2 Camps, 2 Weekends

Ok, so first off I’d like to say sorry for being a ghost on here for the past 2 weeks. Second, thank you for taking time to read this. I hope your enjoying my posts, and pictures when I post them!

CS Camp
Two weekends ago we had 30 kids from the area come to our church for a 2 day/ 1 night camp. They arrived on Saturday morning, and the camp finished after the service on Sunday afternoon at noon.

Saturday morning I woke up early and helped set up the tents that the kids would be sleeping in. Following the orientation, I got to help out in the 1st and 2nd grade class. It was awesome! I can read and write Hiragana, so I was able to follow along and do the activities…well, I didn’t understand what was reading, but I got some pretty good clues from the pictures in the workbooks.

From the class, we piled into cars and drove an hour to the “Athletic Park.” Now, I was expecting fields where we could play soccer, maybe find some basketball hoops, but no. This was much cooler! It was like a Ninja training park. When I was younger, I would have dreamed for something like this. Your essentially running through a beautiful forest, then come to a number of obstacles that you have to climb over, or swing on ropes, or climb ship nets then jump off the other side. I got soaked in sweat! I want to get back there again and make a video.

That was pretty much the highlight of the camp for me. When we got back there was some Yakisoba being grilled, and then I shared my testimony for the kids at the campfire, then we lit off fireworks. When it came time to go to bed, it kind sucked. It wasn’t because I was sleeping in a tent with some 5th and 6th graders, they were actually really good. It was the fact that it was 90 degrees F, humid, and I was sleeping on hard ground. So I did not get much rest that night.

Sunday morning we woke up at 6am, and did our morning exercise lead by Tomoari and Hiromitsu. After breakfast, and church, it was nice to have the rest of the day to rest, relax, play soccer and hang out.

Filio Camp
Filio is the name of the young adult group here. This past weekend we had our retreat. It started Friday night, and ended at noon on Sunday. I joined the activities late because I was teaching a night class, so I made it just in time for free time where we played some good games of Egyptian Rat Screw.

Instead of sleeping in tents outside, we slept a dorm room in the seminary, which you think would be better then tents. Unfortunately it was worse. The building has no air conditioning, the window in our room did not open, we were on the second floor, and again, we were sleeping on the hard ground. So by 2am I was finally able to fall sleep.

We needed to wake up at 6am to get an early start on our trip to Matsushima. This would be my second trip to that beautiful area in two weeks, so I was pretty pumped. We got there around 9am and started setting up camp. Remember how I said I was going to try and build a raft? Well, that didn’t happen, this time me and some of the other guys tried to build a shelter out of bamboo. It would have been much easier if we had something to lay across for shade other then TONS of bamboo shoots. We got the frame of it, and then some more bamboo, but then we realized we didn’t take in account the direction of the sun. We built it facing the wrong way, so we gave up, plus it looked like poo.

I was in charge of planning games and activities at the beach. I thought I would teach them how to build sand castles. We split into teams and spent 20 min building the best ones we could. After my team finished celebrating its victory, we found some bamboo and rope on the beach that would be able to hold up the volleyball net we brought. It was a pretty ghetto set up, but with the resources we had, it got the job done. Once volleyball was done, I jumped in the ocean and didn’t get out for an hour. It was the perfect temperature to cool off from the pounding sun and the water not being too cold where you felt like you were going to freeze. Although, the water was the perfect magnifying glass for the sun to burn my upper back and shoulders. Like all sun burns, they don’t really look bad until your out of the sun for a little while.

From Matsushima, we drove to another city where we went to an onsen (hot spring). One thing that I do not really understand about the Japanese people and the onsen is: Why does it seem like a good idea to go to a hot spring on a really hot day to refresh? I mean, we just came from the beach were we could cool off in the ocean. Now we are going to a hot spring? I have to admit; it was perfect way to clean off all the sand and salty water, so my speculation stopped. Plus, the baking soda pool make my skin feel amazing ;)!

Later that night, we had tons of different kind of meat. Anything ranging from steak, beef, pork to chicken. We grilled our own stuff, and it was delicious. Similar to the kids camp, we lit off some more fireworks. Once things kind of wound down for the night, hisashi, haruka, and manami and I sat around as they taught me some Japanese words younger people use. I guess to sound more hip. Then I taught them some less formal English, so that might understand me better.

Like the previous night, it was hard to fall asleep, so around 2, I was finally in some sort of slumber state, but not the one you need to feel rested when 6am rolls around. Sunday morning I made a classic American breakfast: Pancakes, eggs and bacon. As far as I know, they enjoyed it. By the end of Sunday I was wiped! I went back to my apt at 9, and immediately crashed and didn’t wake up till 10 the next morning.

I spent the day laying around listening to music. I did leave my place for an hr to shoot some hoops. But that was the fist day in a really long time where I did not see a single person. It felt like a really lame day because I did absolutely nothing. But as I laid there trying to think of something to justifying my slothfulness, I realized that everyday for over a month, I’ve been go, go, go, seeing people, saying goodbye to friends and family, packing, unpacking, meeting new faces, adjusting to a new culture, learning how to teach English and teaching. So my body needed a break.

This week is our summer vacation, so I have the week off. I’ll be in Yokohama/Tokyo area Thursday morning through Sunday afternoon where I get to visit my uncle and family! I am really excited because I have not been there since I was seven, and heven’t seen them in years.

Thank you for reading and following, I’ll try and get some pictures from the past weekends loaded up real soon, but I wanted to make sure that people know that I’m still alive and breathing. Blessings, and thank you for your continued prayers and support