Tennis, Toyo Sleepover

I was too tired from last night to blog, since I just got back from a 24 hour sleepover with the students. O_O So starting from Tuesday:

Tuesday morning, I woke up early so I can catch a bus to ICU to play tennis with Mika and the Ono’s father. Jessica was my guide there, and since we arrived early, we got a tour of the campus. It’s a beautiful and huge campus, comparable to UC Davis’s size, but has 10% the student population of Davis (Davis has 20,000+, ICU has ~2000). When Mika and the others arrived, we played 3 sets of tennis =D

Me, Kanji, Mika, and Yukina's father

After a shower, I went shopping and back home to get ready to meet the students. We met them on the way to the SI student center, and then when we arrived, we played games as we waited for dinner. After dinner, we had a 2 hour sharing time from 7-9:30pm where we talked about our hobbies, favorite food, and summer activities. Afterwards, we had free time to talk, shower, play games, or play n64/NES. I stayed up playing so many games with the students until 3am. O_O We played Signs, Pabo Game, Big Booty, Wani Wani, and more. After going to sleep at 3am, I thought they would go home the next day, but when I woke up at 11am, they stayed with us until 5pm! So the sleepover was 24 long instead of just the night. O_O But it was a good time to bond with the students through games and talking. =) Later that night, we went to a ramen shop at 10pm at a mom & pop place, and came home. The girls came over to help clean Mike’s room out, so since we stayed up late cleaning, I wasn’t able to blog on Wednesday. =)

The students are happy to be able to spend the time with us on their summer vacation =)

Misaki is in the middle as we're playing the game "signs"

We played picture Shiritori =)

This video is of the students playing the Kani Kani game, then me panning around so you can see the SI student center =)

This video shows the students teaching Lyndsey a super popular game in Japan. I’m so going to learn this and teach people in America. =D

This video shows them adding a new rule to the already quite hard game. O_O

It was so good to finally be meeting students. The students were so friendly and I got to talk with a few of them over the day. Personally, my conversations were just friendly, but I saw Maria was able to get into some deep conversations with some of the girls, so I just prayed silently during the whole day for the Lord to bring these students to Himself. =)

Prayer Requests

1. May Matt and Robin finish their support by Thursday =)

2. May those Toyo students see the love that the Lord has for them

I added my teammate Lyndsey’s blog link on the right so you can check her blog to see our year through a different set of eyes. =)