My past Saturday was awesome, but I am going to make a few notes about that Friday as well. First off, Friday nights are Sports Nights at the church. A lot of the single adults, missionaries and investigators show up--everyone is welcome. I have a really great Chinese friend, Tony, who is currently investigating the Church and who comes to sports nights. He helps me keep up on my Chinese :). We were chatting when I noticed we had a few new missionaries in the mix. Usually missionaries from all over Tokyo come, so it isn't like too big of a deal--but one missionary in particular looked super familiar.
It was bugging me soo bad and then I figured it out!!!!! And can I just say that the world is one small place??? So it turns out this missionary, Elder Brad Hilton, has a cousin, David Hilton (also on a mission, but in Brazil), who took me to my freshman year Homecoming at BYU...like in 2007...:P. Elder Brad Hilton also doubled with us--thus the familiarity. Funny funny eh? Even funnier is that I did see him like right before he left on his mission randomly at BYU and remember him telling me he got his mission call to Japan! Small small world!
Tony, Elders Lloyd and Koja,a friend name Shizuka and I walked to the train station after Sports Night. During the walk they mentioned this noodle cook off Tony would be teaching the next morning and invited me along. I had already made plans to go ice skating with my friend Rie Saito (from the Kichijoji ward) and although I love Chinese food, I was hesitant to go. But Elder Lloyd mentioned to me how he thinks it would really help Tony (who is currently an investigator) if I was there. You can't argue with the missionaries! So I set out to do both since skating was at 1pm.
So Saturday morning finds me meeting Tony at 9am in Tachikawa. We walk to the Kunitachi ward's building (where Tony goes to church) and met with a member of the bishopric. He had really awesome English and was pretty fun to talk to. We headed out to the grocery store to pick up the ingredients and when we got back quite a few people had showed up. It was really fun meeting more Japanese members! They are soo awesome :).
Once more people start showing up, we start working on making 鸡蛋西红柿： Jidan Xihongshi! Ok, Eggs and Tomatoes over noodles! It is a very common dish in China, and so Tony thought it'd be a good one for us to learn. I wasn't able to stay the whole time (since I had to travel to meet Rie for ice skating!) but I was able to learn how to make noodles from scratch! It was super fun! We spent soo much time on it too! :)
Elder Koja, someone awesome (aka, I don't remember his name) and the member of the bishopric Tony and I went shopping with (on the right).
My beautiful noodles :)
Tony and I showing off the noodles!
Oh, and BTW Tony is from Xi'an (西安), which happens to be my favorite city in China!!!
All my new Japanese friends!!! Ryoji, Anne, and Akemi (from left to right)!!!
We have now all added each other on facebook, so its legit! :D
Ryoji and I were having a little too much fun!!!
Well, ok, I am the only one putting noodles under my nose....
Hehehe, I like this picture!
Yes......I was pretty happy about my noodles....is there anything wrong with that???
On a random side-note, who else loves the song "Dr. Jones" by Aqua?? Or am I really just a freak??
After all this noodle-ishis-fun, how could my Saturday get any better?? Hmm...ICE SKATING!!!
I was able to meet all of these Japanese young single adults like myself who go to the same chapel as me (though some go to the ward right after mine)! Rie is pretty much the best, and I love her soo much! She has been soo great to help me make all these new friends :)
I was taking lots of pictures but then the ice skating "life guard" (what do you call those guys? Monitors?) told me, in English (which was impressive) that I wasn't allowed to take pictures when I was in the rink..oops! Well, here are the ones I got!!
Here's the gang--minus me of course :)
With me--minus Inoue-san
It was super fun because while I'm not like amazing at skating, I have done it ever since I was little. So I am pretty decent. For my Japanese friends--well, it was like their first-third time ever! I got to play teacher, and it was soo awesome! And they all did improve quite a bit! By the end Inoue-san was almost as fast as me! It was great fun :). Plus, just picture this in your mind--a group of Japanese people (in Japan) trying to skate in little circles while this white chick is readjusting their feet and tightening their laces. It makes me laugh! It was great fun teaching them how to do little spins and such! The girls and I eventually moved on to skating backwards--the boys gave up!! Lol, it was soo much fun.
There were actually quite a few people there too!
Well, that is all for now! I am blogged out!! I still have a few things to catch up on...blog-wise, but I have to be up early tomorrow...so all for now!!
Love,
Brooke
