Kris' 28th Birthday

Though we are in a foreign country, I didn't want my beloved's birthday to go unnoticed. I bought him a present that I knew would be late in getting here since I ordered it over the internet (It was Munchkin!!!); so I had to do something a little extra to make his birthday special.  I decided I would bake Kris a cake and bring it to him during work. Sounds easy enough, right?  Welcome to Japan as a foreigner, where even the easiest tasks are difficult. This adventure started out simply enough: I found easy cake and icing recipes online that had good reviews.  Though our oven (LINK) is smaller than most US microwaves, I knew I could use the mixer and American oven in the immersion school's staff kitchen bake the cake.

I knew it would be a challenge to find the ingrediants I needed (baking powder, powdered sugar, and vanilla) since they would be in Japanese.  So I did a little Google research and looked up the Kanji, Romanji, and Katakana of these items (yes, Japan has to be complicated with 4 different alphabet systems).  I figured if I went prepared, I would be okay (especially since vanilla sounds like "bahneerah" and baking powder is simply "baking powderuu").  Well, the vanilla was a success.  The baking powder and powdered sugar were not.  What I thought was baking powder actually turned out to be baking soda (which I found out after I had made the cake).  When I was mixing the icing and it wouldn't absorb the liquid, I decided to taste the "powdered sugar" -- and discoverd that it was actually CORNSTARCH! (Coornstarchee!) Since we don't have a blender or coffee grinder, I had to just go with regular sugar.  The result was a rather grainy icing that looked exactly like...well, you can figure it out...(I liked it, Lauren is just a perfectionist. :-)  )

Though the cake smelled very good, I was embarrassed to walk into Kris' office with this poor speciman.  As my friend Bethany said, "It's kind of like a Charley Brown cake." But I did it anyway because I knew that the thought is what mattered most.  And though it looked rather sorry, it didn't taste too bad (especially with 2 wrong ingrediants!).  And I think Kris really enjoyed his surprise; or, at least he seemed to. (It was great! She had the whole office singing happy B-day to me.)

Eunice, the other 3rd grade teacher (until Greg gets back), suggested that we take our classes in to sing to Kris. She had a fake cake with real candles that she lit.  Our kids got a big kick out of sneaking into Kris' room and singing to him.  He told the students that he was 128 years old! (It's amazing how easy it is to get 2nd and 3rd graders to laugh. Even I can do it.)

For Kris' birthday dinner, we followed the new teacher birthday tradition of going out for Korean barbecue with some other teachers.  Since the usual place had significant damage from the earthquake (see here), we tried out a new place down the road.  We were surprised to find an all-you-can-eat platter for pretty cheap (for Japan).  It was heaping with meat!  It was strips of pork and what we thought was chicken.  The "chicken" was really chewy and fatty -- and turned out to be pork intestine!!!! (Yum! It actually tasted good, it was just really chewy.)  No wonder the platter was so inexpensive!  Kris, Aaron, and Bethany didn't seem to mind it and had several helpings, but Sarah, Alycia, Caitlin, and I couldn't stomach it (but at least I tried it).  And since it was Kris' birthday, they gave him a free BOTTLE of wine! 

It was a birthday celebration filled with the unexpected!

Welcome to our New(est) Apartment!

On March 28 we moved from our tiny apartment on campus to a bigger apartment 5 minutes from campus.   Gone are the days of no where to sit but on our beds and doorways too small for Kris!  Gone are the days of having to invite ourselves over to other peoples' apartments -- now we are the hosts with the most :-) We LOVE our new place: we'd like to welcome you in and give you a tour.

Entryway  

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Please take off your outside shoes at the door and put on a pair of guest slippers from the shoe cupboard.  You can hang your coat up too.



 

The Kitchen

Instead of 1 burner for a stove, we now have 2! We also have plenty of cabinet space and a full-size refrigerator (small for US sizes, but huge compared to our last one!).  And now we have room for guests to come over and eat too!

View from the kitchen sink.  The hall to the left is the entry way. Directly in front of you is the living room.  There are sliding doors to the living room so you can block it off to keep heat in the kitchen, or you can take the doors off completely to make it one big room.  The door to the right leads to the tatami room.

This is our microwave AND our oven -- doesn't look like I will be baking big batches of anything.  Pretty hard to use since it's all in Japanese!  The assistants are going to label it in English for us, though. 

Living Room



Living Room view from the sliding doors.  Notice our laundry drying on the porch the "Japanese" way?

Kris working at the desk.

Bed Room

Our bedroom is pretty tiny, but at least we finally are sleeping on the same bed now instead to 2 twins pushed together! (Duffy is enjoying having the whole bed to himself right now)



View from our window of the adorable kids in our housing area.  They are all over and they are so cute.  They say "hello" and "bye bye" to us over and over.  It's adorable.


Shower Room

I still LOVE my Japanese-style baths! You shower on one side of the room and then soak in the tub afterward.  I think the mirror and shelves are low because people in Japan will often squat on a stool to shower.



Toilet Room

Since this is Japan, the toilet is in a small room that is separate from the sink and shower.  I took a picture of our toilet to show you how it comes with a remote-control bidet!  And see the spout at the top of the toilet?  That's traditionally used to rinse off your hands.

Quotes from The Office make for good bathroom reading!



Our washer and dryer are between the shower room and toilet room.  Now you can see why we hang as many clothes as possible!  Otherwise, we are guessing at what the machine is doing!

Tatami Room

This is our traditional tatami room.  It has a nice window ledge and two huge armours for our clothes -- we each have our own instead of having to share one!

Earthquake and After: Timeline of Events

Friday, March 11

At 2:46 pm the 9.0 magnitude earthquake hit.  The students were not yet at school, except for a few students in the day care, and everyone at both campuses were okay.  The electricity, gas, water, and phone lines went out immediately.  We were able to send an email from a friend's 3G iphone to my mom in the evening to let her know we were okay.  We surveyed the damage to the school, which we thought at the time to be extensive but in reality it was not.   

One of the classrooms in the Spring Building





This crack in the wall is a result of the earthquake damage.

The tower fell off the Korean bbq place we went to the night before the earthquake.

Damage done to the classroom that will be mine in April.

We spent the night in the school with most of the other teachers from Maruyama, but the aftershocks scared many of us and kept most people from sleeping.  The most we knew about the earthquake was that it was the worst that people working at the school had experienced, there was a tsunami warning, and 30 were dead from a fallen apartment building downtown.  We thought everything would be back up and running in a day or two.

Many of us slept in this classroom so we could all be together

 

Saturday, March 12

We spent the day without power and had to fetch water from the pond in the school to flush the toilets with.  Luckily MeySen has a well so we had plenty of water to drink and they made us food, so we also had plenty to eat.  Six of us formed a cleaning crew and helped clean up each others' apartments.  The worst damage in ours was my laptop screen was cracked and a mirror shattered in our entry way. 

Shattered mirror in our entry way - the worst of the damage to our apartment (thankfully!)

We learned that there had been a tsunami that had wiped out a train from Sendai to Matshushima and also one that had covered the Sendai airport.  We also found out that the earthquake had been the largest in Japan’s recorded history.

But we still had no idea of the extent of the damage. We thought things weren't too bad as we relaxed in the sun and ate the school's supply of ice cream that was melting (though the aftershocks came often and frequently scared me).

Impromptu Ice Cream Party!

But when we walked to city hall to find a rumored phone line for foreigners to call home, we realized how fortunate we were and how God had looked out for us.  We saw people sleeping on tarps on the floor or huddled around heaters in city hall.  We saw people standing in line for food or gas for hours and realized how lucky we were to be part of a community and didn't have to fend for ourselves as foreigners.

Bethany and some of our other friends waited in this line for the grocery store for 3 1/2 hours -- and even then, they were limited to the number of items they could buy.

In the evening we prayed and sang our thanks to God for his protection and provision and for healing and redemption for the people of Japan. The gospel was shared with Japanese people in their language.  Shortly after this time of prayer and worship, the electricity came back on.  Not a coincidence (I am sure) but a sign God was showing to the Japanese people at the worship service, as if to say "Yes, I am the one true God and do have power." Having the electricity back on changed our moods drastically.  Electricity was restored to the Immersion building and lower campus, but not the upper campus or our apartment.  So we slept at the Immersion building again.



Makeshift kitchen in the immersion hall that the staff used to keep us all fed



Sunday, March 13

With the power and one cell phone company working again, we were finally able to call our families. It was a relief to let them know we were safe.  The worst part of the whole ordeal for me had been worrying over my family and not being able to contact them. 

For the first time on Sunday we saw images of the earthquake and tsunami’s destruction via the local newspaper.  No wonder our families had been so worried!  The images we saw were of piles of rubble and sticks where buildings had been and a big boat thrown onto the street by a wave.  We immediately thanked God that we had been spared that destruction – all the buildings in our part of Sendai were still standing.  We also found out that there had been an explosion at a nuclear power plant about 80-90 miles away from us.  I was really nervous about the repercussions of that and what could happen, but didn’t really understand how serious the issue was either.

We brought water from our well to the high school across from the Takamori campus, where the government had been giving out water, because we heard they ran out.  A truck with new water arrived before we did, and they didn’t want to use our well water, so instead we offered it to people who passed by as a source of bathing or cooking water.

In the evening, just before dinner, the principal of the school offered us the opportunity to evacuate to an Air Force Base in Misawa because of the concerns about the nuclear power plant.  We had 2 hours to make our decision, eat dinner, and pack all that we could fit into a carry-on for trip that could take a few days to a few weeks.  I was torn up about the decision, because I felt like MeySen was my home and they had taken such good care of us and I wanted to stay an help; but Kris reminded me that we owed it to our families to go so that they could have peace of mind and so that we would avoid any unnecessary ricks.  (He later told me he wouldn’t have let me not get on the bus for my own safety).  We left the school around 9:00pm.

Monday, March 14

About 40 of us teachers and staff from MeySen arrived at Misawa Air Force Base in Aomora just before dawn and sat on the bus outside the gate for over an hour while we waited to hear our fate.  At first they told us there was nothing they could do to help us; but Miss Lillian, a former high-ranking member of the military and also a MeySen evacuee, would not take no for an answer.  She was able to speak to a commander who welcomed us onto the base.  We were able to shower for the first time in 3 days, ate a good meal, and slept on cots in the gym facility.

We were not allowed to roam freely around the base, but we were able to go to the community center and dining hall when escorted by members of the Air Force.  These escorts became our friends and we had the opportunity to share our faith with them over the few days we were at Misawa.

At the community center we were able to finally make phone calls home and get on the Internet to let people know we were safe.  And I did feel really safe for the first time in a few days.  The three hours of sleep I had when we first got to the base was the best sleep I’d had in the past 3 days combined!

We met together as a group and prayed for the people of Sendai, the families of MeySen, and for God to make good out of the bad and to reveal himself to people there.  After that time of prayer, I saw that being at Misawa was an opportunity for me to rest physically and spiritually so that I would be better able to serve God when it was safe to return to Sendai.  Kris and I agreed that it was by no accident that God brought us to Sendai, Japan at this time for a purpose.

Our sleeping arrangements at Misawa

Tuesday, March 15

Staying on base again, we continued to pray for the people of Japan and for the people in Sendai.  Kris and I continued to feel strengthened in our relationships with God and continued to feel that God brought us to Sendai for a reason beyond just teaching.

While on base, we took advantage of the American food at the café in the community center.  We at pizza every day and I had Starbucks every day.  Really, it felt like a 5-star resort to us.

All of the "evacuees" from MeySen

In the evening we helped to load some huge trucks full of donations that people from the base had collected.  Two people from MeySen drove the truck down to MeySen, where the people still working there distributed the water, food, and clothes to people who needed it.

Wednesday, March 16

More people from MeySen arrived at Misawa in the morning, around 6am.  The school had offered to evacuate the staff again, but not everyone took advantage of the offer.

On Wednesday morning, we had a terribly-run meeting with a consulate from the US State Department, Tim Lyons.  He basically told us that we had to leave the base the next day because we were unauthorized civilians and we could either fly back to the United States (which he strongly urged us to do) or we could stay in a hotel and fend for ourselves in a town with no electricity or water.  He scared the crap out of me and made me cry during the whole meeting. During the whole thing, he made it sound like MeySen was holding us in Japan against our will and we should get out as soon as possible – which was so not true!!! The other rediculous thing that Mr. Lyons said was that he was proud of us for “showing independence the way that proud Americans should during these times”.  I don’t know who the hell he was talking about, because all of us relied on other people and on each other from the moment of the earthquake.  If I had been independent during that time, I wouldn’t have survived!

After the meeting, our leaders from MeySen met with us.  They told us that they recommended that teachers whose terms would be ending in two weeks should make arrangements to fly home now.  He told the new teachers that we could fly back to the States if we wanted and return when it was safe or we could stay at a hotel together that the school would pay for.  He assured us that we would not be “on our own” as the State department had said, but that MeySen would take care of us and support us.  He also told us the town and the hotel had electricity. 

The State department took us aside one at a time to ask us whether we were staying or going.  It was a really big decision to make, one that Kris and I took seriously.  We prayed and talked and decided, much to the chagrin of our families, that we would stay.  We felt safe where we were, far north from the nuclear plant that any radiation or even a melt down wouldn’t cause us harm.  The hardest part of the decision for me was telling my family I was going to stay in Japan, because I knew they would worry.

During the afternoon we helped to load some huge trucks full of donations that people from the base had collected.  Two people from MeySen drove the truck down to MeySen, where the people still working there destributed the water, food, and clothes to people who needed it.

In the afternoon we helped pack up another truck that the same two people from MeySen drove back up and then back down again to share the donations with those in need.  It felt really good to be able to contribute and help in some way.

In the evening, some families from the base made us a lasagna dinner and brought it to the base.  It was a huge blessing to soul as well as the stomach.  It had been a rough, emotional day, and having that meal allowed us to feel so cared for and loved.  Later we helped pack up two more trucks of donations, these ones going to other areas in need. 

Lasagna dinner

Friday, March 17

Our goodbyes started on Friday, since some of the group was staying at the base another night to catch early flights back to the US the next morning and the rest of the group was staying at a hotel until their flights or until it was safe to go back to Misawa.  On a positive note, a truck arrived at Misawa from MeySen that had the luggage for people who were flying home.  The truck was stuck at the gate extra long because the guards who scanned the truck, its contents, and the driver for radiation couldn’t believe how clean it was and free from radiation!

Just before dinner we were checked in Koyo Inn, located just outside the main gate of the Air Force Base. The hotel was really nice – we had our own rooms with all the amenities we needed (including Internet access in each room).  There was an onsen (hot bath that requires you to be naked with people of the same sex – don’t knock it til you try it – it is AMAZING) and also a massage chair in the lobby.

Calvary Baptist Church, and English-speaking church three blocks down the road from our hotel, took us under their wing and make dinner for all of us.  They were so kind and welcoming to us.

Delicious dinner at Calvary Baptist Church

Saturday, March 18 through Tuesday, March 22

Each day at the hotel, our numbers shrank down as people flew back to the United States or to other parts of Japan.  Kris and I were eager to get back to Sendai, but not until it was safe to do so.  We bought some small groceries so we could eat breakfast and lunch at the hotel on our own.  The people at the church continued to feed and care for us each night – really a huge blessing since it would have been so expensive for us to pay to eat out every meal.

By Sunday, our number had shrunk down to 9.  We passed our time by going for walks, playing games, talking with family, watching movies we had downloaded, and making nightly visits to the onsen.  I used a lot of my free time to start to learn Japanese, starting with the Hiragana alphabet (Because it’s Japan, there have to be 3 different alphabets with 3 different characters!).  We also enjoyed some Karaoke -- hey, even in tough times you gotta have fun!

On Sunday we attended the church service at the church that had been feeding us, Calvary Baptist Church.  It was a very nice community of people.  On Monday evening, five people from our group went back to Sendai with a bus full of food and diaper donations collected by the members of Calvary Baptist Church.  One member of our group was flying out of the Aomora airport to Tokyo to go to Spain on Wednesday night, so Kris and I, Bethany, and our supervisor Esther decided to stay until Wednesday evening to see him off.

Wednesday, March 23

We are going STIR CRAZY up here in Misawa!  Since the reactors are starting to stabilize, we are headed back tomorrow to MeySen.  We are looking forward to being able to help with the relief efforts and help get the school ready for classes to resume on April 8, the start of the new school year. We feel that, with the reactors stabilizing and with the school being located outside of the US-recommended 50 mile evacuation zone, it is safe for us to be returning.  We are sorry for all the stress and worry this decision is causing our family.  We are continuing to pray through this decision and feel that it is the right one for us.



A Splendid Sunday

After being in Japan for a month, Kris and I finally made it to church.  If I'm being completely honest, I didn't really mind having my Sundays to relax and sleep in for the past few weeks.  As a former youth leader, sometimes church felt like "work" to me.  Not the being around people or the worshipping God part, but more so the getting up early on Sunday, coming home for a few hours, and then going back to work.  After 3 years, it gets a little exhausting.  So to not go to church for a few weeks was kind of nice. In our defense, I (Kris) have to add that we were at the cabin last week and sick the week before :-)

But after finally making it to church today, I realized how much I missed being a part of a community of believers and how very very much I miss my home church, Orchard Hill Church.  I haven't stopped missing my small group or the middle school and high school girls, but now I realized I also miss the music and the teaching and catching up with people in the lobby before and after the service more that I thought I did.  It's a reminder that we weren't made to go it alone -- we were created to reflect the love community of the Holy Trinity. 

So this Sunday we woke up early and went with some friends to Praise Community Church, a small bilingual church community that meets in a bar on Sunday mornings. The bar was called the Soul Life for Black Music Lovers. Could you imagine the reaction to a sign like that in America? What a cool experience it was! It is a small gathering (this morning 20 people) of Americans and Japanese Christians. The Japanese people we met were friendly and welcoming. 

We sang songs in English and Japanese.  The songs in Japanese had Kanji and the English characters, so we could listen and try to sing along.  If you've never experienced people worshipping God in another language, you really should do it some time -- it is amazing! It really was amazing. I could tell the Holy Spirit was there with us while we sang and prayed. Too bad there was no Pentecost miracle involved. When I lived in America, I knew that God was the same and was present no matter my location on the globe; but this morning, as I was praising God in another language with Japanese Christians in a small bar in Sendai, that knowledge became an internalized reality.  In a time when so much is foreign and new and different, to know that we were all worshipping the same God, who is the same God that was with me in the States and that the people at OHC are worshipping, is comforting and amazing.

The pastor's talk was in Japanese, but one person in the back translated for us.  So if you think it's hard to concentrate or understand what the pastor in your church is saying, try it with a language barrier! lol 

Because it was the first Sunday of the month, after the service there was a birthday celebration for everyone with birthdays in March.  Some of the church members had made delicious desserts and food to share with everyone for the celebration.  This was really the best part of the church, when we got to share a meal with everyone and really talk with some of the people we just met.  And the food was FANTASTIC!!!


After church, we came home and it was warm enough we could leave our windows open to air out the apartment and our futons.  (That's right, be jealous Pittsburghers!)  We relaxed and started to plan our spring break trip at the end of the month to Tokyo and DisneySea. 

For dinner, we walked to Tirol, a delicious Italian place that Alycia (a new teacher who was an intern at MeySen last year) recommended to us.  It was SO GOOD! Amen! Lucky for us they had English menus and one of the waitresses spoke English.  While we were eating, I noticed that this little Italian restaurant in Japan was playing American country music!  What a clash of the cultures lol!

Another thing about Japan, is that they love them some punch-cards!  We got punch cards for Tirol so that each time we come, we get closer to a free meal.  And at Starbucks I got a punch card for buying a bag of coffee, again getting closer to something free each time I buy.  And tons of restaurants will give you coupons after your meal for the next time you come back. Our favorite Udon place gives us tickets for each bowl we buy and once we collect 5 we get a free bowl (which we already did haha).  So my love of couponing is not totally lost in this country!

Our Foster Bunny

Meet Our Foster Bunny!

One of the (many) cool things about working at MeySen is the abundance of animals.  To provide students with an environment that is rich in nature, MeySen directors make sure there are plenty of animals on campus, including fish, prarie dogs, chinchillas, gerbils, lizards, rabbits, a horse, goat, pony, dog and more.  In fact, MeySen has a deal with a local pet store to care for baby bunnies until they are large enough to breed or sell. 

If you've read my earlier post, you know how thrilled I was about finding 6 baby bunnies at the Takamori campus.  I've heard of other teachers who have taken the bunnies for several months at a time and had damage done to their apartments as a result of letting the bunnies roam free.  These stories did not deminish my desire to take one of those cute furry guys home with me. 

The person in charge of the animals agreed to let me take a baby bunny home for 1 night as long as I had a place for the bunny to stay.  (I tried to bargin for longer, but that didn't work out).  At the end of the day I got to bring this adorable little bunny home!

Some of you who know me well may be wondering how Kris felt about this.  Though it wasn't his idea -- and though he knew I would be heartbroken if he didn't let me bring the bunny home -- he enjoyed our little foster bunny.  But he may have been a little jealous of the attention it got!  Kris named him Puffy (which I later changed to P-Diddy).

Kris and P-Diddy

We spread out a fleece blanked on our beds and let P-Diddy hop around (when I wasn't cuddling him).  He actually didn't ever leave the blanket -- it might as well have been an invisible fence. 

At one point during the night, we heard him trying to dig through the box, as if he were trying to burrow!  Kris pet him and said "Time to sleep Puffy" and just like that the bunny went to sleep!  Needless to say I was very sad to have to return him in the morning :-(

Enough of me telling you how cute P-Diddy is -- take a look for yourself.

Observations and Baby Bunnies...oh, and Jesus too

For the past two weeks Kris and I have been observing various classes.  I (Lauren) have been at the Takamori campus with the other immersion teachers, while Kris has been at Maruyama (the main campus) with the regular friends club.  It has been good to watch several different teachers and get an idea of how the MeySen curriculum flows together, but I am itching to teach full time.  In the mean time, I am learning what I can and writing down ideas and wisdom from current teachers.

During last week and this week, I have been in Ms. Grace's classroom.  Grace is an amazing lady in her late fifties who teaches at MeySen.  She is a very good teacher and cares about the kids.  I am amazed at her energy and ability to keep up with the kids - she has more energy than me!  During playtime, all the teachers play organized games with the students (ie dodgeball, freeze tag, 2 ball soccer, etc) and even then she is able to keep up with the kids; she's just as competative as they are!

My grade level partner Greg, who is also a new teacher, and I have taken over about half of the class teaching time.  By next week we'll be teaching pretty much all day.  Esther, one of the trainers/supervisors, watched us teach today and didn't have any critiques or suggestions -- that's good news!  I enjoy teaching with Greg -- he is funny, patient, great with kids, and a nice guy.  It's good we get along: we'll be working together a lot since we both will teach 3rd grade at the Maruyama campus.

Today all the friends' club students (regular and immersion) went to an assembly where the gospel was shared in Japanese.  It was really cool to hear the gospel preached in another language.  Ms. Grace interpreted for us so we knew how the gospel was being shared.  This is a huge deal since most of these kids come from nonChristian families and less than 1% of the population is Christian.  Please pray that the Spirit of God moves in these kids' hearts and spreads to their whole family.

Another exciting part of my week is that I've discovered the baby bunnies at the Takamori campus.  There are all kinds of animals kept on the campus that the students are sometimes allowed to play with.  I have been in love with these cute baby bunnies and taking this little guy out of the cage to pet it has become part of my daily routine.  Look how it fits in my hand!  So adorable!!!!


Look how cute it is!!!!!!



We Can Ride The Bus

Today was a very exciting day -- it snowed, we took the bus ourselves, we went to welcome parties, and I found out that I'll be teaching 3rd grade!

This past week we've been training in the MeySen curriculum and teaching strategies for 6 hours a day.  We've received a ton of information, but it's all be very helpful and neither of us feel like it's been overwhelming.  I am really really excited to be back in the classroom -- I've almost forgotten how much I really love teaching.


When we woke up this morning we were excited to find a dusting of snow and see snow falling to the ground.  Maybe it's the kid in me, but I just LOVE snow.  Every time it snows I get excited about it like a little kid.  Unlike Pittsburgh snow, almost all of this white fluffy stuff had melted by early afternoon :-\


After training, Kris and I decided to try a new adventure -- taking the bus to Book Off (a kind of thrift store or Big Lots).  Since all the buses and bus schedules are in Japanese, this is no easy task!  We asked a few teachers who have been here before if they'd ever taken the bus.  One teacher asked the assistants (who help English speakers get around Sendai and figure things out) to look up the bus schedule for us.  She let us know which bus to take there and where the bus stop was, but told us that there were no more buses coming back to MeySen.  We decided to take our chances -- MeySen is uphill from a highway so we figured we would probably find a bus coming back towards the school on the highway.  We figured that if we didn't get a bus, we could just walk the 3 km back to MeySen.


Thanks to the instructions on the Sendai Bus Transportation English Page, we got to Book-Off with almost no trouble (except I didn't realize which stop was ours, so we had to go to the next stop, which gave us about 1 1/2 extra blocks of walking).   Contrary to its name, Book-Off sells more than just used books (though there were rows and rows and rows of shelves filled with Manga -- eat your heart out Madelyn!)  It has clothes, music equipment, sporting equipment, clothes, toys, housewares, etc.  We were both able to get clothes for our upcoming ski trip (since we didn't have room to bring all our ski gear with us).

Kris waiting at the bus stop

Catching the bus back turned out to be a bit of an adventure.  We decided to walk in the direction of home and see if we could find any bus stops.  Just as we got to a bus stop, a bus pulled up.  We got on and hoped for the best.  Turns out we got on the wrong bus lol! When the bus went straight at an intersection where we wanted to go left, we decided to get off at the next stop.  We showed the bus driver our English map of Sendai and tried to find out if there was another bus we could take, but he didn't understand us. One of the women on the bus did speak English, but all she could tell us was that the bus was not going where we wanted to go.  The bus driver did have mercy on us by letting us get off the bus without paying.


We turned around and continued to walk back towards the intersection we passed and back to the school.  When we got to a bus stop at the intersection, a bus pulled up and appeared to be going in the same direction as us.  Again we crossed our fingers, hoped for the best, and got on the bus.  This time we were right!  The bus let off on the main highway right by the school!  When we got off the bus, I jumped up and down and happily shouted about our victory.  I may or may not have karate kicked the air a few times in glee (as Kris pretended not to know me haha).  It may not seem like a big deal, but I was THRILLED that we were able to accomplish something on our own in a foreign country without speaking any of the language.

Can you see why it was so confusing?!

Tonight each department also hosted welcoming parties for the new teachers.  Kris and I went to separate departments since he is teaching the Friends Club and I am teaching the Immersion Friends Club.  At my party we ate tacos and ice cream (both big treats here!).  We also played a few games -- it wasn't until we got into 5-team charades that I realized how competitive people at this school are!  For 5-team charades, each team had 1 representative that acted out the motions while their teammates guessed.  So all the teams were guessing and acting out at the same time.  The team that got it first and made noise won the point.  This lead to some disputes about who really guessed it first, so we solved the problem by saying that which every team guessed correctly, got the marker, and put a point next to their team first was the winner.  Well, this turned into some hilarious chaos as people began wrestling for the marker.  It was so intense!!!!  After that we also played cops and robbers which is basically hide and seek with all the lights off.  It was a fun night and even felt a little like youth group for adults haha.



Playing 5-team charades in the Tatami room

 I also found out that I will be teaching 3rd grade which I am super excited about!  I was hoping to get 3rd or 4th grade (since this year the oldest grade in the Immersion program will be 4th grade). Greg, who is also a new teacher, will be teaching the other 3rd grade class.  He subbed with 3rd grade, so I'm glad we'll get to collaborate.  I bet he'll have some good ideas for playtime too.