of Derrick and me at the top of this post was taken at Amy's house.)

We will post the wedding pics and pics of Amy's party when we get back from Malaysia.....along with some awesome pictures of Malaysia!

Hiking with Waterfalls and going to Tokyo

This past weekend was a busy one. On Saturday we went to a place called Iwaki. In Iwaki, we hiked along waterfalls up a mountain for a few hours. Here and there we stopped to swim in the pools on our way up. It was so beautiful and a ton of fun. At the places where we stopped to swim, we would find places from which to jump into the water.

Here is a beautiful picture of one of the many waterfalls we passed.

You can see how tall this next waterfall is by finding Kendon standing at the top:

Here is Melody Powell, who came to visit her brother Austin on her way back from the Philippines. She is climbing up one of the many ladders we had to climb where it was too dangerous to climb without (with Nicah and Jon Nossaman behind her).
Here I am standing in the freezing cold pool debating whether or not I want to go in farther....
Here's Melody jumping in! She was crazy!!
And me!


After climbing up and down the mountain with the many waterfalls, we got home, got on the train to Mito station and then the bus to Tokyo! We were so tired, but we were very happy when we finally got to our hotel....our feet were very happy.
When we went out to explore Tokyo the next morning we found this "junk market". It was awesome! We love garage sales, so this was like heaven to us to be able to walk around in a bunch of old Japanese junk for sale. Derrick bought a ukulele, so if you have pointers on how to play a ukulele, please let us know.We met up with our good friend Masashi who goes to Oklahoma Christian and is now home for the summer. It was extremely hot that day....because it gets really really hot and humid here in Japan. Hence the waterfall on Masashi's head...We went to the Meiji-jingu shrine in the Shibuya part of the city.

Here is the wash-basin where you are supposed to cleanse yourself before entering the shrine...

Inside the shrine...

Here are many many prayers that people have written in many different languages:

Here we are by the entrance of the shrine:


Hiking the trail along the Iwaki waterfalls and walking around in Tokyo made the weekend very awesome. We have so many more pictures of this weekend adventure, so if you would like to see them, please klick on the link for our pictures and enjoy.

A bit of the sea, a bit of the beach, some of Mexico and some of Japan

We had fun testing out our new underwater camera when we went to the beach for a little bit of bodyboarding.
Unfortunately, the waves were horrible (almost non-existant) and the water was very dirty...so no good clear underwater pics! But we had fun playing around. We also enjoyed a little bit of beach volleyball. We first played with just our group who came to the beach, but later we played with what seemed to be a semi-professional team who was just out there also playing on the beach's volleyball courts. Zane Schwab is the one making this awesome jump!
We had an AET Mexican night. It was the first time we had had homemade Mexican food since we've been here (and before that we had only been to one Mexican restaurant so far), so it was really nice. We had some good fun talking, eating and playing sports and karaoke on Jon and Nicah Nossaman's Wii.
Derrick and I were invited to this lovely lady's house for dinner. She and her husband also have a home in Victoria, Canada, so their English is pretty good. She made us a lovely Japanese meal and also had other Japanese visitors and one American visitor (Todd) who we enjoyed getting to know.
This is Saiko and me:

Beach Day!

This past Saturday was July 5th. Not really the right day for a 4th of July party...but it worked out best for us. A group of Americans from the Mito church (mostly AETs, but some non-AETs too), and some Japanese friends, decided to have a 4th of July party at the beach. We barbecued hamburgers and hotdogs, set up a volleyball net and went swimming and bodyboarding.

Derrick and I road our scooters out there (about 40 minutes away) a few hours early so we could go bodyboarding. We bought some bodyboards and wetsuites at a second hand shop. We also bought a bodyboard-sized backpack so Derrick can carry both of our boards on his back.

Here are a few pictures of us and our boards:

This is the clam that I found on the beach. Derrick decided to put it on the grill and eat it.

It actually seemed to be a Japanese family activity to bring shovels and rakes and have everyone digging for clams to bring home for dinner. Some people had bags of 10-15 huge clams the size of softballs or bigger. We found three and brought them home....Derrick made clamchowder. Here are the clams he used:

Here is the group as we started up the barbecue. This day was memorable, not only because we got to try out our new bodyboards for the first time, but also because we hadn't had a real hamburger since we set foot in Japan. Sure we've been to McDonalds....but we all know that's just not the same! It got really misty that day and we could hardly see 10 meters ahead of us (sorry for all you americans who didnt grow up with the metric system....that is what I'm used to and that is what I use).

The day did clear up very nicely and the sun came out and we played a lot of fun rounds of beach volleyball!

The day was a ton of fun and we thank Mark and Michelle for planning it and Kendon for helping out with food and stuff. And thank you everyone for coming! We had a great time!