4-Day Weekend

Starting on Monday I've had a 4-day weekend.  It's been really nice doing nothing.  But I have been doing some things...

First of all, I updated this blog.  I revamped it and reorganized everything.  I also added two new sections.  The first one is called "Adventures in Cooking."  Since I've had a lot of time, I've started doing something I've been wanting to do for a long time.  Cook a meal for Aaron.  For the past week or so, Aaron's been pretty homesick.  So, I decided to cheer him up by making some local Hawaii foods.  First, I made one of his favorite dishes:  Spicy Ahi Poke Bowl.  The next few days, I tried making a few more other local Hawaii dishes.

Anyway, I'm not a good cook and I don't do it hardly ever.  But I saw the movie Julie and Julia.  It made cooking look so fun.  Especially blogging about it makes it a lot more interesting.  Now anyone can read about my stupid mistakes, which I've already made!  This was something I wanted to do once married and once forced to cook every day.  But it seems I've started early.  Oh well.  It's still fun.  It'll probably stop as soon as I start working again (like in 2 days) and I probably won't start it up again till after I'm married.

The second new tab on the menu bar is "Wedding Site."  It's a wedding site I created for the wedding.  Duh.  I don't know if it's really necessary, but all these wedding planning things kept telling me I should do one.  So I did.  I think it's pretty pointless.  But oh well.  Not all the information is up yet because, well, we don't have all the info yet.  I hope this wedding site becomes a good tool once we start inviting people.

Anyway, I spent this 4-day weekend basically typing away, cooking, and eating.  And sleeping in.  It was wonderful.  I've got one more full day off tomorrow.  Then, on Friday, I'm back in business.

Halloween Costume Party!

  
On October 26th, I threw a Halloween Costume Party at ACC.  Manami and Haruka co-led everything with me.  We bought lotsa fall decorations and wore our own costumes.  Haruka was a very cute Chucky (you know, the murdering doll).  Manami was a pink bear.  I was a pirate.

The kids all rolled in and they were all witches.  We had like 11 witches.  1 pirate (other than me).  1 cat.  1 adorable Anpanman-Stitch baby.  I guess Halloween costumes in Japan are rather limited.  I didn't think finding a costume in Japan would be difficult at all given their love for cosplay.  But I suppose to them Halloween costume automatically equals witch.  Too bad, since I was looking forward to the originality.  But they were still cute.  We had a fairly good turn out.

Anpan-Stitch Baby's grand entrance!

Our first game was Bobbing for Apples.  I thought this would be a really fun, traditional Halloween game.  Unfortunately, no one wanted to dunk their heads in the water.  Only one kid was successful in getting his apple.

Second game was 3-Legged Monster (in this case, Witch) Race.  This was a quick game and we quickly went inside afterwards.  Then we had cupcake time!  The kids decorated their cupcakes with lots and lots of icing, sprinkles, and Reese's peanut butter cups all the way from America.  Some kids piled their icing so high like a mountain.  Then they had to actually eat it, lol.  The result was a lot of sugar rushes and headaches.

 

After cupcakes, I squeezed in a short sermon about sins, forgiveness, and the cross.  Each child wrote a confession on a leaf and taped it to the cross.  Then we said a little prayer, and the leaves fell from the cross down onto the grown.

Afterwards, we had time for one last game.  TP Mummies!  Kids wrapped each other in lots of toilet paper to make mummies.  The best mummy won.  Some were rather nice, others.. well, the tried.

And at last, we had our Costume Contest.  There were 4 prizes:  Scariest Costume, Coolest Costume, Funniest Costume, and Cutest Costume.  The winners won even more candy!



When all the kids went home, we were tired and I had a headache from too much sugar.  All I had was 2 pieces of candy and apple juice!  But I hadn't had a decent meal that day.  It was such a busy day.  We rushed over to McDonald's drive-thru.  I got a cheeseburger and ate it in about 15 minutes.  Then I had an English class to teach.

When the day was over, I was happy and crashed.  The next day was Sunday and I did my typical Sunday things.  But after that, 4 day weekend!  Score!

The Killer DisneySea Vacation

In the beginning of October, Aaron took me on a trip to Disney Sea in Tokyo.  Disney Sea is a park next to Tokyo Disneyland.  It's the only park that is unique only to Japan.  You can't find a Disney Sea in any other part of the world.  It's a park that instead of having different lands like "Fantasyland" or "Tomorrowland", it has different ports.  Some ports are modeled after real places, like Cape Cod, and some places are modeled after Disney movies, like Journey to the Center of the Earth or the Little Mermaid.  I had been there once before about 3 years ago.  It was a lot of fun, similar to Epcot in Orlando.  So I was really looking forward to this trip.

The Little Mermaid Castle

The day started out rough.  We were supposed to be at the bus parking lot at 5:45 am to make the long drive.  But after a long night, I didn't fall asleep until after 3am and woke up AT 5:45.  So Aaron and I ran as fast as we could, then Aaron forgot we were supposed to meet at the parking lot and not the school, so we ran some more.  Finally we made it to the bus, and we were cold, tired, annoyed.  Aaron didn't have time for a shower, we didn't have time to brush our teeth.  Plus, the bus was really noisy and the seats were made for children, so it was incredibly uncomfortable. I didn't get to sleep at all on the 4 hr bus ride to Tokyo.

Once we arrived at the Disneyland parking lot, we were still in really bad moods.  I was really irritated from lack of sleep.  We spent the first 15-20 minutes getting ready in the bathroom.  Brushing our teeth, changing into decent shoes/clothes, finding a locker to stuff our stuff in.  When we finally entered the park, it was around 11:00ish.  We had time to bypass the noon parade and we hopped onto the only ride I hadn't been on the last time -- Journey to the Center of the Earth.  Aaron said it was a roller coaster, so I was really uneasy about going on it.  We hadn't had any decent food to eat yet, I had no sleep, so I really wasn't feeling well enough for a roller coaster.  Plus, I hate roller coasters.  We waited about an hour to get on the thing.  Well, it was a roller coaster at all.  More like Splash Mountain in a volcano, except the big drop at the end wasn't that big and there were no mini drops before.  So kinda a disappointment.  At the same time I was happy it didn't last longer.  The drop at the end made me wanna cry like a baby.  Things were just not going how I wanted them to.

Journey to the Center of the Earth volcano.  Directly underneath is a submarine ride.

Afterwards, we were starving.  While in line for the ride, there were some girls in front of us eating something really nasty smelling.  We decided to get out of that volcano section and head for something more American-friendly.  We walked over to the Cape Cod and New York sections of the park.  There we ate at an American Cook-Off.  Aaron was in the mood for a good cheeseburger and fries.  Unfortunately, it wasn't good.  McDonald's had better burgers than that.  We paid like $8 for it, when it wasn't worth the dollar menu.

After our less than satisfying lunch, we decided to walk around and look at stuff.  We went through the New York section, noticed a new Toy Story section (which has nothing to do with water or ports at all), through the Mediterranean section (my favorite) and through Agrabah.  We rode a few rides (ones with short lines) like the StormRider (a StarTours-like ride with sprinklers that get you wet) and stood in line for over 2 hours waiting for the new Toy Story ride.  It was definitely the best ride in the park.  And it lasted longer than I expected.  But was it worth 2.5 hrs?  Maybe 1.

 

After that really long wait, we rushed to get on the gondola -- the one thing I really wanted to do the most!  We thought it would be a rather unpopular ride since it's slow.  But it was surprisingly crowded.  We were on the very last gondola before the ride closed down for the night.  The wait was actually quite nice, as the Venice replica was lit up with golden lights.  It looked really cool.

 

After a nice, relaxing ride, we rushed back over to Agrabah.  The dining room of that place was so much nicer than the American Cook-Off.  And the food was sooo much better too.  We had Indian curry and naan.  Rather pricey, but definitely better than bad McDonald's rip-off.

 

Finally, we headed back to the Mediterranean port to watch the night show.  It was very Japanese.  Overly dramatic, funny Japanese voice-overs, lots of cheesiness.  It lasted long enough, and then it was a mad rush to the souvenir shops.  Everyone was rushing to get omiyage.  It took us much longer than we anticipated.  We had to find the right amount for a good price.  I also wanted to find a postcard and stamp to add to my collection.  That was the most frustrating thing of all to find.  Also, asking for directions didn't help either.

At last, we headed back to the bus, then the hotel, and straight to bed.  The following morning, Aaron and I had to run some errands at the U.S. Embassy in Tokyo.  Finding the place was an adventure.  We got lost several times, and did a lot of walking.  Aaron did some circles in order to complete some paperwork. Finally, we left for Tokyo Station, ate some cheap sushi, and took a shinkansen home.  The shinkansen was a rip-off.  It definitely would've been way cheaper to take a bus.  But we were both so exhausted, we wanted to get home as soon as possible.