津に行きます！

Hello everyone! Before I get into the adventures of the past two weeks, an update. We had transfer calls this past week and it is official. I will be leaving Toyohashi and transferring to a new area tomorrow (the 17th). My new area is called Tsu, and it is located on the opposite side of the gulf where Toyohashi is positioned. I'm sad to be leaving Toyohashi, but excited for the new opportunities I will have in Tsu. My new companion will be Inouye Shimai. She was actually Prince Shimai's Trainer, haha, so it really is a small world here in the mission. Expect some fun updates next week!

Anywho, some fun stories from the past few weeks.

1) A couple weeks ago we did a concert at the train station. I woke up the day of the concert with a horrible sore throat and a fever, haha. And we had interviews with the Mission President in the morning. So I got myself up and we took a train to Okazaki for the interviews. I explained our situation and he was kind enough to give me a Priesthood Blessing so that I could do the concert. And, believe it or not, the church is true and the blessing worked. We were able to perform and we had a great turn out. It was so much fun to sing the Japanese songs and have everyone sing along with them, haha. We haven't had a ton of people come to our English class because of it, but I know it was a great way to at least put the name of the church out there. I actually got super sick again the day after the concert, haha, but I didn't even care. The concert was over and that's what mattered!

2) Last Monday we had district activity. Our district is actually pretty awesome this transfer, so we all decided to go to a shrine on an island near Okazaki. And it was one of the coolest experiences ever. For anyone that has seen Avatar: The Last Airbender, the island was like a lion turtle. It was a cool nerdy experience, but was also gorgeous! And super fun to see the ocean. Most of the photos from this week come from that, so I will let the pictures speak for the experience. But yeah, it was great. Was also REALLY nice to wear jeans for the day, haha. I can only wear them every once in a while, but it's always a great moment. 

3) After district activity we went to get ramen. For those who don't know me very well, I LOVE ramen, so I was very excited. It's the kind of ramen place where you can choose your size. There's normal, 1.5x, 2.0x, and 2.5x. The elders were all trying to decide and I joked that I could probably eat 2.0x size because I love ramen so much. They did not believe me. I bought it anyways. When the waitress took my order, she double checked that I knew what it meant, haha, since the size is so big. I assured her I knew what I was getting myself into and they served me the ramen. It was...a lot. There's a photo, but it doesn't fully do it justice. I was nervous about what I had just done, but pushed on. After 30 min of eating ramen, I finally finished it. It was pretty good ramen, but the best part was after I finished and the lady came over to take my bowl. She just stared at the empty bowl and went "Sugoi" (which means something like wow/amazing) and I just laughed. She called over her coworkers to show them, too. So, I am now famous in that ramen shop as the "random female foreigner who ate more ramen than most Japanese men", haha. 

4) This past Tuesday we decided to try going to a members house to heart attack her. We made a goal to heart attack everyone this transfer and were pretty determined to get it done. However, she lives out in the middle of the mountains, so we had to schedule out pretty much the whole day. But we had a plan and were sure it was going to work out. So, we headed out on our way. We took our bikes with us on the train about an hour away. Then we had to put our bikes back together. Only problem: my bike was broken. We could not figure out what was wrong, but it would NOT ride properly. It was hot, we were sweaty and tired, and there weren't any bike shops for miles. Finally, we asked some random lady for help and she called one of her friends who called another friend who came and told us that I had my wheel on backwards. Didn't know that was possible. Apparently it is. So, after an hour of messing with my bike, paying the man $10 to tell me my wheel was on backwards, and sweating buckets, we were finally on our way up the mountain. We started biking up, then realized that was a dumb idea and started walking our bikes up the hill. Flash forward two hours of going through giant spider, snake, and other critter invested woods, we finally reach almost the peak of the mountain. We take the path the map tells us to take, but it leads us to an old mans house who then tells us to turn back. We did and took the other road. As we were going up a man runs past us. He pauses, tells us something in Japanese (which we blindly said okay to because we had no idea who he was or what he wanted) and then keeps running. Turns out he was saying the road ends up ahead and you can't pass. We found that out the hard way. Ten minutes later, after passing our new friend--who is doing arm curls with a log at this point--we find the road completely blocked. The sun had started setting at this point and we were running out of time. We looked for the next closest path, turns out it was only twenty minutes away...from the bottom of the mountain. *sigh* We decided that for our own safety we should return home.

BUT, we refused to go home empty handed. We would still heart attack a member! The next closest member was an hour away by bike, but we had already scheduled out the entire day, so we pushed out. Turns out she lives out in a weird area and all the roads leading to it were small, dark, and covered in plants/spider webs. Our motto became "single file. stick to the middle." as we tried to avoid the spiders. But we were able to heart attack her and she really appreciated it <3 We then biked another hour home through more spider invested, dark roads. We were VERY sore the next day, but we saw some pretty views and were able to have some good laughs. That's the main story from this last week.

5) In Japan there are tons of shrines and temples, which is really cool because they're gorgeous and I love the historical implications. But this last week we saw a random one between two houses and it was really pretty, so enjoy the photos <3

6) Yesterday was my last day in church and it was very bittersweet. I have really grown to love the members here in Toyohashi. It's crazy that when I first came in I barely knew these people and couldn't even keep their names straight, but now they are practically my second family. I am so sad to be leaving them, but know that I will see them all again someday. And I am excited to meet even more amazing people in Tsu.

Okay, I think that's it for this week. Expect lots of exciting updates next week! 

As always much appreciation for the letters, emails, and prayers <3