OK, here goes... (The first of many)

First off, to wrap up my last few weeks in Hakodate! :-) す～ごく楽しかったよ。
The culture classes and community activities continued, and were lots of fun! Sorry I don't have pictures of everything, but-- First off was ikebana (flower arranging) which was a lot more fun than I expected it to be. I think it would have been nice to have more than just the one hour, but it was interesting to get to try it for ourselves. Here's mine! (left)
My favorite was shodo (calligraphy) which unfortunately I don't have any pictures of. It was at nearby Nishi High School, and we were able to go to it for two days. The sensei there was a really charismatic teacher, and I thought the class was lots of fun. On the second day, a few people got to try out writing characters on the several-feet by several-feet papers outside, and we all got to write a character on fancy hard board to take home. I wrote 嬉, the character for "happy." :-D



We also got to try out soba and mochi making at a nearby soba shop, which was great (especially the part where they fed us all loads of it after!). People took turns pounding the mochi dough with this huge mallet (see picture)--why I'm not sure, but it seemed to be the proper mochi-making method. And I got to help break the dough into balls so that it could be dipped in all the mochi-topping goodness. We didn't get to stay for much of the soba part, because that was also the day that J.E. Dean Farley and his wife came to visit all us Light-ies and take us out to an absolutely fantastic dinner (thank you, Light Fellowship!).

The last few weeks also hosted the HIF speech contest. We had a mini-contest earlier, in the first semester, and out of that 2 students from each class were picked to compete in the final speech contest (me, yay!). The Yalies represented--I managed to get second place in the advanced-class division--and Rex Isenberg got first in the intermediate-class division~go Yalies, whee~!



The final, really nice thing was that on my last night in Hakodate, my host family surprised me with a cake to celebrate my birthday--which, incidentally, was today. :-) It was personalized and everything, and just really made my night. Yet another reason why host families are definitely the way to go!