What?! 6 Months!!

Today speaks of the duration and continuation of our adventure in the land of Japan. 6 months have flown by like the wind, without notice. Our busy teacher lives have consumed 6 months of joys and hardships while still looking for more to feed upon.

"Japan has truly been a worthwhile adventure," states Travis. "We continue to seek the will of the Lord in our daily life, looking to His strength and faith, which is truly unending."

Many days have been traversed without the sight of family, and the longing of the corn fields haunt the minds of both as they wonder the orchards of Aomori, the Blue Forest as they call it here. "Nothing tastes as sweet as a Hershey's kiss in my mouth," describes Mrs. Appelgate. Both look yonder to the day of return to the home land and the hope of refreshment from those dearly left, but not lost, 6 months ago to this date.

Words can describe the action packed days spent in the foreign lands, but time cannot. "We have learned so much, like how to cook the choiceiest chahan (fried rice) and homemade cheese," exclaims Travis, "but there is more to learn, like how to speak Japanese...yeap...still working on that one..."

The loved ones wish to send their friends and family all the love of the Lord, in hopes that they will be remembered in dinner time prayers and bed time thoughts. "We are still alive!" shouted Angie with excited intonation.

In other thoughts, the two spent the day in celebration of all that the Provider has given. "We know that home is the Lord, and He is continually with us," said Travis with solemn committment. They celebrated joyfully to forkfuls of spaghetti and mouthfuls of bruschetta at a local chain Italian restaurant, after which they enjoyed their favorite local deserts of ice cream and crepes. "How appropriate for Japan," stated Angie, "considering that our first time out to eat in Japan was Italian!"

Thanks be to all those who have placed us in God's care while we be so far from the arms of our loved ones, as we remember a time will come when we will never depart.

p.s. thanks for putting up with reading interesting English; "It's my only escape," cries Travis, "I am forced to speak in such broken English all day!"

English Club Fun!

Teaching English might be difficult, but teaching English Club is more like hanging out with our friends! Most students care little to learn English, but the students who do care are lots of fun! Here's an update of our English Club activities.

Last month we had a BBQ at Haruna's house. We ate lots and lots of meat and of course yummy desserts sent from America by our most wonderful families!!! Needless to say the desserts were the biggest hit :D

Of course, a BBQ wouldn't be a BBQ w/o some fireworks!

We also went bowling with a few of our English Club members. Angie did the best (of course being a retired bowling leaguer helped!) but our students also did very well and had a lot of fun!

Tonight, we decided to have our entire English club over to our apartment for dinner. The main dish was half-cooked/half-burnt spaghetti with not-so-good sauce. We found that it was quite difficult to cook for 20 people!!! Then we had some salad with American Ranch dressing! and some fruit salad, and of course yummy American desserts! Since our apartment is teeny-tiny and our number of English Club students has tripled since we had our first Appelgate dinner (a few weeks after we arrived) we decided to carry the food to the park and have a picnic!

After the picnic we enjoyed desserts and games. We played some assassins, watch Sponge-Bob Squarepants (Thanks Team Johns!) and even sang some worship music!

Please be praying for our English Club students. They are the reason God brought us here and are the students that we can show who God is the most. Please pray that their hearts would be softened to God and they would begin to see God's love for them.

We are alive!

Just thought we would blog to let you all know, yes, we are still alive, despite the fact that we have not blogged in about 3 weeks! We have been quite busy at school since we got back from summer vacation and have had little time to blog! We have been helping 4 of our students prepare for the Aomori speech contest and have been working late most nights.

Hopefully we will be able to blog more soon! We love and miss you all very much!

Hakodate

Last weekend we ventured to the beautiful city of Hakodate. Hakodate lies on the very southern shore of the northern island Hokkaido. To understand what we did in Hakodate you must first have a history lesson: In the late 1800's the Meiji Restoration took place in Japan. Prior to this time Japan had cut off all contact with the world for 270 years (which is also the longest duration of Christian persecution). Hakodate was one of the first ports open to the world during the restoration, so there are many old buildings of the western style.

So our time in Hakodate was spent walking about looking at old buildings from the early nineteen hundreds and taking pictures of them. All of which Travis thought was quite peculiar since his parent's house is older (this year is the 100th anniversary of their house!!) than most of the buildings...but they were in Japan so that makes them cool.

We stayed in a really nice hotel with English service!! We were quite surprised to find that many people talked to us in English, signs were in English, even menus were in english!!

To travel between places we rode on the street cars! Yes, that's right street cars just like in the 1920's San Francisco style. Here's a picture of an old school one.

Supposedly, Hakodate has one of the 3 best views in the world which is the night view of the city from atop the nearby mount Hakodate. It was gorgeous minus the fact that there were hundreds of people crowding around trying to take pictures.

We also went to the top of a tower to check out a star shaped fort characteristic of a Western fort from the mid 1800's. The fort looked cool from the top of the tower, but from the park grounds it was a mess of construction because they are rebuilding parts of the fort buildings.

Here is a picture of the old town hall built in 1910ish. Hakodate is prone to fires which burnt down most of the pre-1900 buildings. But this was a nice house!

Of course Hakodate wouldn't be complete without a bit of tourist shops. These buildings (and more) were filled with tourist shops. You think that American towns are bad, just wait till you see how excited the Japanese are about souvenirs!!

Also during our stay in Hakodate we stayed with Maribeth Voss who is another RCA missionary working as a teacher there. She was super nice allowing us to stay at her place and encouraging us in our efforts here in Japan. Unfortunately we did not get a picture of her to share with you, but she did take this picture of a giant block of parmesan cheese during Angie's birthday dinner.

We really liked Hakodate with its western style and English availability, but we are happy to be back home in Hirosaki.