umbrella graveyard

hello everybody!

i hear it's really humid in hawaii! i hope it clears up :) this past weekend i went to koriyama to visit my friend melanie. it was so cold and windy in iwaki on sunday morning that i couldn't help to stop and take pictures of all of the "dead" umbrellas...chris kept telling me that we didn't have time to take pictures because we were going to miss our train to koriyama. i was like, "oh stop worrying we have time..." we missed our train by literally a minute. i was like, "whoopsie sorry!" hahaha for some reason the next train to koriyama wasn't for another five hours, so we went to mr. donut :) chris took my camera away...haha









we finally arrived in koriyama around 3p.m...and it was twice as cold and twice as windy!! but koriyama eki was awesome! it's relatively new and there is tons of shopping and restaurants in the station...also there was some kind of music festival going on so there was live music going on all day! it was so cold so we didn't have time to discuss what we wanted to do so we went to koriyama space center. they have a planetarium it was cool...reminded me of bishop museum, i haven't been there in probably over a decade.








melanie works for amity koriyama, she's from outside of vancouver canada and this past weekend was her thanksgiving so we helped to celebrate it with her. it was my first 'home cooked" meal since i've been here. no turkey though :(










oh yeah, notice the blue garlic with the rosemary?? hahaha it's a mystery how it turned blue but it's just like in bridget jones diary, no? i was lucky to meet a lot of people that night...two from britain, one from ireland, and other japanese girls...it was so much fun!











the next day we walked, shopped, and walked some more...koriyama is beautiful! you will notice that a lot of my picture have the backsides of mel and chris...they call me "camera girl" because i'm always way behind everyone snapping pictures...chris again threatened to take away my camera hahaha...it's ok he's "donut boy" because he always wants to go to mr. donut. notice the leaves are turning colors! :)

















koriyama has shot to my number 1 favorite city so far in japan :) it only costs me 16 dollars to get there by local train so i'll be there a lot. mostly to shop and grab starbucks...the greatest thing about the station aside from the "loco moco" restaurant, is that they have a pretty good import foods market. i bought tortilla chips, refried beans, salsa, capers, swiss miss cocoa, and honey. but they have pretty much everything...spam, gravy, taco mix, jams, even hawaiian host chocolates!

work is still pretty rough, but this week was rewarding for our junior high students because we just got their TOEIC bridge scores back (it's like the Pre-TOEFL/ English language SATs) 4 out of the top 5 scorers are my students for their practical course :) i take no credit for it because i've only had them for a month, but i'm still very proud of them! i also have a handful that were in the bottom half, but at least i know now who needs more work especially in the listening sections...

i'm not planning on travelling for the next couple of weeks because i need to save money and my apartment needs some heavy duty cleaning!! i just wanted to update my blog with pictures for now, but i will write more this weekend.

talk to you all soon, love you!
andie