Holy crap!

So, it's Uoshima, which means Fish Island! Wow! We're going to be pretty isolated. It'll be awesome, though. More info later.

Stef and I took Kelsey to the Scottish games today. While not as cool as the games in Sacramento, they were still a lot of fun. Bagpipes are awesome.

Some links to Kamijima blogs

So, more on Kamijima. Like I said, we’re either going to Yuge, Ikina, or Uoshima.

The ALT on Yuge, has a blog. She’s got some neat photos of Yuge here.

Ikina’s ALT also keeps a blog. More good pictures.

Uoshima, which is even farther away from everything, also has an ALT. And luckily, he blogs.

I’d post pictures, but I really don’t want to infringe on any copyrights. But through their blogs, you can pretty much get an idea of what we're going to be doing out there.

Kamijima town, here were come!

..but we still don't know exactly where.

So, we're headed to Kamijima, which is a group of small islands in the Seto Inland Sea (the sea between Honshu and Shikoku, two of Japan's four big islands). Pay no attention to the green arrow.



Here's the Seto Inland Sea:



Kamijima's islands are actually closer to Honshu than they are to Shikoku, but they belong to Ehime Prefecture (similar to a state), which is part of Shikoku.



There are four assistant language teachers (ALTs) in Kamijima. One is living on Iwagi, one on Yuge, one on Ikina, and one on Uoshima. The Iwagi ALT is staying for another year, but the other three are leaving. That means that we'll be on one of those three islands. We still don't know which of the three islands will be our home, since we haven't been contacted by my contracting organization (I'll be employed by the Kamijima board of education). We'll surely let everyone know when we find out.



Later, I'll go into a little more detail about each of the islands and Kamijima in general. For now, everyone can know where in Japan we'll be (sort of).

Projects

Stef and I have a few projects we're working on before we go to Japan. I'm typing out the journal entries that I originally sent to Christina so that I can get those back to her if she wants them. Also, we're converting our DVD collection into .avi files and keeping them on an external hard drive. It's a lot easier than lugging all those dvds in a case. Much lighter, too.

We're trying to figure out what we need to bring with us. As of now, all we can really think of is clothing, the Wii, and the laptop. We'll ship any books that we need separately. I may need to buy a bike and take it on the plane with me.

I'll be leaving for Japan on July 26th. Stef will follow me out with Kelsey on the 15th (or so) of August. We're going to drive (or fly, not sure yet) to California around the 6th or 7th of July, and I'll fly back on the 24th in preparation for the orientation in Salt Lake on the 25th. I'll arrive in Japan on the 27th and go to some orientation meetings for a few days. Then, the real adventure starts.

Stef and I have started studying Japanese together in preparation. It's very exciting to think that we'll be able to communicate with each other in another language. Kelsey will probably pick up a bit of Japanese, too.

Stef is going through the final preparations to become a labor doula. She's flying out to Colorado for a conference at the beginning of May. She'll take the classes she needs, and then return to Utah to participate in a few births. She's already go some possible clients after setting up an ad on Craigslist. That's exciting for her. She's hoping to do a little bit of that while in Japan.

How did I wait so long?

"Dear JET Program Applicant:

Congratulations! You have successfully passed the second stage of the screening process and are now on the final short-list of candidates for the 2008 JET Program."

We're going to Japan!!! Now, we just have to get everything in order and wait to find out where we're going.

Also, I took my last final on Friday! Sweet! Done with school! Finally! Now I can spend more time with the fam.

Easter

So, it's Easter Sunday. We had Em and the Simmons over for dinner and Easter eggs. Stef made a delicious pot roast and angel food cake, and the Simmons brought salad. Kelsey had a good time searching for eggs in the grass. I'll post some pictures somewhere.

We had our tournament game for intramural basketball. I use the singular as we obviously lost. We played them just fine until we got tired. With only five of us to their nine or ten, we couldn't keep up. No substitutions at all. We got pounded, and they weren't even good. My 18 or 20 points were little consolation.

I think I'm gonna play basketball tomorrow morning at 6 AM. Time to hang out with Stef.

good.

Tonight we had our final regular season intramural basketball game. As we sat and waited for the previous game to end, our opponents walked in. It was a group of kids that we had played one weeknight at the church building a month or so ago. When we saw them, we knew it'd be a win for us. They're a good bunch of kids, but they were severely lacking height. When we played them at the chapel, we beat them 21-2. Scott Gale and I played post, and it worked beautifully. The floor was open for people to cut to the hoop, and nobody could really stop us from scoring.

That's not entirely true. I got fouled almost every time I tried to score from closed, but there wasn't a single call. On one shot, I had a guy hanging on my arm to the point that I couldn't even get the shot off right, and there was no call. On another one, I actually got hit so hard in the head that I bled for a little. Still no call. I realize that I shouldn't be frustrated when we're winning by 20 points, but when the other team is saying sorry for fouling you and telling the refs that they were wrong, something's wrong with the refs. It was great to see everyone have fun. Everybody played pretty well; Tony even hit a 3.

The final score was 60-49, which seems a lot closer than it really was. Before that, we had built and maintained a 20-plus point lead for the whole game. Gale scored quite a bit but went down with an injury halfway through the second half. Ryan distributed the ball pretty well, and Lance cut to the hoop a few times. I got a bit frustrated with the no-calls and took a couple shots that I shouldn't have taken. In the end I had a good game: 22 points, 5ish assists, probably over 10 rebounds, and 4-5 blocks. I was probably about 4-8 from the arc (I didn't keep track of the misses; maybe I was 4-9), and 5-12 from the rest of the floor. I didn't turn the ball over once, which is the stat I'm most proud of. Oh, and Ryan and I ran the "set play" twice, where he dribbles to the top of the key while I run around him and he pops the ball out while setting a screen. I made it both times, and the second one was a high, deep three (it felt like 30 feet or so).

I enjoyed making more passes tonight. It would've been a perfect game if I had just spent a little less time complaining about the lack of calls. I seriously think the refs didn't call them because I was piping up the whole time. Playoffs start soon. I think we'll have a game every couple nights until we lose.

Kelsey was being really cute tonight, too. For some reason, she really wanted to hold my hand. I walked with her as she held my finger until we had gotten about halfway down the hall. Then Stef picked her up, but she got really fussy and held her hand out towards me. I gave her my finger and she held on, instantly cheering up. Stef and I walked to the car, Stef holding Kelsey and Kelsey holding my finger. When we got to the car, Stef strapped her in and she got fussy. So, I drove home from the game with one hand on the steering wheel and the other hand in Kelsey's hand, keeping her happy.

It's heart-warming to have her be so attached to me. She's not normally like that. Ooh, it's late--time for bed.