HAHA

Well, this weekend is a big weekend, the annual Harvest Thanksgiving Festival here at ARI. We are spending the entire week getting ready for two days of food and entertainment for the community. We are cleaning the property for an open house, harvesting food and preparing lists for the regional dishes and desserts we will be cooking, and of course rehearsing our singing and dancing for the stage shows. I have been here for 4 days and tonight I was pulled into my fourth act for this weekend. So far I am the vocals for Hotel California, a guitar player for a skit, a dancer in our rendition of Footloose, and an "interactive" curtain holder for a skit. We stayed up until midnight playing guitar in the dorm getting ready for Hotel California, and today we practiced Footloose for at least an hour, I was pulled down there under the impression that we were just going to try it and next thing I know they are talking about stage cues and partners. Such is the life I guess.

I am having a lot of fun. The community here is so welcoming I feel like I have been here for weeks. I am learning some Japanese and hope to go to my first official lesson tomorrow night, it might not be as hard as I initially expected. There is a library in the main building with a surprising collection of books. I met the librarian on Friday and told her that my mom is a librarian and I loved reading. She couldn't believe I love books, who would have thought? Well I checked out a book called Small is Beautiful, a Japanese phrase book, and Addicted to War about our countries militarism. They are proving to be provocative books.

Sunday morning I was woken up at 4:50 and invited to go climb a mountain. I piled into a small car with four others and we drove an hour into Nikko National Park. By 6:15 we were on our way up the trail. As we climbed it was explained to me that we were actually going to climb three peaks that day. It was great, besides being very tired I got to see some amazing views. The area we were in had already started changing colors so the foliage was beautiful. Have you ever noticed how the trees in Japanese gardens always look so manicured? Well, apparently that is how God does things in Japan because everywhere there were these georgeous trees that looked like someone had been tending them for years, it was enough to inspire some magnificent gardens. The third peak we climbed was an active volcano complete with steam vents spewing sulfur into the autumn air. At the top you could very clearly see the 200m (notice the metric system being used here) crater left over from the last eruption. After all the climbing up we rode an air trolley back down the mountain (think James Bond when jaws bites through the cable in Europe.) That day left me very drained, but I have recovered well.

Thank you for all of your thoughts and prayers. I am calling it a night. I will keep you posted.

Peace and Love,

Mike