Ready for the Third Week of Camp!

I just realized that my summer in Japan is already almost a third of the way over.  Before I left for Japan, many people told me I would love it here, but I didn't realize exactly how correct they were.  Life here has been a blast, and I hope that someday I can come back to Japan for at least a little while!

The second week of camp seemed to go by extremely fast, and I enjoyed getting to know the kids in my room better.  It was a busy week with meetings every weeknight except Thursday.  The different sites in Japan are creating lip dub videos to compete with each other, so we spent a few nights working on our video, in addition to our regular Sunday night meetings to decorate the center and Wednesday night whole staff meetings.  Our Friday field trip took us to the Cup Noodles museum in Yokohama, where we got to make our own individual cup of noodles, including decorating the cup and choosing what went in it.  Here are some pictures from that:

This weekend, the majority of the Camp Adventure participants placed in Japan met up on Saturday at the big Buddha in Kamakura for a group picture and some games on the beach.  Although it was a dreary day, we still had fun!  Sunday my friend Haylie and I returned to Kamakura to spend some time on the beach again, this time when it was sunny!  I managed to get a pretty good sunburn, even though I used sunscreen, so these night couple days might be a little bit uncomfortable.  Here are some pictures from the beach!

On Saturday night, I went out with a group of girls to a restaurant called Pepper Lunch, where you ordered your food from a machine (like a vending machine), and received it uncooked on an extremely hot skillet and proceeded to cook it to your liking before eating it.  It was really good food, and was much cheaper than that quality of food would be back home.  I definitely plan to go back to this restaurant a few times before I head back to Iowa!  Here's some pictures of this whole process:

One of the goals I set for myself for the summer is to get into a regular exercise routine, and I have yet to attempt this, but I have determined that this is the week!  Part of my motivation for this is that I have signed up to climb Mount Fuji on July 26th.  However, I want to get in better shape in general.

It's hard to believe it's already the Fourth of July this week, but I am looking forward to see what types of celebrations will take place here on the base.  We do not have camp on Friday, but we will be working at some type of special event (we haven't received many details yet).

Two specific prayer requests this week are: following through with my exercise plans, and continuing to further my relationship with God.  Oh, and that my sunburn stops hurting quickly!  Thanks so much for taking the time to read my posts!

Ready or Not, Here's Week 2!

Hello everyone!  Week 2 of Camp started today! (I'm typing this on my lunch break), and I’m excited to see what God has in store for me, the other camp counselors, and also our kids!  Each week we do lots of special things (weather permitting), on Tuesday mornings we take the kids in our room swimming, Wednesday mornings we go bowling, Thursday afternoons we walk to a park to play, and Fridays we go on field trips!  Last week I went in to work at 8AM, this week I go in at 7AM so that will be a bit of a change.  The three camp counselors in my room are on a weekly rotation of shifts.  Next week I will go in at 7:30.

This weekend my friend Haylie and I headed to Tokyo!  We booked a hotel room a few nights in advance, and hopped on the train Saturday morning.  We didn’t really plan things out, and decided that from now on we will determine a better itinerary for our trips.  Although we had fun, we didn’t see the part of Tokyo that we were expecting.  Tokyo is split into several different regions, and we explored parts of 3, but they were on the outskirts and were not nearly as busy as we were expecting.  Our hotel room was bunk bed style, with a total of 129 square feet.  There was hardly enough room for both of us to change clothes at the same time!  MUCH different than hotels back home!  Here are a few pictures of our accommodations:

 

Saturday we visited Ueno Park, Ueno Zoo, a street market of sorts where lots of fresh seafood was being sold, and did lots of walking to see various parts of the city.  Sunday we did some more browsing, and found a very fancy (and expensive) shopping district.  We didn’t stay long in most stores after seeing a few price tags.  I’ll also include some pictures of the city as well.

 

The first week of camp went well overall!  Each Friday the counselors choose one camper from their room to cream a counselor.  That camper in turn gets to choose with counselor (of all of us) they want to cream.  I was the lucky one chosen by one of my campers!  Here is a picture from that.

This week is looking like another really busy week, with lots of meetings.  Each counselor at my site will work with one other person to plan activities for two separate weeks of camp.  My first week of programming is due next Monday, so preparing that will take up a large portion of my ‘free time’ this week.  I am really hoping that this summer with help to strengthen my faith, and I ask for your prayers through the good days and the bad.  I want to shine God’s light not only to the kids I am working with, but also to the other young adults I am working in close contact with this summer.  Thanks so much for taking the time to read my posts, I hope you are enjoying following me through my journey here in Japan!

I Survived the First Day of Camp!

Hi everyone!  Guess what?  I survived the first day of summer camp!  I am extremely tired, and am hoping the coming days go a little smoother than today, but we did it!

Here's some updates on what I have been up to since my last post:

This weekend was amazing!  Japan is a really cool place to be.  Friday night we went out to a sushi restaurant where each table was seated along a conveyor belt.  You could choose different types of sushi directly from the belt, or you could order (via a computer screen in the booth) whatever kind of sushi you wanted.  There were tons of options!  When the item you ordered was ready, it would be added to the conveyor belt under a special bowl so no one else would take it, and shortly before it arrived at your table, the computer screen would ding and show you what item of yours was about to arrive.  Each plate only costs about 100 yen, which is the equivalent of $1.  When we were finished eating, we pushed a button on the screen for someone to come prepare our check (based off of how many plates we had.  Different colored plates meant different price ranges).  The sushi I ate here was all Nigiri, meaning it was just the meat on top of a chunk of rice.  The kinds I tried were: shrimp, sweet shrimp, octopus, salmon with cheese, and marinated tuna.  My two favorites were the regular shrimp and the octopus.  That was the extent of my Friday evening activities.  Here are some pictures of the food we ate at the sushi restaurant.

On Saturday morning, we woke up and left a little after 9AM to head towards a train station to go to Yokohama, which is the second largest city in Japan (after Tokyo).  This was our second time using the train system by ourselves, and we ended up on a train that stopped at every station on the way to Yokohama, so it took much longer than it needed to, but we made it there without getting lost!  While in Yokohama we explored a shopping mall called World Porters, ate curry at a sweet Hawaiian restaurant (see pictures below), viewed the city from the top of Marine Tower, explored a very large Chinatown (see pictures below), and ate at a Hard Rock Café.  We arrived back to base around 11PM, but we were all exhausted!

 

On Sunday, we slept in some and then headed to a beach in Zushi.  It was the perfect afternoon to spend at the beach relaxing before heading back to base to finish preparations for the first day of camp!  Here are some pictures from our trip to the beach.

Be jealous of my awesome tan lines! :)

I’m really looking forward to this week, which is the first week of Camp!  I am working with 2 other Camp Adventure counselors in a room of up to 30 kindergarteners and first graders, meaning very few of them have experienced Camp before.  There is also two staff members who work in the center year-round in the room with us.  The first week has been a truly awesome experience, and I look forward to the weeks to come!  Have a fantastic week!

Love,

- Becky

Week 1 is Wrapping Up!

It's hard to believe that a week ago I was finishing packing my bags and saying so many hard goodbyes to my loved ones at home.  It feels like I've been here much longer than that!  This morning we visited Kamakura, which was really awesome, even though the weather wasn't exactly the greatest.  The temperature was fine, but it misted frequently during the morning.  I'll add pictures from today's trip at the bottom of this post.  Quick crazy story, though... I bought a chocolate mint crepe, and as I was walking down the street eating it, a large hawk swooped down and stole it out of my hand!  It was really scary.  I guess it is not polite to eat while walking (I didn't realize this until afterwards), so from now on I will sit down and eat my food before moving on to another shop!

Apparently green tea ice cream is very popular in Japan, there is vanilla ice cream, green tea ice cream, and sweet potato ice cream (no chocolate in most places we saw today).  A friend and I tried a green tea and sweat potato twist cone.  Neither one of us was too crazy about it, but we are both glad we tried it!

After visiting some shrines at Kamakura, two friends and I explored the shops located on surrounding streets before hopping the train and heading back to base.  The whole train system is really new to me, but I'm sure by the time I get home I will be well rehearsed!  I don't know too much yet about the age of kids I will be working with while here, but should find out more information tomorrow.  Orientation week is almost over!  The poster making is coming along, but we are not anywhere near the end of the posters.

I won't upload all my photos here from today's adventures, but you can view them via my Facebook profile (you must log into Facebook for this to work) by clicking on this link: Adventures in Japan.

I just finished making plans with a few friends for a some day trips this weekend, which I'm very excited about!  We plan to explore Yokohama and Yokosuka.  I look forward to updating you on the fun things we do over the weekend!

So far I am thankful for developing friendships and the opportunity to really become my own person.  I have set some goals for myself that I intend to monitor regularly in an effort to gain the most possible benefit out of this incredible experience.  I ask for your prayers to continue making progress towards these goals not just when progress is easy to come by, but also on the hard days/weeks when I am homesick.  I have not gotten homesick yet, but it is only the first week. :)  I am blessed to have such a wonderful support system standing behind me and sending prayers for me and my fellow Camp Adventure counselors throughout the summer.  Also, thanks for taking the time to read about all the things that are going on in my life!  I enjoy sharing with you what I have been up to.

More to come after my first real weekend in Japan! :)
- Becky

First Adventure Off-Base!

Tonight we left base for the first time!  We just went out for a few hours to visit the 100 Yen Store.  This was similar to the Dollar Store, as $1 is the equivalent to 100 yen.  Then we stopped at a 711, where I got an ice cream sandwich (which was heavenly by the way!).  It was crunchy waffle stuff on the outside with rich vanilla ice cream inside, in the middle of which was chocolate.  Here's a few (bad) pictures.

We also got our Japanese phones set up.  I still have a lot of figuring out to do, though!  We have done two days of orientation, and start the actual Camp Program on Monday.  So far we have done a lot of required trainings for the Navy, and also a large amount of poster painting.  We still have tons of posters to make (13 per week to be specific... times 10 weeks is 130 posters!), but we are making progress.

I'm really looking forward to having the opportunity to travel around Japan on the weekends; already starting to discuss where to go and when with friends.  There are 41 Camp A counselors currently living on Yokosuka Naval Base (including myself), but some of them will be leaving next week to work at a different base, while a few of them will be traveling to a nearby base to do their programs.

Anyway, below is a picture of the room that I share with one other girl.  We share a bathroom (toilet and shower) with the two girls next door.  Each room also has their own sink and set of closets.

Finally, here's a few pictures I snapped quickly of life outside of the base.

At first I couldn't believe how cheap gas was, until another girl said that they use liters instead of gallons.  I have no idea what the conversion was, but I was initially jealous of their prices!

That's all for tonight, going to look a little bit into travel ideas for the coming weekends and then get to bed!  Have a great day, as most of your days are just starting as a type this.

Love,
- Becky

First Day Here!

Well, my first flight (from Des Moines to Minneapolis) was delayed an hour, but luckily I still arrived in enough time to catch my flight from Minneapolis to Tokyo Narita (which was nearly 12 hours long).  I wasn't able to sleep much on the plane, even though I was tired.  I can't believe how many times they offered us food... none of which I thought was very good.  Next time I will probably decline some of it!  Going through customs was uneventful, but then we had to get on a bus for a 2 hour bus ride to the naval base.  It was very hard to stay awake, but we were told adjusting to the time would be much easier if we didn't sleep then.

Today we took a walking tour of the base, did some get to know you activities, and practiced songs that we will be singing.  Now we have some free time before staff meetings tonight, so thought I'd update people on how the first day has been so far!  Tomorrow will start a week of orientation before we begin the actual Camp Adventure program.

The weather was cool and somewhat rainy this morning, but the sun came out and warmed things up this afternoon.  This month is part of the rainy season here in Japan, so will need to get used to clouds and rain.  I haven't taken many pictures yet, but hope to soon and then will share them on here!

Thanks for all your thoughts and prayers during my trip here!  During the next week, I ask for prayers while forming relationships with my peers and for easy transitions.  Thanks again!  Have a great week. :)

- Becky

Only Two Days Left in the States!

Well, it's finally starting to sink in that I am going to be leaving in two days (on Friday) for ELEVEN WEEKS.  Yikes, that is a bit intimidating.  I know this is going to be a life-changing experience, and trying to mentally prepare myself, as well as pack for that is, well, difficult to say the least.  However, I am also getting very excited for all the new things that I will be experiencing in the next eleven weeks.  Matthew 6:27 reminds me that I cannot "add a single hour" to my life by worrying.  God's word sure seems to have an answer to all of life's problems, for which I am thankful!

Each Camp Adventure counselor has been asked to bring a costume to their base, so a Pinterest search for DIY costumes led me to attempt to create a fairly simple Mrs. Potatohead costume.  I figured it wouldn't take up much space in my suitcase, and would be easy to wear multiple times if needed!  Last weekend I did some last minute shopping with my sister, where I purchased the supplies needed to create my costume.  Here's a few pictures of me wearing my masterpiece!  A big thank you goes out to my mom for helping me make it today.  If anyone else wants a Mrs. / Mr. Potatohead costume let me know... I purchased enough tan felt to make at least one more costume! :)

Saying goodbyes are hard and rather emotional, but I know that before long there will be many happy hellos.  As my mom said to me today, I'm blessed to have so many people in my life that are so hard to say goodbye to.

The process of flying to Japan from Iowa is a quite lengthy one, as you can imagine!  So this week I ask for your prayers for safe travels for me and all the other Camp Adventure counselors, as this is the weekend that the majority of us fly out.  I would also appreciate your prayers during the coming week as I get to know the people I will be working with this summer and settle into life in Japan.  I'm not sure when I will be able to post next, especially since I will not have wireless internet in my living quarters.  However, I will do my best to keep you updated throughout this journey!

God's blessings!
- Becky