Spaceships and Kyoto

ahhh i have so much to tell for this post. Let's start with Week 5: Space Week. 47 kids. It was crazy, but it was a great week. Learned all their names by Tuesday. One boy could only speak Japanese and he was my favorite. He ended up in art club and we were all drawing aliens. I had all the other kids hold up their aliens and even had another child say the word alien in Japanese, and the boy drew a car. When he said he was done I told him to keep drawing and then he drew a person in a car. Well, I guess a person does count as an alien. This week we went to a space museum for our field trip and it was pretty cool. Saw an IMAX movie all in Japanese and I pretty much fell asleep: bad counselor! the week was really really good. Every Monday is challenging but every Friday it is hard to see more and more kids leave. Sometimes I just want to keep them all just because they make me laugh. It is so hard to watch more and more leave and have them tell you, "I'll miss you Miss Snickers." Also this last Friday we had a water balloon fight. All of the kids got a water balloon and got to get whichever counselor they wanted. I got NAILED by some kids. It was crazy, but super fun.

Here are the decorations for this week:






This weekend has been a crazy weekend. Let's start with a bus. Let's then put a time for said bus to leave. add 10 people, two of which were lost and what do you get? well you get 10 Americans getting on a Japanese bus 20 minutes late and instantly being stamped as tourists. There was definitely comedy in it all. There was tears, running and a little bit of sweat.

Oh, lets talk about sweat. Um, you would think that my body didn't have any more sweat to produce after this weekend. Amber+100 degree weather+ 100% humidity= more sweat then even my dear father can imagine (which is a lot). After getting on the bus and riding for 7 hours during the night, we finally got to Kyoto at 6:30 AM saturday morning. It was a rough night on the bus and everyone was a little sore, a little hot, and a little cranky due to lack of sleep. well ok, i was a little cranky, but rather relieved that others were willing to decide where to go since i was kind of indifferent. I was just happy to be there. Kyoto is an old city in Japan that still has a lot of old architecture (will put pics on facebook soon). Some of you might know it because a lot of scenes in the movie Memoirs of a Geisha was filmed in Kyoto (stand by for later in this blog). Kyoto is also known for having a great many shrines and temples.

We saw a couple shrines and couple temples. We also saw the imperial palace, well just the outside because they don't open up the palace unless its the emperor's bday or new years. This is the first shrine that we saw. I liked it a lot. I like shrines. I love religious stuff.




The second shrine we went to had a silver roof, and you could take this path above the shrine and look out over the city. Kyoto also has a tower just like tokyo. There are 20 in Japan all together.




I am going to show you my favorite shrine though. It is a shrine that is all gold. It was really cool. It was across this pond full of these giant fish. I felt very cultured seeing all of these great things where all of these people come to give offerings.





As we were leaving this shrine, this lightening hit. How, let's remember, its about 100 degrees outside. The lightening actually hit the ground. I saw it hit the ground right next to where our group was standing. It was CRAZY!! And then it poured. It poured and poured and poured. We were on the bus watching people get blown around left and right. Nuts. Kyoto is nuts.
So we get back to the bus station and then get on another bus to a place called Fushima. There is a shrine there too. For thos e of you who have seen Memoirs of a Geisha you may remember a scene with a little girl running through a lot of orange posts at a shrine. well brace yourselves. I have been there...that's right be jealous. It was so cool!





Not only that, but this shrine was having a festival. Another Festival! more food, more dancing, more fun! this was great because I was starting to get a little tired and this just really picked up my spirit towards the end.



We went home on another bus, and we got back to the hotel at 7:30AM and boy was I tired and kind of cranky. I was so ready to be home but Kyoto was freaking amazing!!

This week is 61 kids in camp and it is crazy, even more crazy when kids are pooping in pools and making it so my camp can't go to the pool. NO GOOD!! Today was kind of a frustrating day because the language barrier is becoming more and more of a problem. It's not a bad thing, just a new challenge. I have yet to walk away at the end of the day thinking it was a terrible day. Of course there are difficult kids who kick other kids in the face or mock your English or talk Japanese while you are speaking, cry or get mad every time they lose. However, there are good moments for all those kids too, in those moments when they are truly having fun. I love them all. I almost like the bad moments because i know they won't last forever. They are just a challenge, and boy do I love a challenge