day 29 --- AMAZING RACE!

6/25/09



Well today is the day we travel to our retreat and we have to get there by doing the AMAZING RACE! I was pretty excited when i heard about it because i am so competitive about things like that! SOOO we had a short meeting at 8 and then we were to take off at 9! Everyone couldn't leave till 9 because we had to allow our checkpoint people to get to their location! So as 9 came along we took off and had to get to a train station and solve a riddle in order to find the checkpoint. We found the intern at the point an had to solve 3 riddles in order to get the next one. At this point we were in 2nd place. So we had to get to the next station, find a statue, take a team photo with it and continue to the next checkpoint. As we got on the train to get to checkpoint number 2, we ditched a team and now got in the lead! So once arriving to the next station we had to climb a hill about half a mile or so up and found the next intern with the next clue. So we got our next clue and only had one more train ride to get to the retreat! We jumped on and were secure in our first place lead by at least one hour :) We arrived at the lake and it was breathtaking! So amazing and so beautiful! I can't wait for the next two days here :) So we beat all the teams to our cabin by an hour a half, earned 1000 yen and had "no cleaning" privileges for the weekend! We were able to pick our beds in the cabins first and it was great! I stayed with the 4 girls in a huge cabin while the other 10 girls stayed together in another cabin! they were both very nice cabins and then we went searching for the other 3 lost teams! Eventually they showed up and we had dinner together! Pizza :D and played volleyball (:D) and rode bikes around the beautiful lake! At night one of the guy interns took me out to the lake because i had yet to see Mt. Fuji. So i am thinking it is one of the mountains on the lake and he is like SILLY girl look up! So hello HUGE MT. FUJI! In the view were rows and rows of forests and grasslands and that was as far as I looked because the clouds started. WELL... little did I know above those clouds was FUJI! Breathtaking let me just tell you that :) So I sat there for a good while just thanking God for such a beautiful sight! It was a fun night and we ended up staying up till like 2 am playing phase 10 with 3 of the interns! :D

pr-
.interns and the retreat
.our contacts while we are out of tokyo
.our high school interns learning about their assignments this summer
.M family and having us on vacation
.the many people at this beautiful lake


haley michelle