Hitoyoshi

Alright....on to finish yesterday's story.

I was at the elementary school yesterday.  A common question to get here is "What sport do you play?"  I'm like....er....um....I don't really play sports.  Instead, I usually say volleyball, badminton, or hiking.  It so happens that my English teacher at the elementary school is the volleyball coach, so when I told people I liked volleyball, they were like, "OMG!  You HAVE to play since so-and-so is the coach!!!"  Apparently, I'm joining the volleyball team.  I will play the position of handicap for the team.  ;)

Yesterday was a flurry of activity at school.  Since today was the first day of class, everyone was running around trying to get last minute things completed.  It was crazy!

Last night when I got home, Ian asked me if I wanted to go to Hitoyoshi.  I was like, "Why?!?!"  He said that he had found the nearest Catholic church and was wanting to confirm his findings.  I really didn't want to go b/c I wanted to go for a walk instead, but I'm glad we went.  It takes about 40-50 minutes to drive there.  Ian had google maps lead us straight to the church.  It's fairly easy to find, so we're going to try to go at least every other weekend.  We think (I say think b/c everything is written in kanji) Mass is at 9:00AM on Sundays.  After visiting the church, Ian said, "I kinda want a big, fat, greasy burger."  I haven't had a burger since I left (it has officially been a full month.....yay!), and I agreed that it sounded good.  We found a McDonald's.  I know it's horribly stereotypical for the Americans to go to McDonald's in a foreign land, but when you want a burger, you want a burger!  It makes sense, but it kinda sucks for us b/c McDonald's is kinda expensive.  We probably spent $15ish just on the two of us.  We didn't really get anything special, but whereas McDonald's in the States is cheap food, McDonald's here is a little bit more expensive.  After supper, we walked across the street to what we called "Walmart".  It was fabulous!  It had everything we could need.  We really can't get a lot of things in Yunomae.  Actually, we were blown away by the size of the grocery side.  Our little super market is Yunomae is probably half the size of Supervalu in Paducah, and I feel like that's being generous.  We finally found flour.  We weren't sure it was flour, and we wanted to make sure that we were buying flour and not a sack of corn starch, so I used my phone to translate the word for flour and went up to the first person I saw to confirm that the bag we had in our hands was flour.  Success....it was!   I'm sure I've complained about the.....specialness of our car.  Let's just say that it smells like the 80s and the hamsters running the engine are on their last leg.  :)    On our drive home, we were stopped at a red light.  We kept hearing a noise and thinking, what is that??  It seemed to be coming from the concrete bank and woods to the right of us.  Ian was the one to finally figure it out after a couple of lights and this mysterious noise following us that it was our car.  Yep, our car makes some pretty horrendous noises.  lol.


I know I should continue to write in order to get caught up with today's first day of school events, but I'm beat.  I promise...tomorrow I shall get caught up!