"I live in aso of kumamoto."

Over the winter break, I made some great new friends from Japan. Two spoke English fluently, the other barely spoke English. As a result, she would teach me Japanese and I would teach her English.

My friend has learned a lot of English since then and we have been writing to ech other back and forth. I love having a pen pal!

In my limited understand of the Japanese language and its sentence structure, I read this sentence with a lot of confusion and laughter:

"I live in aso of kumamoto."

This is what when through my head:

"You live in the what of Kumamoto?! I guess she really doesn't like it there."

It is not my friend's fault I read her sentence incorrectly. It is 100% mine. I even went and looked-up "aso" online to see what she meant. "Aso" is the name of the city in which my friend lives in Kumamoto. Duh, Flora!

Learning Japanese is going to be a long, interesting journey.

Christmas Break So Far...

...has been great!

We arrived at the in-law's with no problem. My sister-in-law also has some friends over from Japan that have been really fun. I have learned a lot of Japanese so far and I guess I have good pronunciation. Who knew?

Yesterday we went to see a hockey game: the Sacramento Kings vs. the Stockton Vikings. The Vikings one. Here are some highlights from the game:

Thunder vs. Kings from fergie on Vimeo.

Today Kyle, our new friends from Japan, Kyle's dad, and I went to Yosemite. It was really snowy. I guess I really like the snow when it is not mine.

Here are some pictures from the last few days:



Click here to look at the pictures individually.

Tomorrow we are going to San Francisco and then whale watching on a boat in Monterrey. I am scared of whale watching, but I guess I have to do it at least once in my life.