Boiled Buckwheat and other food for thought So. The first day of school was wonderful, albeit a tad long (an hour later than usual, with the added one hour meeting as soon as I got home). My favorite part: observing Ryo, a 7th grader, locomote down the hallway, index fingers inserted in ears, vociferously chanting something to the effect of "laaa laaaa laaaa laaaa" as Tamaki sensei (his English teacher) followed closely behind, belting out the "ABC" song. Aaaah. It's good to be back. And today was the official welcome lunch for the new teachers. Today was the "small" lunch (an official tummy stuffer will be coming in a few weeks) including tempura (fried vegetables and/or things like shrimp), and soba (noodles, eaten cold in the summer, made from buckwheat). The meal also included soba cha, a tea made from the leftover boiled buckwheat noodles water. I humbly declined. And during the meal, I had the privilege to sit across from two of our new teachers, Mike and Ben, both of whom are extremely intelligent and extraordinarily witty. Ben is full of more random language knowledge than any person I've ever met in my life, and Mike uses words that just make my ears happy to hear again. Feeling a little intellectually inferior, at some point in our conversation, I seized the opportunity to offer a random smart-sounding fact of my own. Apparently, according to my genius, Physics Education major brother Nathan, as of two days ago, Pluto is officially no longer considered a planet. This got us to thinking. Our cute acronyms no longer apply to the planet order. We pondered this: My Very Excellent Mother [no longer] Just Served Us Nine Pizzas. Rather she Just Served Us Nine. That's it. Nine. Sad day. Feeling the loss of such an imperative component of our childhood astronomy education, Mike responded, "Yeah. NOW My Very Excellent Mother Just Served Us Nothing!" I feel he captured the emotion of the situation quite well. Goodbye Pluto. We'll miss you.

Off I go Well, tomorrow starts school again. I'm actually excited about this, believe it or not. I've been teaching during the last week or so, helping students prepare for speech contest next week, but it's been more one-on-one, and I still have had too much time to think. I'm ready for my schedule back, please (something to get my mind off of culture and adjustment, and other way-too-deep-for-everyday issues). And I'm just plain excited to see my students again. They're just great. Especially Hiroaki. I've told you about him before--recall the bug-eyed reaction to the Easter eggs? Yeah, that was him. Well, he and several other students are doing a non-judged presentation for speech contest next week. They're not ready at all, but that's beside the point. Their presentation is a big "game show" of American trivia (written by yours truly). One of the questions involves the song "Yankee Doodle," and since my head teacher was worried the audience wouldn't know quite what the heck was going on with the words, we decided to have one of the students act it out. Enter Hiroaki's role. Yep. He rides a pony (paper cut-out of a horse's head stuck on the back of a chair), and sticks a feather (which I will "create" tomorrow) in his hat. The hat is my favorite part. It's made out of a stiff cardstock-like material, and the "barrel" is only about, oh, 5 or so inches in diameter. The brim comes out about an inch from that. The best part of this paper hat is that it's about a foot tall. Does does this home-made creation fit on his Yankee Doodle head? By no means. But that doesn't stop him from wearing it everywhere he goes. And sticking the paper horse in, ears up, to the front of it, so it looks like he's actually the "pony" rather than the fellow riding the said animal. I really can't do the whole scene justice. I'll have to just get pictures. Next week. Well then. On that note, goodnight world. May visions of wonderful paper-pony-riding junior high students glitter your dreams with delight.

To prove to my mother.... To prove to my dear okaa san that Funehiki is, in fact, a lovely place, I have taken the liberty of snapping a few photos as evidence for my case. Granted, we're not talking a 2 hour slide show here, but here's a couple snapshots of a delicious summer evening walk I took with Tammy last night (making me late for Bible study hosted in my own apartment, but, yeah....woops...) And, yeah, if you want to see the new apartment layout, you can kinda figure it out from the first pic posted here. Otherwise enjoy the preview. Click here to see the whole thing. Ja, ne.

The new apartment layout

Weird and wonderful orange plant things...

Our own Funehiki floating houses. Every town should have a couple of these. (rice fields required)

Wildlife gets pretty big around here...including BUGS

....Back Again. A Foreigner's Tale. Just a few reflections on coming back to Japan, haphazard and random as they are... 1. As much as I didn't want to come back (I broke into tears when my plane took off from Houston), it actually felt more comfortable to come back to Japan than to go to America. I'm still not sure how I feel about this. 2. Japan is a stunningly gorgeous country. I kept thinking to myself, "Wow, the Midwest is kinda 'bla'," when I was home, but didn't realize why until the bus ride from Tokyo to Koriyama. Breathtaking, I say, especially with the rice fields reaching their full green crescendo before changing color around harvest-time. 3. Running is a lot more fun here. There is an absolute plethora of scents to scintillate your nose as you wander through the hills of Funehiki. All kinds of food, incense (especially with this week being O Bon, a holiday for honoring the dead), hundreds of flowers, and, well, yes, the occasional open sewer smell. But all in all, it's just dandy. 4. I already miss my family. 5. Americans have a lot of "stuff." After moving upwards of 4 people in the last 2 or so weeks, I have officially been inspired to STOP BUYING THINGS. Seriously, American excess in Japanese-style apartments does not work so well. I have had to do a lot of cramming and such to get all my junk "together." I felt like my room was a puzzle and there was literally only one way to put it together. Unfortunately, there were no edge pieces to make the process easier. 6. I missed Japanese food while in the US. Astounding. Never thought this would happen. 7. This is something entirely new, but I find fascinating. Yesterday, I was outside during most of the daylight hours, and some non-daylight hours, either running or buying extremely heavy objects and trucking them across town (hence the excruciating pain in my neck right now). As I trekked along, I kept noticing a light mist-type feeling on my face, similar to what might be sprayed at you in line at Cedar Point. I thought it was just coming from random plants and such (excess dew or something being blown off), but it kept happening all day. The funny thing is, the air didn't seem overly humid (I say this, mind you, just coming out of rainy season, so my perception could be skewed...), and it was sunny during some of this time. It was as if the humidity in the air said to itself, "Let's make something that's kinda like rain, but doesn't fall down." It really was pretty cool. 8. My team really is a blessing...no, that's too weak a word, but I can't think of anything stronger right now...from God. I have 8 women surrounding me that I can say are some of the most godly people I've ever met in my life, and 4 more joining us this week that I believe are of the same caliber. Wow. I hope I never take this for granted. 9. Things in Japan are not always logically done. For example, the bed situation. To make a long story short, we have two extra beds in our 13-person team, because our hosts assumed we needed them (without asking us, but still trying to show us love), and now they're just taking up much-needed spaces in the two apartments which they're located. I personally find this quite humorous, but I'm not one with an extra bed. 10. Cicadas sound like birds and live in Japan too. I told my brother Chris the other day that I knew it was going to be a scorcher by the sound of the "birds that only call when it's going to be hot." He was like, "Oh, yeah, cicadas do that too." Then I realized they were cicadas. Yeah.... 11. I really have to go to the bathroom, so I'll leave you all with the above ten thoughts. Ja, ne.

Pecans and other finely ground items.... Earlier this year Adriane decided she was going to help her roommate Cristy out by chopping up some nuts for a salad. So she got out her blender. I'm not sure she had ever used her blender before, and therefore did not know its full potential. So she stuck some pecans in there and pushed "start." What resulted was not the intended product. It was more like pecan puree than coarsely chopped nuts. Woops. In short, I feel like those poor pecans. After breaking down Saturday night after seeing "The Sound of Music," at our local theater, my brother Chris described this time in my life as "an emotional blender." I couldn't agree more. Though this week has been wonderful to catch up with friends and family, it has also been an extreme emotional blender/roller coaster time. (and we're talking the kind of coaster that's just about .2 G's away from killing you...) I miss living in America. I don't miss everything about the culture by any means, particularly the selfish attitude that 99% of the population subscribes to (unfortunately, I should probably be included in this number). But, I miss everyone here. My family, my friends, and the openness with which I can talk to a perfect stranger. There's still a mask, mind you, but it's a lot thinner here. It's ok to not be cheery all the time. What's hard about feeling this way is that I feel like I want to be "on" for all of the people I only have a small window of time with. I fear I have failed in this regard. I know I have not been able to emit anything close to "myself" because I've been so focused on other things. I've had fun. I've laughed. But I've not been able to pry the "Hollyness" out for too many to see. My brother Nathan reminded me last night that no matter what culture I'm in, I need to "act the part, but maintain who I am." The only problem is, I'm not sure who that is. After returning from a trip to Toledo with the said brother, I opened my Bible to Hosea 6:1 and sort of began to spew liquid from my eyes: "Come, let us return to the Lord. He has torn us to pieces but he will heal us; he has injured us but he will bind up our wounds." I know in my life I try to fill my sense of "self" or "self-worth" with things other than God, and he isn't too happy about it. So he gets proactive. And starts blending. I hope and pray that he'll take the fruit smoothie that is my heart and mind and add some congealer to it this year. I hope to return next year more confident of who I am in Christ than when I left, not less. I hope to come back closer to the Lord than when I started. Year number two: here we come. God, I hope you know what you're doing.

A Word from the New Sun Room Hello, everyone. I can officially greet you this way because, after a very long period of waiting, I am officially in the States. For a while. An all-too-short while, actually, about 11 days. But, I am determined to enjoy even a mini stay, because it is greatly needed, and, well, I'm just plain am glad to be home. I find myself quite altered since the last time I stepped foot on American soil. It could be in part because I haven't been able to sleep much yet. My plane was 2 1/2 hours late from Newark to Cleveland (the last #$&! leg of my journey...), so I didn't get home until midnight Tuesday night. Of course, I didn't go straight to bed, though (not even after not sleeping for 30-some hours), but instead, stayed up talking, not hitting the pillow until around 2 AM. Unfortunately, I'm living in a new house in a new neighborhood. This in and of itself is not unfortunate...I love the new house (it seems quite grand compared to my tiny apartment), but since it's freshly built, that means other houses around it are in the process of achieving the state of freshly built, too...beginning at 7:00 in the morning. So, my first night in Ohio allowed me a grand total of 5 hours of sleep. Figures. And yes, it is currently 5:50 AM. Jet lag is a killer, ne? We'll see if the changes I and other people see in me are really sleep-related, or more a direct result from the Japanese culture as the week carries on and I remember more fully that I am an American. I just hope I can sleep soon.