Chris & Abbie

I'm sorry for the absence these days. Ever since the Easter program we have been overwhelmed with finishing out the term, as Summer break starts after this week. We aren't officially off school until August 1-16, but the students are done after tomorrow...so we are only 1 day away from some much needed rest and some more time to blog.

Please don't give up on our blog yet - I promise to post pictures of the Easter program and some other happenings from the past few weeks!

For now, I will leave you with saying:
"Happy Birthday Chris!" (tomorrow, July 17th)
He only has one more year left in his late-twenties,
as I remind him of frequently these days!

This is my favorite picture of Chris from when he was a kid.

There might not be as much blogging this week because we have so much to get done, besides our normal teaching responsibilities. So with this post I am asking that you pray for us for some things that we are trying to get done:

Easter Program: Yes, you read right. We are having an Easter program this Sunday for the town we live in. We have been inviting friends, students and co-workers to come join us as we celebrate Easter and teach them about why we celebrate Easter. So, first if you can pray that people come. But there is also a lot we need to get done before the people can come...
- we (our team) are going to be hard-boiling 300 eggs that they can color
- we are going to be baking 200 sugar cookies that they can decorate
- we are going to be baking other snacks that they can eat
- we are giving a drama, so we have two more practices for that
- we are singing/playing music and that needs to finish coming together
- but most of all we want people to hear what we have to say...so pray that their hearts are open.

Stolen Identities: Today we learned that Chris' identity has been stolen. While he was in Japan this weekend, he also appears to have been at Six Flags Great America, The Cute Kid store, TMobile, etc... We have found out that there has been fraudulent activity on two credit cards, and possibly more. We are both actually laughing about this, because come on, how crazy that this is happening while we around the world?! But at the same time, how annoying that we have to deal with this and try to figure this out while we are around the world!

4th of July: A day to celebrate, right, so why is this a prayer request? Well, the 4th of July is my favorite holiday. My whole life I have gathered with many of you on both the 3rd and 4th of July. I was away at camp a couple of summers and missed it, but I was still able to celebrate with friends. I'm really nervous that this will be a hard weekend for me, being away from all of you and knowing the fun that I am missing. And nobody here knows what 4th of July is...there are no fireworks...and of course, no Taste of Chicago! We are going to do a little something with our team on Saturday, but with all we have to do for Sunday, it will be short. So please just pray that I don't get more homesick than necessary this weekend.

As a side note, to curb my missing the 4th of July, I bought a CD today off iTunes - it was $5.99 and had 50 patriotic songs - it's wonderful and I feel like I should be sitting in Grant Park when I listen to it.

Ok, I know this is long, so I will say thanks ahead of time. We have some busy days ahead!

Don't like Japan now.
Watermelon, twenty bucks?!
That is just silly.

This was stated this evening after he went to the grocery store and was disappointed by their fruit selection.

This week has been a hard week for me. I've been so exhausted and just haven't felt like I have any more to give. On my breaks each day I was taking naps, and I'd go to bed by 9pm each night. Emotionally this just made it a struggle for me to get through each day. We have been working so hard at teaching, plus we are getting ready for an Easter Program we are putting on for the town on July 5th. I know "Easter in July?", but the timing works out best to have it then.

Anyways, so the other night I was finishing up with class and then we had a 2 hour break or so before we had drama practice for the Easter program. So I said to Chris, let's just keep going, if I go home I'll be frustrated that I have to leave the house again. My kind and wonderful husband said, ok.

So we took the 6:12pm train to Koriyama and set out to have dinner at McDonald's and dessert at Starbucks, and catch the train back home an hour later.

Well, McDonald's has this sale right now "4 chicken nuggets for 100 yen ($1 dollar)", and I was so hungry by the time we got there I said I wanted to get a sandwich and some nuggets as a side. Chris said ok, so we placed our order for our sandwiches and I said and we'd like the "4 chicken nuggets for 100 yen". The lady responded and said "4 chicken nuggets, ok". Well, then she gave us 4 sauces - I thought, thats's so generous, you'd never get that many in America.

So we get our number and sit down and Chris says, "I think you might have ordered 4 orders of chicken nuggets." I was like really? Maybe, but I don't think so.

Well, our order came and sure enough - we had our sandwiches, fries, drinks and 4 orders of 5 chicken nuggets. So there we sat with all of our food and 20 chicken nuggets! I couldn't stop laughing, I was already so exhausted and I had just ordered so much food!

No wonder think of us as the "Fat Americans"!

Needless to say, we only ate 1 of the orders and brought the rest home for our friends' kids, and I still was able to get a Starbucks for dessert!

Here are two Japanese videos that we like to watch these days. I think it is so cool how they are made pay attention to the background, and quite funny to watch!

Enjoy!

On Sunday afternoon our friends, Peter and Rebekah, called us to see if we could come over and watch 2 of their 3 kids. The kids were napping, so it was really an easy task set before us.

We packed up our lunch and laptop and headed over. Most of the time the kids were asleep so Chris and I just sat around watching a movie, but after the kids woke up from their nap, we had some fun entertaining ourselves on Photobooth.

Here's some of the fun we had!
Me and Katherine - silly faces

Asher woke up and joined us in the fun. He was a little groggy at first, but by the end he was all smiles!

Katherine liked this one because of her blue tongue.


Thanks for letting us hang out with your kids Peter and Rebekah!
We love them (and you)!

Last Saturday we got to spend the day with a new friend, Shizuka. Shizuka is friends with Kitty. They knew each other when they were both living down-state. As we were coming to Japan, Kitty found out that Shizuka only lived about 40 minutes from us! So Saturday we finally met her and spent the day with her.

She took us to the town of Nikko, to see the Toshogu Shrine. The Shrine was so huge; there was building after building of beautiful Japanese architecture that was built in the 1600's. It was very interesting and sad at the same time to see all that had been built to worship false Gods.

This is Ashley, me and Shizuka in the town of Nikko. They had a beautiful bridge and waterfall. Turns out that Ashley, who is on our team, also knew Shizuka - what a small world!

The theme of the day was STAIRS - this is the first set of 100 stairs that we climbed throughout the day. We started to count at one point, but I never heard the final number.


Japanese Monks

People write their prayers on these papers and tie them to the post. Reminded me of the Wailing Wall in Israel.

The Five-Storied Pagoda

The original hear no evil, speak no evil, see no evil monkeys.


These arches are put in front of every shrine in Japan.

There was lots of gold. This arch had dragons carved into it, and every dragon was different.

This cat is a national monument. I think it means "good luck", but we're still not sure why it's so famous.

Chris and the scary man

There were HUGE trees there. We wanted to know if they were from the 1600's too.

We had a great time and were excited to see a new part of Japan and make a new friend!