Ayami and Megumi visit Lyn and Craig

Ayami and Megumi arrived at the Sheraton Hotel on Sunday afternoon. All the host families were seated on the left side of the hotel auditorium when the students started marching in two at a time, in perfect unison. They wore their school uniforms of white blouses and dark blue blazers and skirts and sat in consecutive seats. One pair seemed confused when there was only one seat left in a row. They didn't want to split up, but didn't want to leave a gap either. Eventually the pair split up ...how sad. But the girls weren't. Smiling and giggling, each pair was matched up with their host families.

Ayami and Megumi seemed very hesitant to speak their first few words of English to us. I thought this might be a very long two weeks. But, after those first unsure hours, we have communicated quite well.

On Tuesday evening, there was a group picnic in a park in San Jose. We brought hot dogs to barbeque and brought watermellon as a dish to share with everyone else. After eating we played frisbee and walked over to a beautiful lake and watched some ducks.

We have had a lot of fun playing tennis and basketball. We took one trip where Ayami and Megumi bicycled and Lyn and I skated to a park near San Francisco Bay. We had a picnic there and watched wind surfers out on a nearby lake. One evening Ayami tried skating with us; she did very well!

One evening we drove down to Santa Cruz and rode some of the rides including two roller coasters. We had dinner at a restaurant on the pier and then walked out to the end to watch and listen to the sea lions. A couple of evenings we played card games and we also showed them how to play "paper" football.

One time I secretly placed a fake "poop" on their bed. When I heard the screams I knew they had found it. After showing them it was fake, they started laughing so hard. The next day they sheepishly wanted to know where I had gotten it so they could get some poop of their own. That was not the last of the poop, though. On their last day, after they had gotten on the bus, the teacher told us of her most memorable moment in class, when Ayami and Megumi were recounting the story in their best English in front of the class. However, they could not come up with an English word for poop that anyone understood. Finally, Ayami said "fake sh__" and everybody understood! The whole class erupted in laughter.

I will never forget Ayami throwing the frisbee at a right angle to where she wanted it to go. It flew right over the hood of a truck. The driver was nice about it though and just smiled.

The Sayonara party was beautiful. The kimonos were so colorful and the young ladies were so talented as we watched them sing and dance and play beautiful music. There was a clarinet trio with one of the girls fighting hard to keep from laughing thoughout their performance. One group sang "It's a Small World", but couldn't quite remember all the English words. It didn't matter because they were so adorable in their effort. Another time one group was performing, while another group of students in the audience was doing the "wave" in appreciation. The finale included everyone in a traditional Japanese dance. The food was delicious also.

Early Sunday morning the students boarded a bus to the airport. Before returning to Japan, they were flying down to Los Angeles for a few days of sightseeing: Disneyland (2 days), Universal Studios, etc.. On the evening before their flight to Japan, we received a surprise phone call from Ayami and Megumi! We were very touched.

We will miss them very much. We hope we will see them again some day. Sayonara!

p.s. I wish we had rented a Godzilla picture!