Monday:

School was hard, we're learning pretty fast.  But our culture class was amazing!  We studied tea ceremony with a professional.  Our class was held in an beautiful tatami room with shogi (paper screen) walls.  When we arrived the teacher wasn't there yet so we waited, but it was really fun because Maki-san (our culture coordinator) tells funny stories.  When she arrived (in a gorgeous kimono) she dressed each of us in a yukata.  I really liked wearing it!  I'm hoping to buy one while I'm here so I can wear it to Hakata Dontaku (Fukuoka's big festival).

I really love the tea ceremony.  It was all very graceful and settling.  However, because I don't drink green tea I drank o-yu (hot water) instead.  I was happy with this though, because the water tasted really good!  It was because the kettle we used was traditional iron.  I really liked our sensei, she was very kind and liked that we were interested.  I had the chance to prepare some tea for her.

Later that night we met up with Atsuko at Starbucks.  It was raining a lot.  Oh.  We first met Atsuko at church, she speaks English perfectly and likes us.  We took an absolutely jam-packed bus, it was incredible.  Together, we went to the other church for YSA night.  It was really fun!  We played jenga and then ate the huge plates of food they prepared for us.  Everyone put ice cream on their bread . . . it was weird.  One of the leaders called it "ice hamburger". 

Tuesday:  

Ditto for school.  Our culture class today was also omoshiroii!  We learned how to prepare okonomiyaki.  It's super easy.  Basically, take whatever you have in the fridge and mix it with finely chopped cabbage, a little flour, and eggs.  Voila.

We also went to the church again!  They asked us to come help them with the weekly English class.  It's really hard to explain "I might as well"  and I had to stand in front of everyone and teach them what the phrase "march hare" meant and why.  It was pretty embarrassing.  Laugh!

Today:

I'll post more on today tomorrow.  But we found our bag of snacks!  We'd left it at the school.  Along with our almost identical bag of replacement snacks.  They thought we were pretty funny.