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Hello. It is Thursday night here. This morning I took the hardest test of my entire life. I have absolutely no idea how I did on it, and I am expecting the worst. *Sigh*

Since I spent the first half of this week studying like crazy, I haven’t had time to post anything, as you may have noticed. In this entry I have included a couple of pictures of things that have happened in the past couple of days…

I am also very tempted to include an email that Austin sent me one night, mainly because it is very funny to me. It might not be funny to anyone else, because it has to do with our dog, and if you do not know my dog, or his hedgehog obsession, then you will not understand what makes this one little paragraph so darn funny. Perhaps I will add it to the bottom of this entry, feel free to read it if you want.

I would also like to thank whoever comes to my website on a daily basis. Because of you, all of you, my website was down the other day due to “Banwidth Limit Reached”. I had no idea what was going on, and Noel simply told me that so many people were going to my site that he needed to give me some more website space (I don’t know how it all works, so do not rely on the accuracy of my descriptions about anything technical…). Either way, I was so very excited to learn that many people visited my site this month. Thank You!

Tomorrow I am taking a taxi with three other people I do not know yet (our groups were chosen for us for this assignment), and we are heading out to an elementary school, where we will teach one classroom some common English songs and games and maybe something else. It should be very very fun, I am looking forward to it, and I am bringing my camera, so hopefully I will be allowed to take a picture of the kids, or maybe even a video!! I will keep you posted.

That’s all for tonight, here are some pictures for your viewing enjoyment:

This picture is for all the old (and recently new) Pistons fans… The other day Noel and I were in an electronics store when I heard people speaking in English (which is very strange, and does not happen often outside of JCMU), and I had to take a look. What did I see on EVERY TV in the place? A Piston’s game, and not just any game, it was GAME 2 of the finals. Many of you know that I know little about sports, and if not for Austin, I would know nothing about the basketball team from Detroit that is in the finals… However, there in the store, in English on every screen were the words: GAME 2 OF THE FINALS… PISTONS VS LAKERS… so on and so forth. I watched a little of the game, and then left the store, but not before taking a picture, to prove that it was actually being broadcasted here. I did find it a little strange that it was being shown over here when it was shown in the US a WEEK and a HALF ago!!! And of all the games to show, why pick game 2? Did something happen during game 2 that was really great? I would have picked the last game, if I was going to show one in Japan, at least then they will know who won. Or maybe this was only game 2, and they planned on showing all the games or something… Sorry, I got a little out of hand. I am done analyzing the game 2 situation. Just look at the picture:

Some quick facts before I explain the picture:

Fact #1: We all have our own bikes here.
Fact #2: Everyone rides a bike here, or walks to where they need to go, it doesn’t matter how old you are, you can ride your bike to the store.
Fact #3: Every bike comes with a little bell. The bells purpose is to warn people that you are coming, it is not a rude gesture, rather a “I don’t want to run into you with the front tire of my bike” gesture.
Fact #4: For the first 3 weeks we were here, Noel and I used our bells for another purpose. To make music. We chimed our bikes all day and all night long… we made rhythms, we made songs, we composed everywhere we went…
Fact #5: Noel’s bell broke apart last weekend. The top fell off and rolled into the river, never to be seen again. Then another piece of it fell off somewhere between where we live and the town we frequently visit…
Fact #6 Noel has been sad everyday since over the loss of his bell.

So now that you know the facts, you can look at the picture. It is a picture of one of the happiest days of Noel’s week. We stopped by a bike shop, and Noel went inside, pointed to a bell on a bike, and gestured that he needed one. The man in the store not only gave him a bell, but he came out, took the old bell off, replaced it within 2 minutes, and only charged him $4 for a new bell. We now can compose bell songs to and from town once again. (Only this time we will be a little more careful, and be sure not to have any more bell-breaking incidents.)

This last picture is of Noel and I on the biggest, coolest wire-climbing-jungle-gym thing ever. It is at this great park that we go to, and there are actually seats built into the climbing structure, so you can climb up and sit where you please. You can see the seats in the picture, we are standing on one, and they are all black in color. It’s a lot of fun!

For those of you still interested, here is that paragragh from Austin’s email that makes me laugh. Read it if you want to:

Max completely destroyed his hedgehog.õ There was a hole large enough for all of the stuffing to fall out in one big clump and then max would just carry around the skin of the hedgehog.õ It was really sad.õ So yesterday I threw that away and went up to the pet store in flat rock that sells the hedgehogs.õ They didn’t have any hedgehogs, but they did haveõlarge, stuffed ant-eaters that made the same grunting sound as the hedgehogs.õ I bought him that and he seems to like it.õ Of course now I have to teach him the word “aardvark.”õ Before I would say to him, “Max, get your hedgehog,” and then he would run over to his hedgehog and tromp around the room with it.õ But now I have to tell him, “Max get your aardvark.”õ He is still having a little trouble grasping which toy is his “aardvark.”õ I think he’s making good progress though.

This entry was posted on Thursday, June 24th, 2004 at 11:47 am and is filed under . You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.