Random Acts

Due to the coming typhoon, which is the biggest in recent years, our school cancelled classes early! We came to school today just to find out that classes would let out after 1st period. Well, we don't have 1st period so we had no classes today!! Yippy! Unfortunately, if the typhoon is bad enough it will knock all the apples off the trees and the farmers will lose a lot of money!

Also, one of our favorite shopping centers will be closing this weekend! The department store is called Joppal and is the popular hang out for high school students. It has a lot of cheaper fashion shops and a really nice dollar store. We are frequenters to this department store and will be quite sad to it see it go. Many a good memory has been had within the walls of Joppal. What will Hirosaki be without trusty Joppal. Some may say a safer city, but NO! Where will the kids hang out? They will just turn to the streets. For us, it means long, long, long treks through the winter waist deep snow for our supplies. Or we'll just broke spending our money at more expensive (and reliable) stores.

Here is a picture of our stomping grounds: Joppal. Oh! You shall be missed.

All is well though, we are thankful to have learned to cook well enough to make pulled pork!! Yes, thanks to our slow cooker we had a delightful meal! There is a lot to be thankful for!

Hi Ho Silver!

Well, this last weekend and 3 days we've had Silver Week here in Japan, a string of 3 holidays in a row so we can enjoy the beatiful changing of seasons!

We did a nice array of things..

went to a display of Ikebana (Japanese flower arrangements)

played badminton and made pizza with some of our boys from English club! (the competition was pretty intense though, so no pictures were taken :D)

conquered Mount Iwaki for the second time :) and we must say it's much prettier in the Fall with the changing leaves and rice patties! Thankfully this time it was clear so we had a pretty amazing view from the top!

went to karaoke and had dinner-and-a movie with some other students..

and if you're wondering who's the only other foreigner in the picture besides us, that's our new foreign exchange student, all the way from Salem, Massachusetts!

went exploring and stumbled upon a KKK building... wonder what this stands for?!

but the highlight of the whole weekend was getting to feel a little bit closer to home..

Thanks to you, Pella windows :) even famous in good ol' Hirosaki, Japan!!

Onto the Big Leagues!

Sorry we haven't blogged lately; we've been quite busy with the state speech contest here!

After 2 weeks of hard work, the day finally came...

Though all of our students did absolutely wonderful, only 1 of our students got 3rd place!! Still rather exciting! And, of course we had fun along the way :)

We're back...

and our plants are dead :(

but, we have lots of food!!