Friday, July 15th: Today was a good day.

YAY!  Today was a good day :)  It began with free play in airconditioning with the kids.  I sat right under the air and kids brought me play food to "eat" for 45 minutes straight.  It was great.  Then we had a meaning with Minako and Keiko to discuss the final plans for our Kyoto trip!  YAY KYOTO!  I'll blog the plans we have in Saturday's blog so if I don't get one up on Sunday, my faithful readers will have an idea what I was up to then :)
Nursery time came next!  Gosh I could stay with these kids for forever! After we got them dressed, we play with them, make up English stories to go with their Japanese books, cuddle, giggle, and of course take pictures!


Japanese peace sign...she's still learning.



Little Miss Giggles!

That boy is something else.
I want to take him home with me!
He is so adorable and does the
cutest fishy/kissy face for a smile.
Sadly, he wouldn't do it for the
camera. Still gotta love him! :)

The little ones loved our laps :)

 We sadly had to leave the nursery...next was play time with the normal summer kids before lunch.  It was SO hot!  I know understand why they wear hats all the time!

Holding hands! How precious :)

They dress themselves...
can't you tell?
(if you can't, check out the
shirt tucked into the star
underwear on this kid)

Hiding from the hot sun!

 Lunch was by far my favorite yet!  I thought they had served us all the lunches they offer but today's was new and wonderful!  Carrot soup, which was still unpleasant because I don't like soup.  But it was an identifiable and familiar flavor so my stomach accepted it.  Next was corn mixed with raw onions, I admit that I passed on the onions.  If I hadn't, poor Madelyn would have smelt me for the rest of the weekend!  There was also chicken which was good and then the best part....white squish bread and jam!  I've never loved jam and bread so much!!  And an apple for dessert :)  So good.  And the conversations at lunch were entertaining :)  Madelyn's table of 5 year old girls were discussing boobs...for example, Lin Sensei small and Emely Sensei big.  Like they were literally explaining their thoughts on the size of our chest to Madelyn.  I though it was a hilarious story!  I had no idea 5 year olds notice that stuff.

Here are my lunch buddies.  Miss Chatty
Kathy on the left dropped a cherry on the
floor.  So of course, she's washing it off
in her cup of water.  That fixes everything.

I think I just felt an earthquake...Madelyn didn't feel it, so maybe it was in my imagination.  The afternoon went as usual but just really well :)  Nap time, our Japanese Kumon plus added chill time chatting with Majelyn which was super fun to get that opportunity, snack time, and Kids Club which went surprisingly well.  Following Kids Club, there was a coloring project and I got laughed at cuz I wrote something in English.  Apparently English letters are funny looking.
Okay, I just took a 3 hour break from this blog to go to dinner and put more money on our Pasmo (train passes).  I sat down to write, Madelyn was skyping with her mom, and all of a sudden there was an earthquake.  Madelyn felt this one, too.  Actually it was the biggest one we've been in so far.  Not big enough that anything knocked off a shelf or whatever, but it was big enough to scare us so that we moved to under the door jam.  But no worries :) We recieved a call from Majelyn Sensei, luckily we have a cell phone with us for the Kyoto trip.  We now know if the earthquake goes much longer than what we just experienced, we need to go outside into the open area of the playground until it stops.  It was only a 5.5 and we've experienced far higher number but never this big.  After a little research, I realized why this one hit us so hard...it wasn't 150+ miles away like the last ones.  This one was in Ibaraki-ken, the prefecture right next to us.  Don't freak out, like I said, nothing even moved on our bookshelves or anything.  Madelyn's a little nervous since we're riding the train for a long time on Sunday and we'll be alone.  I'm not worried :)
Anyways!   After work was some chill time.  We were going to work more on the giraffes, but Minako said she'd take us to the train station to put more money on our Pasmo (train passes).  And in true Nishimura tradition, as you can probably tell since I mentioned our 3 hour trip, our quick trip to the train station turned into a lengthy dinner and then the train station.  It was fun :) I had some ramen noodles and gyoza (pot stickers, if you know what those are).  The ramen here is NOTHING like the classic college version of ramen.  Gross.  This stuff was delicious!
On the way to dinner and back from dinner, our car contained Minako, Majelyn, Naomi chan, No-no chan, Uri chan, Madelyn, and me. Very full!  But it was so fun! Since Madelyn and I have taken so many car trips with them, we now can sing along with parts of their Japanese kids CD.  It was so fun jamming out with them :)  And on the way home, Uri chan was getting sleepy so she cuddled up next to me and fell asleep against me :) :) :) It was a wonderful feeling!  Sigh.  Today was a good day.  Tomorrow won't be too eventful.  Just painting some giraffes.  Fun stuff.
Please keep up the prayers!  But praise God that there are rainbows appearing amongst all the gray clouds I've dealt with these past 3 weeks :)