Life in Japan: Happy Halloween!

Well it's about time to make another blog! It's been a while, I've been busy...having fun. I am learning a whole lot from my time here. This internship has been such an awesome opportunity for me growing professionally as well as personally. I've had many memorable experiences with the kids here and I know that I chose the right path as far as working with youth. When I do something for or with the kids, it warms my heart to see them learn from it or just have fun and be happy.

It's interesting from the military aspect of things too. I spent some time in a 5th grade classroom and we were working on a math project about mean, median, and mode. The teacher asked each child to write down a question that could be answered with a number (ex. How many video games do you own?) so each student could walk around and answer. This provided some data for the kids to chart. I participated in this and came to a question that was "How many times have you moved?". Most of the responses were double digit numbers, around 8-12. These are 5th graders! It would be really cool to move to places all around the world, but it can be rough as a kid. It just got me thinking how difficult it must be to adjust to a new environment, new school, friends, routine. I have mad respect for these kids, I don't know if I would have been able to do it!

Halloween is big here just as it is in the states. On Friday, all the centers had costume parties which was really cute.

The preschool

The butterflies

Dancing to Thriller

Kelsie and I did some dressing up too! We put together some really last minute costumes, but hey, I got a sweet wolf tail out of it that I'm really excited about LOL

I went as a wolf

Michael Jackson was busting out all the moves

Small little hole in the wall joint. This was literally the whole bar.

Night #2

Go TEAM SASEBO!

The" Sasebo Story" summed up

aaaand Halloween take 3. I've never dressed up as something so scary! We had a Halloween event for kids on base and this is the costume I was provided to wear. I was scaring children left and right, it was so sad! We were in charge of guiding kids through the haunted house. It was a little much for the younger ones and I felt really bad leading a group of screaming children scared for their lives that will probably have nightmares for a month through this thing. I guess I make a bad no-face demon or whatever it is I was supposed to be. Kelsie is the one looking all creepy in the mask

But now to the good part, Kelsie and I took advantage of another MWR trip going rock climbing in the Kurogawa area in Kyushu. We drove out into the mountains for about an hour and begin our hike up to the spot. We hiked through some ancient Japanese rice fields, shitake mushroom gardens, and found ourselves in a magical Fern Gully/Avatar forest. We passed by waterfalls and made our way through an overgrown field filled with spiders. It was quite the adventure - just what I ordered!