Ok, after about 6 hours of sleep in a real bed and a nice shower, I think I'm awake and ready to continue writing about Friday. I was finally hungry when I woke up and I was actually feeling pretty good, not great, but pretty good. I walked the 100 yards uphill to the cafeteria and was exhausted. Ok, I guess I wasn't as good as I thought, but I was still pretty good. I don't remember what the lunch was but it must have been good because I ate it pretty quickly and had a chance to table-hop again and hear from several people about the rec that I had slept through. I took the rest of the day pretty easy and just hung out in the lounge and played Blockus (or however you spell that game) and met several new people like Tron (that's not really his name but I can't remember what his real name is) and Lauren. I met several other people in there but I can't remember their names because I'm horrible with names.
Over all, I was surprised to find that even though Friday was a little slower for me than other days as I drank five bottles of water and tried to save and build up my energy, I actually felt more fulfilled and more content with that day than any other. That's not to say I feel I wasted any day, I just feel better about Friday for some reason.
The only other thing I remember very well about Friday is dinner. We ate on the roof of the cafeteria where several of the campers cooked meat and veggies for us to put on our rice. That freshly-cooked meat was delicioso. :D *yum*!
Saturday was interesting. We had to be completely packed up and have the rooms all cleaned and passed inspection by 2pm. We managed to get most of the campers packed out of their rooms by 9am and the Hume staff went through the rooms while the campers were in morning chapel and we checked to make sure that all the blankets, pillows, and mats were folded and put away just right. The Japanese are very meticulous about these things. What bothered all of us is that whatever we left is what the next group got. There was no staff to come through and clean after us. I'm not going to go into too great of detail but that gets ridiculous and redundant. I'll just say that we went through every room at least 3 or 4 times before we finally learned exactly what they were looking for. The blankets had to be folded just right and stored in the proper orientation with the single fold outwards. For the rooms that had beds, the beds had to be swept off of sand and whatnot and then the floors swept (there were no vacuum cleaners).
Overall, it really wasn't too ridiculous what they were asking for us to do. What really drove us crazy is the Japanese way of telling us what to do. If they found a single thing wrong, they would tell us that it was wrong, show us how to fix that one thing, then have us go through all the rooms and make sure it was ok. Then they'd go down to item number 2 on the list and show us we had done that thing wrong and tell us to check all the rooms again. They wouldn't just tell us everything that we needed to do and check it all at once. It got to be quite frustrating.
By 2pm, we had loaded all the bags into a large box truck that Buddy had brought over and all the campers and staff (except those driving vehicles) started walking down the mountain. It really wouldn't have been bad at all if it weren't for that fact that I had been to stupid to ditch my laptop bag and backpack and it was the first sunny day since we'd arrived in Japan. I was probably carrying 15 or 20 pounds on my back which was completely unnecessary. When we finally got down to the port, I dropped my bags and followed the crowd of kids to a nearby store that was selling ice cream. The ice cream that I bought was really good but I don't remember what it's called.
We all boarded the ferry and enjoyed that last hour that we all had together. That hour went way too fast. I'm really glad that I will be seeing the Kadena kids again tonight when we go to their youth group because the week was way too short (and Shelby still has the jacket that I let her borrow on Friday when she was complaining about being cold).
When we finally got to Kadena, we loaded our stuff into vans. The rec gear we put in a van that we won't be opening again until Wednesday and our personal gear was shuttled all the way across the street to the Shogun Inn where we are staying. After dropping our stuff in our rooms, we all went to Chili's and ate a real American meal (or Mexican) with forks instead of chopsticks.
Well that pretty much brings us up to date. At noon today, Buddy is going to take us to eat lunch at a really good sushi place where Tiger Woods comes just to eat sushi because it's so good.
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