A Day at the Zoo

During the week Nao had English classes and activities with the rest of her group who had come with her from 9 to 4 or 5 each day. They had classes on the language and our culture and did activities like visit the high school, the post office, fire and police stations, Kennecott Copper Mine, Park City, Temple Square, Real Salt Lake's soccer stadium, a retirement home, an afternoon at the pool and an afternoon with local youth. So, while Nao was away at class on Monday, the girls and I spent a day at the zoo with grandma and grandpa, a treasured summer outing for the girls.
The zoo is now the home of many dinosaur statues which the kids really enjoyed.

Jessica managed to steal her grandma's hat for a bit...
We always love the bird show. I think it is the girls' favorite thing about the zoo ... that and giraffes of course.




After the bird show, we managed to catch the end of the elephant show. They are trying to teach the baby elephant to play in the water. For some reason, the adult elephants do not enjoy the pond that the zoo built for the elephants so they are encouraging the baby to play in the water (startig with this little pool) with hopes she will play in the pond as she gets bigger.


The big elephants reach up high to get their food ... good exercise and it keeps it from the baby. The baby is mostly still nursing and eats the left overs that fall to the ground.
Next, was the reptile house ... which my dad took the girls into because my mom and I don't care for the snakes. Then came the big cats ... unfortunately they were all sleeping.
Finally, our favorite ... the giraffes.

Another successful day at the zoo!

Dinner American style ... barbecue

Sunday the girls broke out the origami... they spent quite awhile after church folding butterflies, dogs, frogs, crickets, little purses and Alyssa even managed a swan using the book that Nao gave them. What a treat for them ... a gift of her culture that they can use long after she is gone.

What better way to welcome a visitor to the USA then barbecue with good old hamburgers and hot dogs? Since Jenny and Chris also had an exchange student, we invited them over for dinner on Sunday night ... after we watched the USA vs Japan Soccer game in the theater. The game was great despite the final results ... although Nao would say that was the best part. :)

So the Meeks came over and we taught Nao and Sakina how to barbecue.


After our barbecue, we decided to go for a walk to visit another family in our neighborhood who was also hosting an exchange student. But before we got far, Nao noticed our neighbors little dog... so we stopped to play for a minute.
We wanted Nao and Sakina to meet the Cardons since we would all be carpooling together. The Cardons weren't expecting us but were sitting on their back porch and invited us to join them. They have chickens which were roaming around the yard. The kids all enjoyed that.
It was fun to watch the kids all interact with the three exchange students. They played tag, basketball and on the swingset together.
Then they taught us another hand game that they play in Japan. The goal is to get your opponent to put 5 fingers up on each hand. To play, you add. You each start with one finger up on each hand. Player 1 taps the hand of player 2 which adds player 1's one finger to the one finger already up on player 2's hand. So, player 2 now has 2 fingers up on the hand that was tapped and just 1 on the other hand. Player 1 still has 1 finger up on each hand. Player 2 now uses one hand to tap the hand of one of player 1's hands. If they use their one finger, player 1 adds that one finger to their one finger already up. If player 2 used the hand with 2 fingers, player 1 adds that 2 fingers to their one, making 3. If a player has 3 fingers up and is tapped with 3 more, that makes six, so the player holds up one finger. The game continues until someone has five fingers up. That hand is then removed from the game. The game continues until one player loses both hands, leaving the other player a winner. Steve played several times and could never win...
When it was time to go, our kids took off on their scooters and bikes but we managed a picture with the Cardon kids, Nao, Mami and Sakina.
We headed back to our house, where we enjoyed some yummy brownies. The girls thought they were pretty rich. Another successful day...

Weeeeeeee......

Our exchange student, Nao (pronounced now), asked for a few things in her first letter. She told us she wanted to go to a movie or concert, an amusement park, and a handball game... we met her requests, except the handball game. We had a hard time finding that one. But, she brought one for us instead - we watched a DVD of her playing a game last fall. :)

Day 1... Nao arrived Friday night and we figured what better way to keep her awake all day on Saturday then to take her to ride roller coasters! It definitely worked! We started the day with Alyssa and Nao on JetStar.
She loved it! She was the perfect roller coaster rider ... arms up and screaming the whole time.
The Samurai was our next stop ... Alyssa wimped out and wouldn't ride, so I did. :)
Since the Tay and Jess can't ride the bigger rides, we split up. Me, Alyssa and Nao headed for the big rides while Steve took Jess and Tay to ride some smaller rides. Next stop, The Bat...
After the Bat and the new ride, BomBara, we bumped into Steve and the girls. He had convinced the little girls to try BomBara. THEY LOVED IT!! Yikes, my little girls are riding the big rides ... just wasn't ready for that. But it was hot, so we took a break and headed for the water park. So glad that Nao's knee was doing well enough that she could traipse around Lagoon and get wet and cool off in the pool.
After the water park, the girls all wanted to ride BomBara again. Since the roller coasters remind Steve and I that we aren't as young as we once were, we sat back and watched.
Although it was exciting that the little girls could ride the big rides, it made me a little sad. No traditional picture of the girls riding the little kid boats that have been there since Steve was a kid. But, it does mean no more ridiculously slow moving lines in the kiddieland. And it meant that we could all stick together and they'd ride all the rides. But first, we still rode the carousel.


Off to Mousetrap!! This was Jessica's favorite ride of hte day! She loved it! Taylor loved it and wanted to ride again right away. But we did convince her to try some other ones first.

Spider was next!
Tay loved Spider. But next came Wicked. Alyssa rode it last year and convinced Jessica and Taylor to give it a try. She promised Jessica a "treat" if she didn't like it. So off we all went! Steve sat on one end, with Jessica, then Tay and me. If you don't know what Wicked is ... it is a propulsion launch so you go from a stop to high speed almost instantly and you go from a dark tunnel to staring straight up into the sky as you shoot vertical into the air then peak at the top and go straight down before you spiral into some loops. ... I'd give a lot to have a picture of their faces as we rode this ride. Taylor laughed and giggled and screamed with joy all the way through.... a real adrenaline junky! Jessica, on the other hand, lived up to her "baby of a million faces" nickname we gave her when she was a baby. Steve looked over at her when we reached the top at the beginning of the ride and as she looked over the edge and realized she was going to be heading straight down, she didn't look panicked or scared ... just pure MAD! She got this angry look like "nobody told me about this!" expression. It was priceless When the ride stopped, she had a very stern, grumpy expression. When we asked her what she thought, she angrily told us "I'm mad at Alyssa. She owes me a treat." Steve and I both cracked up laughing ... which made her even more angry.
All in all, a wonderful day! We all enjoyed it so much, we agreed it would be fun to bounce back a 2nd day! :) So, more to come!

After Lagoon we went to a late night dinner at Applebees. While we waited for our food, Nao taught us a hand game called Yubisuma. Yubi means thumb. Everyone puts their fists into the center of the table. Five people means 10 thumbs. One player says yubisuma and then a number. The number represents the player's guess of how many thumbs the players will all put up. As the player says yubisuma #, all the players tap their hands to yu-bi-su-ma and then they each put up zero, one or two thumbs as the player says their guess. If the player said 5 thumbs and 5 thumbs go up, then that player removes one hand and the next player continues. If their guess is wrong, than they keep both hands and it is the next players turn. Play continues with the next player saying "yubisuma" and their guess. When a player has guessed correctly 2 times that player wins. Our kids loved it. I'm sure we will play it for a long time to come.

It’s a Girl!!

quick little note ... didn't realize I was uploading the smaller pics on the previous few posts ... don't like it as well so I'm going back to the bigger ones...

Our family added a girl this week … no, we didn’t concede on getting a pet, we got an exchange student! (Had to copy this title from my friend’s blog about her exchange student … I wasn’t feeling creative so copying will have to do!).

About two months ago, my friend, Jenny, mentioned that she was signing up to host a Japanese exchange student for a two week “Homestay” program. We liked the idea so we agreed to host one also. We have been very excited for her to come. We got a letter from her in early June. Her name is Hasui Nao and she is 17 years old. (They write family name first so her first name is Nao (pronounced like Now). We wrote her back and didn’t hear from her for awhile … until this week. She had actually hurt her knee and spent 17 days in the hospital which prevented her from emailing us. The girls were just as excited as Steve and I. While she is here, we are her “family” but she does go to school most days from 9-4. Her school includes English language and customs classes and activities like field trips to the post office, police department, Kennecott Copper Mine, a senior citizen home, Real Salt Lake’s stadium, Salt Lake City, Park City and Bridal Veil Falls. She speaks a good amount of English but their goal is to learn more English and experience our family, culture and language as much as possible.

She arrived Friday. Her name is Nao and she is 17. Steve was on a business trip and his flight got delayed so he didn’t get to go with us when we picked her up. The girls made her a sign at my mom’s house to hold when she arrived.

They arrived on a bus from the airport. As each student got to the door of the bus, they would call out the host name. As Nao got to the top of the stairs, she saw our banner and we saw her knee brace… recognizing each other.



We introduced ourselves and then loaded her luggage in the van and came to our house. We showed her the house and then went to the grocery store to pick up some things we needed and to get some ice cream! She was surprised how big our store is, how big the packages of food are and how much food we buy at one time. In Japan, they go to the store daily rather than stocking up for several days at a time.

Back at our house, Nao shared some souvenirs that she had brought us us. The girls and I LOVED all the wonderful things she gave us. Little purses and fans for each of the girls, erasers shaped like food, a green tea soap, two bamboo cushions for chairs (or to sit on the floor with), a beautiful apron, oven mit and fabric napkins, a sign that says “No Soliciting”, a little purse, a bank shaped like a Japanese abacus, a ceramic cat that brings good fortune/luck and lots of Japanese candy. She also gave the girls paper balloons and an origami book with some origami paper.

This picture of the candy she brought us was taken on Sunday (after we'd already tried several different ones). Alyssa and Jessica loved the whistles shaped similar to a lifesaver. Taylor actually like a candy that is similar to a gummy bear. I personally liked the rock candy (in the little round containers in this picture). And the tiny cupcakes are super yummy!


The girls had a lot of fun playing with the paper balloons. They played “volleyball” in the living room with Nao … bouncing the balloons back and forth and giggling. It was fun to see.



Steve arrived home about 45 minutes after everyone else went to sleep so he got to meet Nao on Saturday.