Second Weeked with Liz :)

So kind of on a whim Liz decided to spend the weekend with me!! It was so much fun! We met up in Kichijoji and played a little at the Kichijoji Chapel's sports night. She also knows Elder Hilton from Lone Peak High School, so it was pretty fun to shock him once again with random people in Japan!!

I had texted my dear friend Rie earlier that day asking to borrow bedding and she said ok, but her dad didn't end up getting off work until like 11:30pm. Yet they still drove over to my house to drop it off!! How sweet is that? I felt soo bad!! The Saito family is the best! I am so grateful to be their friend! I owe them big. 

Liz and I had soo much fun just chatting it up and it was nice not being all by myself for a change!! It was especially fun to cook dinner for the two of us! I got some good cooking practice in over the weekend. I had such a great time and Liz ate everything so hopefully it didn't taste too horrible!

One of the reasons she came over was so that she could use my webcam to skype her family. It was so cute seeing her totally flip when she saw her family. So sweet :). We had pancakes for breakfast the next day and it was great!!

We chilled at my place until about 1:30pm and then headed out to the Tama Zoo!! Which now happens to be like one of my favorite places in Japan!! Our Interac trainer Jody, told me that I lived by this awesome zoo that has LION BUSES!!!!! As some of you might have seen on facebook, this zoo has a huge lion enclosure where you can pay a little extra money to ride a bus through the enclosure!! They painted the buses like zebras and hang meat on the sides of them!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! It is soo flipping awesome!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Liz and I were so STOKED! Plus the on the train ride there, we had the whole compartment to ourselves! So we had a mini photo shoot :P

Brooke on the train...I wish I was like this every day!! It would totally freak out the Japanese :P.

But back to the ZOO!!! It was soo amazing and we only went to probably about one third of it!! Sadly everything in Japan shuts down around five pm....sad sad sad!!!

So first thing I notice--the cute pavement décor! Lol. It says "Who's feet made these?"

At the end of that stretch, it gives the answer, an "Ostrich"! Cool eh??

Not really sure why the Lions have Aladdin style buildings......but see the Zebra buses?????

Liz and I were soooooooooooo excited. Can you tell???

This is from inside the LION BUS!!!!!!!! Look how close they are!!!!

Such a big cat...

So pretty.

Liz and I were like bouncing in our seats with excitement!

Especially when the lion started going for the meat!!!!!

CHECK IT OUT!!!!!!!!!!!!

SOO COOL!!!!!!!!

While we were out there the lions started fighting and their roars were AWESOME! The zoo keepers opened this window and pulled out a tranquillizer gun...luckily they didn't have to use it. But imagine this--you are in a bus, painted like a zebra, with meat chunks attached to it with roaring lions all around you! It was AWESOME AND CRAZY SCARY!

Yeah, Liz and I really want to go back. Pretty bad.

After the lions, we check out some of the usual animals: giraffes, zebras, elephants etc. We saw the chubbiest elephant ever!! It was soo cute!

Then we stumbled upon this insect-topia! The first half of it was rather gross...but there were some pretty fun things, like playing darts with burrs!!

And there were some amazing bugs!!

THIS IS A BUG!!!!

SO IS THIS!!! GROSS!!!!!!!!!

Then we walked into this room full of glow worms!! It looked like the night sky--soo cool!!

It's a Brooke Butterfly, yay!

Liz makes a great butterfly too :)

Then we went to the second building, opened a door and found ourselves in a UTOPIA!!! It was soo unexpected, but soo awesome!

See how happy Liz is??

The air was humid, flowers abloom and butterflies everywhere!!!!!

YAY! We felt like we had somehow landed in Fairy Land!

YAY!!

They flew so close you could've touched 'em!

This one just looked soo cool!

We were soo happy!!!

We had a quick bite at the zoo before it closed and loved the atmosphere :).

And the gift shop...hehe.

A LOT! Hehehe. Cute Liz.

But then we had to leave...but the monorail was fun and Liz is cute!

After the zoo we actually met up with some Air Force boys who live on base here in Japan! Liz met them at her Paramore concert and they were really fun! James and Jordan :) They took us on base and it was like mini America! They have like a walmart kind of shop and full of US GOODS!!!!! It was like going home for a bit! We just goofed off in the store for a bit and had soo much fun! They were super nice guys. The base is actually right next to the schools I teach at.

I think our craziness started to rub off on those boys...hahaha. We found St. Patty's decorations and it was all over!!! Lol.

Liz stayed for Sunday with Brooke too!! It was great and church was as amazing as ever. I really love Japan and am soo grateful for all of the amazing people I have been able to meet!

I really need to go to bed!!! Love ya all!!!!