A Few Picks of Our Travels

We have been to a lot of places since we have been back to the states. Just the other day we counted how many states we had been to in the past two months. We have been to: Texas, New Mexico, Oklahoma, Arkansas, Missouri, Kansas, Iowa, Nebraska, Minnesota, and Wisconsin. This brings our grand total to ten states in just 60 days. Now, I know some people can easily surpass us with how much they may travel for business or many other reasons but we are quite shocked by it. We are tired but grateful for our time. So, to commemorate some of our travels I have included some of our pictures from the trip.

A sunset in Iowa in December.

Before we made it to Jason's family Christmas in Nebraska, we headed into Branson to visit many of our friends. The first pic is of me with the amazing, Angela Dube and the second is with the fantastic, Kati Burkdoll.

We had a great time with Jason's family at Christmas. Here is Teresa, Jason's sister, playing with our niece, Samantha. Samantha belongs to Colleen and Erik. Colleen is Jason's second oldest sister.

Some more of the Kuiper family making some Christmas memories.

After Christmas at the Kuiper family we went skiing with my family in Red River, New Mexico. It was soo much fun to be with the Marcum family. Jason and I learned how to snowboard and there was a lot falling as well as aches and pains. The picture below on the left is of Kelly, my sister and her boyfriend, Logan. Logan was a great teacher. On the right is a picture of Jason and me acting like snowboard pros....yeah right.

We were able to be in Boyd for my youngest sister, Sarah's, 16th birthday party. I got a picture of the cake and not much else. Sorry, sis. :( I think i just really liked the candles. hehe.

Jason and I got to visit Memorial Stadium. Home to my husband's favorite team, the Nebraska Huskers. Here we are posing in the Heisman Trophy room with our best Heisman stance we could muster up. The bottom left picture is of us standing inside of Memorial Stadium and the bottom left is the outside of the arena. I felt a little like a cheater..you know, going and looking at all that Husker paraphanalia. I'm a Red Raider at heart but I did it to support my husband. However, I did sing the Matador's song inside my head from time to time. I guess it was my weird little way of proving my loyalty. Silly.

After our trip in Nebraska we journeyed further north to Wisconsin. Here we are with Nate, Jason's cousin, and Nate's wife, Summer in a local coffee shop. They taught us how to play cribbage which is now our favorite game. Also, on this particular day it was -40 degrees outside. I don't think I have been in that cold of weather in my life. Phew. After Eau Claire, Wisconsin we went to Milwaukee to visit Jason's sister, Colleen and her family. We had so much fun playing with our niece, Clara in the snow.

We have had such a great time and it isn't over yet. We are in Texas now and I plan on taking more pictures of our time here. I will post those next.

The Count Down Begins

Today is February 20, 2008 and we leave for Japan on March 19^th. It’s hard to believe it is now less than a month before we take off for Tokyo for the second time. This time when we go back to Japan we will be living about 50 minutes closer to Tokyo which puts Tokyo only about a 15 minute train ride away.

We will be teaching conversational English at an all girls Christian school. The school has about 1,000 Junior and Senior High students. We have already visited the school and we are looking forward to getting to know the students.

We are also excited to see our friends in Japan again. We have just recently committed to going on an adventure to India in August with several of our friends. I am looking forward to the adventure and getting to experience another culture. We also have hopes to explore some of China, Malaysia, Australia, New Zealand, Korea, or Thailand. It would be great to visit all of these countries but even just two would be wonderful.

I feel more comfortable about going to Japan this time around. The first time I was really nervous but this time I am super excited. I believe it has something to do with knowing what we are getting ourselves into this go-around.