Fun-Fact-Friday

This has been quite an interesting and somewhat trying week, but we came out on top.. and we'll share some of the better moments with you!

As you may know the dollar weakened to a 14-year low against the yen, which earned us an extra $400 in our monthly transfer today.. talk about a deal, making an extra $400 for NO work! Sorry, everyone, we know the economy is bad back in the states, but we are reaping the benefits over here :)

We also found out today that many of the teachers find it difficult to understand Angie, due to her thick southern Iowa accent. Ya'know, it's so close to the Missouri border, and ya'know how them Missourians are :) Unfortunately, we came to this conclusion when no teacher showed up to teach one of our classes. Angie had confirmed that another teacher would take over the class, but that did not happen, due to her uninterpretable accent!

On a final note, we did have a delicious-home-style dinner with a "Walking Taco" (or for those of you from way down south in Burlington, Taco-in-a-Bag)

Thanksgiving!!

On Sunday English club celebrated, with tons of food and dessert, Thanksgiving!!!

The food included mashed potatos, stuffing, green bean casserole, and even a real turkey!!

The dessert included pumpkin pie, sweet potato pie, puppy chow, and apple crisp!!

A special thanks to all those who provided the "fixin's" for our splendid meal!

After the meal we explained the story of Thanksgiving and that Thanksgiving is a time to thank God for all the good things we have. To explain the story the students conducted a short skit in which they were given a short part of the story and had to write a script in pairs. We ended up with some pretty wonderfully creative parts to the play.

Overall the party was a success! We all had a great time and stuffed ourselves full of food, and yet there are still leftovers!!

We Didn't Start the FIRE!

Last night at 1:30am we awoke to yelling, sirens, and the smell of smoke! Drowsily we pulled ourselves out of bed to assess the situation. In a matter of seconds that drowsiness disappeared to be replaced by surprise and confusion. Upon opening the window we were astonished to see that our neighboring apartment building was on FIRE! Firemen were rushing frantically and smoke billowed out of the windows (it was more like flowing but at the time it was much different!). A big fire truck was filling the entire parking lot with its presence and many of our neighbors and bystanders were gazing in awe of the catastrophe. Fortunately, as far as we could tell (as it is rather difficult for us to understand frantic Japanese yelling), noone was hurt and only one apartment was damaged to what appeared to be beyond repair.

Here is our witness from the precipice of our living room window.

The First of the Lasts

Yes, the time has come. It all starts here, simply a bag of salt. Who would think that such a turn of the tides would start with such a mundane object as this. Sadness breaks upon our hearts. Confusion stirs our senses- happiness or sadness, which should we feel?!

(just so you know, we have used only 1 bag of salt in a year and a half's time here, so we know this one last bag of salt will last us our last year and a half here)

Happy Halloween!

Well, on Saturday we had our Halloween party for English club, and overall we think it was a hit! We had all of the old-school favorites: carmel apples, popcorn balls, & pumpkin bars.. yummy!

The entertainment included guessing body parts in bags (it was really food of course), the classic cake walk, a scarecrow buliding relay, and last but not least, pumpkin (Japanese squash) carving!!

Now, it's time to start preparin' for Thanksgivin'!!!