John's officially graduated!

Yes, as of last Thursday, 24th August 2006, John has offically graduated from Taylor University with a degree in Engineering Physics, or Physics Engineering, or whatever it is that his professors were torturing him with!! We all went out last night, 20 of our friends & students from the campus, to celebrate at Outback Steakhouse down town. It was so much fun to be with a "free" John - the stress is gone, the work is gone, and hopefully, soon, the sickness will be gone too!

In about 3 weeks, I leave for Japan. And I admit, I don't think it's totally hit me yet, though I am really excited about going. I'm trying not to think about the fact that John and I will be doing the long-distance thing again (and this is super-long-distance, I'll be a whole day away from him!). But, I know, in the long-run, that it will be the best thing for the both of us. We had our first outreach meeting the other day and I'm starting to meet with the students one-on-one and I have to say that I have the best team ever! They really are such a great group, and for those of you who know Sarah Hayhurst (Jonathan Hamilton's girlfriend), yes, I have the pleasure of having her with me on outreach too!

Anyway, here's a pic of where we'll be staying near for the first few weeks in Tokyo, yes downtown Tokyo! I'm so excited. I've been stuck in cornfields for the last two years and now I'll finally be back in a real live city!

beaches galore

Dad just left yesterday and I was so sad last night, going back to his room and clearing out his fridge. I had such a good time with him, and it was SO nice to have him around, I really didn't want him to go. It was a great week of teaching and we've had really good feedback from the students about how much it was helpful to them. I'm so proud of my pops!

John and I had lots of fun carting my dad around to beach after beach, then to get some coffee, then go shopping, then go shopping again, then get some Coldstone Creamery - yummy... It was great to hit some fun beaches with him and relax with him in the afternoons when he was done teaching.

And, I'm not sure if I've posted this or not, but I am offically going to Japan! We're going to go together as one big group, and then after about 10 days in Osaka, I will take 6 wonderful students to Tokyo for the rest of the time. I am really excited in many ways about going, though sad too because John isn't coming with me. We really feel that it is time for him to take a well-needed break so he's going stay back on the island and relax a lot and maybe take a part-time job. We feel that it's right but it's weird to be going without him.

Other than that, things are going well here on the big island. The days are still hot and humid, the weeks are, well, just flying by, really. Before you know it, I'll be blogging from Japan! What the heck!?? I can't wait!

random musings...

I'm enjoying the healthiness that I feel after having sipped an entire "Original" size of Jamba Juice Strawberry Whirl. My new favourite flavour as I discovered that it's all Fruit. John and I are consisent Jamba Juice goers especially since he's been so sick recently and for the last few weeks I've been hitting a wall every day at about 3pm. It gives us the vitamins and energy we need for our day.

We return to the somewhat-stuffy DTS office that is lacking in fans in our part of the building, and get back to work. But, no, not DTS work, study. Macro-Economics for John and Italian 101 and Theory of Literature for me. We try and do an hour a day, but more recently it's definitely been more like 2 or 3. Fortunately this week is way more relaxed than last week when we had the "over-caffeinated" team from Tacoma, WA. Just kidding with the "over-caffeinated" part.

My dad arrives in two days to come speak on the school, he is speaking on the Father-Heart of God, and on Sunday he is cooking us a Swiss dinner of Roschti and meat. Yummy. I can't wait to see him and get to go to some beaches with him and John. Should be most wonderful. Here is a pic of Magic Sands beach that I went to a couple of weeks ago with our students when we almost got pulverised by the waves...though for some reason there are no waves in this pic:

John and I are making good use of our couples counseling, though last night was a little interesting. We're going through communication exercises from a workbook and he was in a stinky mood, so I got into a stinky mood and well, it was just amusing, looking back on it now!

Anyway, enough blogging for today.

brief...

So, I am going on outreach and John isn't. I'm too tired to write much right now because I've been working from 7am-9pm for the last few days... I'm excited though because John and I are going to skip (shhhh) the campus meeting tonight (that is never than 2 hours long) so we can go on a date.

Here's a pic of my small group:
It's me, Stephanie (Virginia), Plamena (Bulgaria) and April (Alaska)
We have lots of fun!