Voir Dire

Look carefully at the picture below.....especially at the communication breakdown between the boy on the left and Christina. Now, while the rest of us were just trying to get a nice little picture taken, Christina is telling the Chinese kid something on the left. Whatever she is communicating is frightening the kid........ Found this place north of Beijing. It's called Summer's Palace, kind of nice.... After much time and anticipation from a lot of people our self-portraits are finally complete. Right now we only have one copy of each so their not for sale. If you would like to request one let us know, it will be extra for a signed copy.

We thought we would take some time to introduce some people we have met along the way. Above is Pastor Sergai, his wife Tanya and their boy Daniel. Below is their daughter Anastasia. We met them in Vladivostok. They were always inviting us over to their place for lunch, or to take a shower, or use a normal toilet. One of our new compliments when arriving at a house is, "nice toilet." For a couple weeks we got to hang out with them. They took us to the beach, we would play ping pong on Sunday evenings or just hang out in their apartment. Nastia, their daughter helped us learn some Russian while Daniel the little boy, just learning to walk, would patrol the living room. He is a very special kid. This is our tour guide Victor "the Drifter." We had one phone number to call when we arrived to Vladivostok, and it was Victor......it was a real treat to get to know him. Very nice guy who helped us get around the city for a couple weeks. He helped us find places to stay. T...

Decided to take a little tour of Military Fort No.7................ Despite a rough couple days we have been treated extremely well by our friends Victor, Sergai and his wife Tanya, their two children Anastasia and Daniel, and their church. On Monday, our One Year Anniversary Tanya invited us over for lunch at their place where she and Anastasia had decorated the house with balloons, flowers, a picture of us, and signs celebrating our first year. After the great meal they drove us to the beach where we enjoyed some sun and surf, the water was refreshing and my surprise One Year Anniversary party for Christina was a success....it actually was all Tanya, Sergai and her daughter....we also had a chance to help teach an English class at the University here........anyways hope all is well.......

The RUS from Fushiki, Japan to Vladivostok, Russia. The Russian people are big.....stayed on this ship Friday and Saturday night crossing the Sea of Japan headed for Russia. We were fed three times a day in a little room segregated with other non-Russians. There were about 10 of us out of 400 that ate in this special room. Livin the dream.......our living quarters is the tent in the corner.....the only thing that seperates these living conditions from a prison is that you can freely come and go, kind of.....I demanded Christina to put on a smile for the picture to show her family how much fun we are having.....to add to the fun, the next day, Christina was walking to the hospital to encourage and pray for a teenage girl and actually had to be checked-in herself after walking up hill in the heat, possibly drinking some bad water, sleeping in the damp tent, or we don't know exactly but after staying in the hospital for a couple hours, having to ask for toilet paper and settling ...

Well, we thought we would throw down a few pictures here before we step onto the RUS ferry across the Sea of Japan. We get on the boat this afternoon and arrive in Vladivostok 40 hours later.......... up above is just a nice little garden we found walking around Hiroshima......... down below is Scott and Christina on our way up to Mt. Fuji, notice the peak of the mountain in the top right corner........ on the way up we ran into some workers, were all not that different, one of the guys in front of the machine is just laying in the dirt........ finally after a pretty decent hike we arrived at the top in all of the latest mountain climbing gear, unfortunately we lost Christina along the way and she took the bus back down at the fifth station after we ate pancakes.

Baseball Game ……..on offense, everybody stands for every single pitch. From the first pitch of the game to the very last. One of the chants they had everybody would raise their arms and in harmony begin to chant different players names. My Japanese is a little off, so we had a hard time following the chants. People we never met before until now and ended up having dinner at their place and staying the night. They welcomed us in like we were family. So far, we would say the Japanese get the hospitality award. Very friendly, very helpful…….. Teaching an upper level Trigonometry class in Japanese as a native English speaker was hard at first, but actually is not all that difficult. Notice the slippers……a little tight on the feet.

Made it into Tokyo, got a bus down to Yokohama, taxi to the wrong hotel....finally found a spot to stay. Today were just tryin to locate the Van before we validate our railpasses for a week and storm Japan. Tonight were goin to see Yokohama vs. The Marines at 6:00, one of Japans best baseball teams, I actually dont know that, but it sounds good. The women like the ultra high heels around here so we`ll keep you updated on that. Except for the girl that threw up on the plane right next to me things are goin pretty good. Hope everybody is doing fine...........and あえあ。￥あえ