Our Humble Abode

I know I said about a month ago that we would be putting up pictures of our place. Well, at last the time has come; be excited! Instead of boring you with lots of pictures of our place, we will bore you with just one video (actually two...). We really do enjoy our little apartment. You are also getting a glimpse into some of our festiveness with Halloween décor. Emily has been hard at work on a few projects and coming up with cool ideas for Halloween lessons.

Had to split it in two videos because apparently you can only post videos under a minute long or something. We started with a 7-minute video but didn't work. We'll post some pictures up later. :)

Other than that, not much has been going on. Emily had a Relief Society activity that she went to yesterday that I was actually asked to go to. I got a call earlier in the week from the Relief Society President, Sister Haga, who said that one of the other sisters in the branch wanted to bring their husband (who was visiting from Germany) to the activity and that I should come along. I thanked her for the invitation not knowing exactly what they were doing. We showed up on Saturday morning at the church and found out that the sister and her husband had to cancel and weren’t coming. I decided to stay and enjoy the activity. Due to the radiation in the Fukushima Prefecture, the sisters in the surrounding areas (Koriyama and Iwaki) don’t get to “play” outside very often. So the activity was actually for all of the Relief Society sisters in the district. We walked around parts of the old AIzu Wakamatsu and saw some really cool things. We also were able to find a pumpkin and some other vegetable for cheap while we were out. Needless to say, we had a good time with everyone.

There are a bunch of the sisters from the district that we went with.

Aizu Wakamatsu is really famous for their lacquer-ware. 

Another thing the city is famous for is candle art. We talked to the manager of the store who actually made all the candles himself. He says that he makes a bunch of them at once and that it takes about 2 weeks from start to finish. Some of the larger candles are over a hundred dollars and the smallest ones we saw were still over ten dollars. Amazing!

This is one of the cute houses that we saw.

I just got my 4^th flat tire today on my way home from church. I’m starting to think that I’m too fat for my Japanese bike! Well, I just wanted to say how grateful I am for my bike… when it works. Due to so many punctured tubes, Emily and I decided to buy a kit and fix the tires ourselves. The kit was about 700 yen, and I could fix probably 6 flats with it, while taking it to the shop to get fixed costs 900 yen for just one tire. All I have to say is that flat tires are no fun, but I’m glad that I got my cycling merit badge when I was a Boy Scout and that I get to put those skills to use.

We love you all very much and hope you are doing well. Until next week!