Sebastopol World Friends

We had our welcome party earlier. Wow.

Not only did the Japanese exchange students sing for us, but the hosting parents sang for us also. There was an incredible assortment of Japanese food, extremely talented live music, and our hosts gave us many gifts and honored us in many ways. Japanese students danced the "Algorithm Dance" for us, and then invited the American students to join in.

The shoe thing was something of note to me.. It seems large event halls have huge quantities of communal indoor slippers. Well, they all come in one size...WAY too small (at least from my perspective). I really wish I had known that you weren't supposed to wear your slippers on stage, otherwise I would have probably been less dazed and confused during my speech. :)

Gotta keep this short because I need sleep, but wanted to post so everyone knew that we're safe and sound. We'll post more as soon as we can!

Update:
Want to see how awake we were on the bus to Yamauchi-Takeo?

Several more photos are attached, see below.

I think a marching band could have gone by and they wouldn't have noticed. It was a pretty exhausting trip. But we made it.

All the students did a great job helping move luggage at the airports, and also when we hit unexpectedly long lines at immigration control in Tokyo, the students did a great job of following instructions and really helped us make sure we made our flight to Fukuoka. Kudos to them.

- Chris

This guy really gets it, offering his home to complete strangers once a week in the hopes of fostering new friendships. Take a look at this "All Things Considered" report from NPR:
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=99172304

The past few days have been amazing. I still am slowly realizing that I truly am not in my homeland anymore. Many things that I take for granted are so different here. This is truly a fantastic benefit of living with natives. Even when doing touristy things, our hosts do things that are natural to them.

The first few days have been amazing! Today we met with the head of the District of Chyhyryn. It was a short, but very good meeting. At over 2 meters tall (~6'4") he cuts an imposing figure. He spoke of competing in a national competition for most beautiful and attractive region of Ukraine.

I feel so loved and wanted. My host family was so excited to see me. They waited patiently for dinner while I washed up from the trip. They provided me all kinds of Ukrainian foods. (What a spread!!) Katooshka (potatoes) with some dill sprinkled over them, served with sour cream. They also had made fish cakes, and pancakes (with onion, cabbage, egg, flour).