October 18, 2008: Park & Parade

"Being Active" is our new initiative! It was a Saturday and the weather was perfect. A group of us decided to go to the park. If you didn't think it was possible....FOUR of our friends crammed into the back of our tiny Green Monster! Here's the picture to prove it.

Brandon, Caitlyn, Ira, Darryl, Tim & Me

We played football for awhile and even recruited a little Japanese boy to play with us (Darryl was able to tell him our plays in Japanese and it was funny because the little boy was suggesting plays that only involved throwing it to him). He was cute!

Darryl, Brandon, Tim, Ira & Japanese boy

Ira & Me!

After our afternoon at the park, the whole crew crammed back into our car (we got a couple laughs and stares). In fact, we heard there's a rule that you're only allowed to have four people (TOTAL) in a car like that! haha!

That evening...Darryl, Tim, Brandon and I caught a train to Kanada (a town about 40 minutes away), not to be confused with Canada, of course! Some of Darryl's students were involved in a festival, so we tagged along. First, there was a parade with all these different floats that were lit up and being pushed by students and adults. The entire time they were chanting Japanese, while kids were playing these flute-type instruments.

Brandon, Darryl & Tim

While we were there, this older Japanese lady tapped us on the shoulder and motioned for us to meet her granddaughter (6 or 7 years old?)....who was American! She's visiting from Missouri (U.S.A). We talked the little girl for awhile and she told us that her mother is Japanese and dad is American. Anyways, it was random and the girl was very anxious to speak English!!

We also spoke to this group of little girls. They would follow us around and try to get eachother to ask us questions. It was really cute!

After the parade and mingling with little kids, we wandered around to all the food booths (kind of like "fair food")...including things we were familiar with, like: meat on a stick, corn on the cob and candy apples. Tim and I just HAD to have one! I think I chipped a tooth trying to eat it and I made a huge mess, but IT WAS WORTH IT! It was a delicious treat :)

-Sarah