Sunday, August 29, 2004
Love and Birthday Parties
On Saturday morning, I gave Joe and DT a “tour” of my apartment, and then we made breakfast “together.” Catherine had spent the night so they got to “meet” her too! It was so wonderful having Joe and DT in my kitchen as I made eggs, bacon and toast. I only wish they could’ve sat down to enjoy it with me too.
...right now I’m getting emails from my sister with pictures of my family holding “We love you” and “We miss you” signs. Thank you Aunt Leta, Aunt Lynne, Joelle and DT! You don’t know how much this means to me! I’m going to print them out at school and hang them in my apartment. I love you and I miss you too!!
Joelle holding up a poster for me!
My Aunt Leta with her poster!
My mom and Aunt Lynne laughing as they make me posters.
The whole crew together!
Satomi came to pick me up for my birthday party at 9 a.m. So, here’s the deal: Satomi works part-time at Nakagoto High School and full-time at an after-school English club in her hometown (somewhere past Arikawa up north). The birthday party was for one of her 10-year-old students at this English club school. The girls were doing a play in English and wanted to perform it for me, which is the main reason I was invited to her party, but I think they also just like having English speakers come and visit occasionally.
The party was from 10:30 a.m. to noon and we did all sorts of English activities. I read an English book Satomi brought back from Seattle, we played games like Go Fish and Memory; we ate snacks from America (including Almond Joy and Mounds so I had to sing the “Almond Joy’s got nuts, Mound’s don’t” song for them). The play they performed for me was The Very Hungry Caterpillar and upon completion I gave them an American flag to hang in the classroom. I had no idea what to expect from this birthday party so it turned out to be a lot of fun.
The birthday girl is in the middle.
The beginning of The Hungry Caterpiller play. "On the second day he ate through two pears."
"On the second day he ate through three plums."
"On the next day he ate through one cupcake, one ice cream, etc." The girls drew all these pictures!
All the girls with the "beautiful butterfly." Satomi is on the far left.
After the girls went home Satomi gave me home-made salt and a sea-salt medicine. Her husband’s family are fisherman and have started making salt and this medicine to sell during the off-season. I’m not exactly sure what the medicine is, but it’s the liquid that’s left over when you are boiling sea water and have extracted most of the dry salt. I am suppose to put a couple drops in my water, tea or soup, a little bit in my bath water for my skin, and can use it as an anti-itch cream when I’ve got bug bites. She said it’s pretty bitter so I have just put one drop in a full glass of water and I can’t even taste it. I’m not really sure what it is, but maybe I’ll do some research when I’ve got some spare time.
Satomi and I went to lunch at an udon shop and I learned how to order udon with a fried egg. I don’t like the typical raw egg on my udon and am so thankful everytime I learn how to order food the way I want it. Then we went to Clark Kent, a video store in Arikawa, and Satomi taught me how to determine which movies are in Japanese and which have Japanese subtitles, how long each rental is and how much it costs, and how to save money by buying a prepaid card. Then she took me to a hyaku-en shop, another video store, a bookstore, a plant shop, a discount store, and another hyaku-en store!! I got so many things that I’ve wanted to get since I arrived, but just didn’t have the time or the means to transport home. To name just a few: two large house plants (from her sister-in-law’s shop), a flower arranging vase (given to me for free by her sister-in-law), an alarm clock, more postcards of Nakadorishima, a full-length mirror, an electric toothbrush, a towel hanger for my bathroom, drinking glasses, bottled water (in case the water gets turned off after the typhoon for a couple days), a laundry basket, clothespins for hanging the laundry, and the list goes on...
Here is the large plant I bought.
And here is the smaller plant.
I am so appreciative of the massive amount of time it took her to truck me around the town, to each store and all the way back home again. She actually lost track of time and told me at 3 p.m. in our last store that she had a tutoring appointment she had to get back for at 4 p.m.! It takes about 30 minutes each way so I’m sure she was a little bit late! Yikes! But I’m glad we were able to get to know one another before classes start next week.
Kerry and Laura also came down for a visit this weekend. Catherine entertained them in the afternoon and then I joined the festivities after my day with Satomi. We hung out at Catherine’s place for the most part—telling stories, watching Reality Bites, and continuing with our random questions game. We also went for dinner in a new restaurant in Narao. We stumbled upon it while I was looking for the okonomiyaki place. We weren’t even sure if it was a restaurant so I kind of knocked on the door for someone to let us in. We called Blue House because we think there’s a sign outside that says Blue something-or-other and the service is wonderful. There were dishes of food sitting out on the bar counter and so all we did was point to what looked good and they dished up a plate. Another customer was so excited about the four foreign girls that just walked in that he bought us all drinks! We had a really nice wine from Germany; I was so surprised I liked it! We lavished them with as many Japanese words we could think of, but definitely used “ooishi” (delicious) the most often. We were given huge slices of home-grown watermelon for dessert and told it was “service” which I think we determined meant free of charge. The whole meal cost us just ¥1000 and we went home very satisfied and happy.
Here are the four of us eating at the "Blue House" restaurant. From left to right: Laura, Sierra, Catherine, Kerry.
Here is the woman who gave us free watermelon!
Today the girls took a bus back to Aokata by noon because this threatening typhoon is suppose to arrive at 3 p.m. When I look outside though, now at 4 p.m. there is no rain and it doesn’t even look windy. Maybe this is the calm before the storm, but I’m doubtful. There was so much build-up to the last typhoon it seems hard to believe this one is just going to appear out of nowhere and be even worse than the last one. Watch, I’m going to be shivering under the covers in just a few hours and wishing I hadn’t posted this! Wish me luck through tonight’s typhoon!
Love and birthday parties,
Sierra
