As Hot As Possible

ARI is just about finished putting up new buildings. When we arrived last year, The kitchen, dining hall, library, and classroom were just being finished. Now the men's dorm is nearly finished. Also the pigs have a new dormitory too! The last building project, the chapel. we started this week! On Tuesday we all traveled to the site of a hundred year old Japanese farmhouse where we began to dismantle it. We are going to use the material from that old farmhouse to build the chapel after a similar fashion like the Japanese farmhouse. We all went and spent the morning removing walls!



Later that day we picked up our friends from college, Patrick and Nanami! We graduated with these two from UCA. Patrick and Nanami met at college and now they are engaged! Patrick is now studying environmental literature in a graduate program in Nevada and Nanami has been working in Tokyo. He came to visit her and her family for a month. So they caught a train from Tokyo one afternoon to visit us and see ARI!



Knight Field Update: We harvested our modest planting of potatoes. We figure they needed a little more nutrients or sunlight to grow larger. We'll eat the tiny ones anyway. After that we just put out some sunflower seeds and let some red perilla volunteer.

Jenny is packing as I am writing this. We still have fourteen days left here at ARI, but the new Men's Dormitory is finished. So we are going to move out of the Missionary house where we have been living ever since they tore the old men's dorm down, and move into the new couples housing up at Men's Dorm for a few days before we fly off. Jenny and I are happy about this because we'll have all of our stuff together when it comes time to leave for good.

The Asian Rural Institute has been our home for a whole year. We have made it our home. By now, when we get off the train at Nishi-nasuno station, we get that, "Ah, we've made it home," feeling. It is so strange to think that in a few days we'll get on the train at that station and never come back.

Though, this week we feel like we have been far away from Japan and ARI. Our friend, Soren, invited us to stay a few days at his cabin in Nagano. It is right on the lake in a place called Nogiri. Soren's grandfather was a missionary here in Japan and he bought the cabin. There is an association of Christian missionaries here that handle the cabins around the lake. In the summer time, Soren works there as a lifeguard!



So he drove Jenny, Kelly, and I up there on Wednesday. We spent a few days just relaxing with him and his friends. The motto for the weekend was, "as hot as possible." Everything was!