Saturday, July 16th: A day of giraffes

Dinner yesterday...forgot to add it
to the previous blog!  oops.

Today was another good day!  Yay :)  Madelyn and I slept in which was nice...although just until 7am.  By 7:30 we were outside painting the griaffes.  Our goal was to avoid the heat and it worked pretty well.  After a few hours of morning work, we stopped to take a "short" break.  What started as short turned into a little over 2 hours due to our skype dates with people...and Mrs. Nishimura brought us little sandwhiches from their version of 7/11.  They do a good job of looking after us :) By the time we got out there again, it was much warmer but we kept working!

Me painting giraffe #1's shoulder.

We finished giraffe #1 before our next break.  YAY!  Our process was Madelyn does the yellow and I went back over and smoothed out the edges with the dark brown.  It worked well other than the fact that I'd get distracted and switch spots without finishing them entirely.  Oops.  Plus the humidity and heat made the paint clump up so badly on the brushes.  Between that and the fact that the wood is old and weathered, smoothe edges on the spots were quite a challenge to attain.  But after several hours of work we succeeded on the first giraffe :)
During the next break, we biked to the convience store and got some celebratory ice cream...I got my favorite waffle kind.  SO GOOD!  After our short ice cream break, we went back out to pain giraffe #2.

Madelyn chilling with giraffe #2.
Just kidding, she actually was
hard at work painting the belly!

This time I created a method for my spot painting madness!  (On the top of giraffe #2's back I made a MI shaped spot, but nobody can see it because it's so tall)  We got a good bit done on giraffe #2.  Madelyn got all of the yellow painted so on Tuesday she'll help me with the brown.  If we get the full 2 hours of light we have after work to pain, we should be able to finish!  YAY!
Tomorrow is the Kyoto trip :)  Overview of the schedule:
SUNDAY
- Leave room at 6:30am to go to the train station
- Take a train to Tokyo to meet our English speaking tour group to a bullet train to Kyoto
- Arrive around noon
- Eat lunch with the group at a random hotel
- Afternoon tour...Kyoto is famous for its beauty, gardens, and SO many old temples! So I'll have lots of pictures to add to the blog...or maybe facebook?
- Dinner is on our own
- Check in to our hotel around 6...we might switch it up and do dinner around the hotel?
- Evening is free for whatever, but we're going to try to go to some parade that's an ancient tradition for Kyoto.  Should be exciting if it's close enough to our hotel!
MONDAY:
- Morning tour around more beautiful gardens and old temples
- Lunch with the group at some buffet place
- Afternoon hands-on class...probably a tea ceremony? Should be fun :)

- Dinner is on our own before we get back on the train

- Back to the school around 10pm

Busy two days!  Please keep Madelyn and I in your prayers.  It's going to be super hot and potentially a lot of walking which combined equals total exhaustion.  I'm taking my computer with me, so maybe I'll blog a bit tomorrow night.  Good night to my Saturday!