A Pirate Ship, Some Cream Puffs, and Fireworks to Top it off

We had an amazing past week full of parties and fun! Pictures first...

English club at my (Emily's) base school. We are playing Funglish in this picture - an amazing teaching tool and way fun!

This is me at a special hospital school that I visited a couple weeks ago. The kids were phenomenal. Amazingly sweet with beautiful smiles and eager to try hard.

English bulletin board. It's supposed to the be the ocean and beach. A student made the little crab in the corner.

Happy Fourth of July!!! This was our party with two American missionaries and another American couple in our branch. I'm sure it was quite a cultural experience for the Japanese people there. We sang patriotic songs, lit sparklers, and ate bbq chicken, corn on the cob, and other traditional food. It was so festive!

Fireworks! We were on the balcony on the seventh floor of a building. I can only imagine what it looked like from the ground with tons of sparklers going off at once. Totally worth it. 

Yesterday was a holiday in Japan called Tanabata. All over the city in front of the shops were these awesome decorations. The explanation of Tanabata on Wikipedia says that Tanabata, "celebrates the meeting of the deities Orihime and Hikoboshi. According to legend, the Milky Way separates these lovers, and they are allowed to meet only once a year on the seventh day of the seventh lunar month of the lunisolar calendar. The date of Tanabata varies by region of the country, but the first festivities begin on July 7." Isn't that romantic?!

A pirate ship. My favorite.

The members of our branch threw a farewell party for us with tons of food and fun. We will miss them so much.

I think this is called Aoi or hollyhock in English. These flowers are everywhere in our city and I have fallen in love with them.

Kinda weird faces, but look at what we are holding instead. Those are cream puffs from a train station in Fukushima City. Mine was mango flavored and James had chocolate. Holy smokes, they were amazing. Especially because they were frozen and it was sooo hot outside.

Other exciting news from this week is that we ran a full seven miles on Friday. That is more that half of our goal. We are planning to run a Halloween half marathon in October in Oregon, so we are slowly gearing up for it. I've discovered the secret to getting myself to run for longer periods of time...audiobooks. On Friday, I finished my first audiobook - The Goose Girl. It was so cute, and I would highly recommend it. I'm looking for new books to keep my mind off of blisters and sore knees, so if anyone has any suggestions, please let me know!

Other than that, we are just trying to get everything wrapped up here before the big move coming up in about two weeks. Yikes! Where has this year gone?!