Hokkaido-ing

beds
Originally uploaded by sillyhapa.

Getting up north to Hokkaido was quite the nightmare...In summary, a large ship and nearly an entire day spent rockin it, sleeping with 40 girls on the floor of aforementioned ship ("refuge camp" or "girl's orphanage," we liked to call it), moving (barely) up to an odd campsite in the mountains to sleep in bunk beds (see, moving up a little) and take gang showers (does no one else call them this?) or perhaps to NOT, singing around a campfire (or NOT, as I conveniently went to bed early instead), and generally avoiding being treated like a five year old at summer camp. Blech. Plus, us eight Pomona kids are the only representatives of America on the whole program, which means that everyone else is Chinese or Korean or Vietnamese, which provides an interesting linguistic challenge.

Today there is a typhoon in Hokkaido, and with the enormous gusts of wind and torrential rainfall, the power went out, which could only mean one thing...yasumi no hi! So my siblings and I are happily indoors playing video games and internetting all day long. My dad still had to go feed the cows and whatnot, and I don't know where my mom is, but I'm happy as a clam here in the house. TOO BAD, no zazen or middle school - visiting.

Time for lunch, I hope. Whee!