An eventful weekend

If a picture is worth a thousand words, then this blog post is over 17,000 words long!!

It's been a busy last few days, and I have lots of pictures. So I'm going to skimp on the text today and let the pictures and captions do the talking. Let's begin with Friday...

This is what the main street in Kuji looked like for the "Tanabata Matsuri" (Star Festival).

A custom of the festival is making lanterns to set outside and glow at night. I actually made a lantern last month at one of my schools, and I'll blog about that next time. :)

I wish these cool, colorful decorations were left up year-round!

As I walked down the street I heard, "Dana Sensei, Dana Sensei!" So I stopped and took a picture of my darling students. :)

My dance team! We performed four dances Friday night in the festival, and it was a blast! (but sooo hot!)

Posing for a picture before dancing. This sweet lady works at the post office and is so good to me! :)

Liz took some snippets of video while I danced, so I strung them together into this video...Enjoy!



On Saturday, I went to a beach party in Fudai, about 45 minutes away.

Beach soccer sounds like a fun idea until you realize you have to kick the ball barefoot!

Megumi's son Haruki is the cutest thing you ever did see!

This is what a Japanese cookout looks like -- all different kinds of meat and veggies.

Moving on to Sunday...

We had a successful surprise birthday party for Liz at my place!! By the way, Nate from Franklin is here now! Yay! That's him in the back.

During the birthday party, we heard something going on in my "backyard," the Dofukan (community building). So we went over to check it out, and I took this video...



Of course we joined in the dancing!

Precious little girl in a yukatta...I could resist snapping a photo. :)

After the raffle, we posed with our prizes. (I won a box of bean-flavored jellies. Yeah! haha) The goofy guy with the yellow glasses randomly hopped into our picture!

So that was my eventful weekend. The End. :)

But wait! There's more. I also have a few pictures from last weekend at DisneySea/Tokyo. Miyuki e-mailed them to me last night, and since this is a "picture post" of weekend activities, I'll share them now...

Fire up for DisneySea!

Modeling the Indiana Jones hats after the ride.

"Look! What's over there!?" Captain Jarlath apparently didn't get the memo that there's something amazing over in the distance.

Why is it my natural reaction to the camera to throw up a peace sign and open my mouth!?! I really don't know. I pointed that out to the other gals, so they did the "Dana pose" with me! hahaha

Ok, THE END. For real this time. :)

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To read my latest entry in "Keep Shining" (which is all words and no pictures), click here.