The week is over. :-)

We have a busy day tomorrow, though! Church in the morning, then we're going to one of my student's history lectures near the museum, and then to our friend, Sonomi's, band's concert in Yamaguchi City. Unfortunately, we have been told it is likely we'll have bad weather tomorrow because of an approaching typhoon. Usually just a lot of wind and rain, as none of them hit Hagi directly because we are on the western coast. It's actually a very nice place to live, overall. We're not near the areas that have volcanoes or earthquakes or bad typhoons... we're not inland so the temperature is pretty mild year around and there's always a nice sea breeze. The land is flat, so we don't have to ride up any hills or mountains going to or from work. And the scenery is gorgeous as I've mentioned before. :-) Not to make you all jealous... hehe...

Not much new for us, as usual. Classes are going well, students are passing tests, oh! all the local schools' the Sports Festivals are going on this month, so many students/schools have been very busy practicing and preparing. It's one of the biggest events of the year. We haven't been to one yet, but they are going on every weekend so we still have plenty of chances. The I hear the last week of September is Kimono week... I'm not sure what that means exactly, but I think it involves another parade. We get the first day of that week off work (not sure if it's another holiday or if it's related). Oh! At the last staff meeting we found out we'll be having a Halloween "week" this year! We have to come up with a costume and wear it every day to school so all the kids can enjoy it, not just the classes on Friday (the 31st). Have any ideas on what we should be?

I HAVE MY CAMERA BACK!!! Whoo hoo!!!!!!! I was pretty thrilled when I picked it up this afternoon and everything worked the way it should! Too bad it had to cost $84 to fix, but at least it's taking pictures again. :-)

House pictures, etc!

I finally found the picture CD I made after my camera broke! It doesn't have too many pictures on, but I can show you all the ones I do have. :-)

Me and my wonderful blessing. *sniff* I will be forever be grateful for the gift that she was. 7/7/08


A view from our flight over here - somewhere along the Arctic Circle above Canada/Alaska. 7/11/08


During our first "outing" - to San Mart, a convenience store a block away. This picture is for Tom and Jesse, lol. 7/12/08


The Hagi School (first floor, left side). No pictures of the Nagato School yet (it isn't real pretty from the outside!).


The front side of our house.


The back side of our house.


Our bedroom.


The "guest" room - where our MANY guests will stay! ;-)


The kitchen.


The tatami room.


Where we make our phone calls to you...


The living room - where we spend 90% of our time at home, playing games, surfing the web, or watching Japanese television.


The bathroom - the tub and shower are behind me (the toilets are kept in separate rooms).


The back area where we dry our clothes and run from spiders - there are also many potted plants that the previous teachers left behind - but we aren't good gardeners, so they are struggling for dear life. :-p


And lastly, here are the only pictures from the Bell School picnic at a park in Nagato, moments before my camera malfunctioned... sigh. 7/19/08

In this one (craft time), you can see Jeremy, Melody (who recently left to go back to the US), and Carla - the only three foreigners in the picture, haha.


The awesome playground at the park - and the crazy, cool roller slide in the background.


The lady in the black hat is our boss, Nakashima-san.

Summer break!

I suppose we're starting break off with a good start! Today, after church, we had lunch at Yamazaki - a local restaurant popular for it's okinomiyaki (similar to a pancake with cabbage and your choice meat, etc.) and gakigori (flavored ice). It was a GORGEOUS day! The weather has been fantastic lately, with much lower humidity and the temperature has been very comfortable (a few nights ago we actually had to pull out the blankets!). The surf was high and we could see wind surfers and people riding jet skis enjoying their play in the waves near the beach. After lunch, we had some friends over to play a few of the games we brought with us, Zigity and Fluxx. We also played a few rounds of "killer" Uno. It was almost like a real game night! Without the night... dinner... and large selection of games. I miss the Gabharts' game nights!! I've been going through serious withdraw lately. All my favorite games we had to leave at home because there was no space in our luggage. Sigh. Jeremy discovered that there is a Japanese version of Settlers of Catan out there somewhere and if it is a semi-decent price we may purchase it. We'll search for it at Toys R Us when we visit Yamaguchi City a some point this week. And on Friday, we're going to Costco! I'm super excited about it, even though it's a 2.5 hour car ride. American food here we come again!! :-)

Grove City?

The latest news is that Grove City is about to get Harry-ier! Haha. I just found out that my brother got a job at Best Buy in Grove City, Ohio and will be moving down there this weekend! Whoa! Good for him! He's been looking for a job like that for a LONG time - I just hope they can afford to stay there, and keep the job (he needs to get his own tools). Please pray! :-)

I went picture scavenging!

So I've been searching around online for some pictures of Hagi, so I've included a few in this post to give you somewhat of an idea of the town we're living in. Also, some pictures of "sazae" which I also found online - sea snail, a type of shellfish, that we tasted at a barbecue Saturday night. We were a little disgusted at the thought of prying the boiled creature from its shell and eating it... so we only sampled a tiny bit. :-p It wasn't too bad. After the barbecue (by the way, Japanese barbecues are NOTHING like American ones! They're actually much better, ha!), we went to a local entertainment place called US Bowl for some karaoke with the other teachers and two of Jeremy's students - who pride themselves on their record 11 hours of karaoke! We only stayed for two hours that night though. :-)


This is an aerial photo of the city of Hagi, Japan. It can technically be called an island, I guess, because it is situated between the Hashimoto and the Matsumoto rivers.


This is an image of a tourist map of Hagi, very similar to the one we have.


This is an aerial view of Mt. Shizuki, and to the lower, left of the mountain, the smaller, more private beach.


This is the public beach, Kikugahama, and the prominent Mt. Shizuki in the background. Jeremy says that we will hike up it one of these days. :-)


Believe it or not, this is an image of our house and the school car we use, which I found on an old teacher's blog!


Here is a picture of "sazae" or sea snails (I assume before being boiled in soy sauce, because the caps are still attached to the shells).


And this is what the snail looks like outside of its shell - yum, heh. :-p

Enjoy!

It's been a while!

Yeah... it's been a while since I've posted here! Sorry, I still don't have any pictures to show you. :-( We are working on getting a camera, but it seems to be a SLOW process. It's difficult with the language barrier to discuss my camera issues, and the estimate they called back on it doesn't seem like it would solve the problem so we are waiting on a second opinion from my old boss at the camera shop before we decide to either fix it or buy a new one... which, if that's the case, will likely take even longer because we'll have to figure out how to buy the right camera in Japanese! Whoa. I do hope we have a camera soon though! Thankfully, we've been getting a few pictures here and there from staff members and friends, but no digital pictures, so we'd require a scanner to put them up for you all. :-p Somewhere, I do have pictures of our house, inside and out, but I cannot find the CD they are on...

Moving on, please do feel free to write us, call us, message us, or use Skype. I've been wanting to use Skype, but I have so few of your addresses, I haven't seen anyone online yet to call. Jeremy and I have been fighting for the computer in the mornings - the best time to talk with you all (our mornings are your evenings) - so I haven't been around too much when the best times would be. I'll try to work on that a little. Now, it's the middle of the night for you. :-p I don't have too much interesting to report... this coming week is Obon (sp?), a time when the Japanese spend time visiting their hometowns and families, and celebrating the lives of their ancestors. We are going to a festival in Nagato tomorrow with some friends. This week, we're also opening a bank account to start some automatic payments so we don't have to mail them every month. I think we may also be getting our first paychecks this week! We got paid for training last week so that has helped us get by without cashing the rest of our travelers checks. We need to create a budget now that we have an income. That will be tough getting started! :-p

I guess that's all I have for now, I'll try to update more often now that we're back online.