the rainy season has begun...

... but I don't see any rain yet. One of our investigators has the TV on all the time - I honestly don't think she knows there is an off button. So we watched the news where the rain is pouring down in Tokyo, but I haven't seen any rain yet. The sky looks pretty scary, and other parts of Kyushu (you know, that Island I'm on) have gotten rain, but not us yet. I don't know what this big fuss is about.

Rainy season? What's that? When the rain starts, I pretty much plan on trashing my trashest shoes - the Easy Spirit ones that are anti-gravity. They aren't really trashy, but they are the easiest to dry off and are the most secure. Then I will keep my other shoes for nice things, like when general authorities come to zone conference.

Speaking of, Elder Choi from the Seventy came to our zone conference last week. It's pronounced `Chay` in case you're wondering. He's from Korea, but since he's a general authority, he knows English pretty well. The Zone conference is in English, and then they had the assistants to the president translate for natives. I wish I could tell you what I learned, but at the end of that, I felt like I did at the end of General Conference - just drained. But I shook his hand and stuff.

I even sang a song. That takes a little bit of explaining. There was a special musical number at the very beginning with a piano and a flute. It was a song with words, but obviously you can't sing and play the flute at the same time. So he thanked the sister for the musical number and asked one of the sisters to read the words. Well, I kinda volunteered - because that's what Americans are trained to do. You volunteer. But no one else did because they are Japanese, or have been in Japan long enough to almost be considered Japanese. So I volunteered to read the words, only I thought I was volunteering to sing. When that got straightened out, I ended up singing the song in the whole zone conference, mission president and wife, and general authority and wife. Yep, I have guts. Afterwards everyone thought I was awesome. That felt pretty cool. But we all know my voice isn't the prettiest one in the world, but I can carry a tune, especially if the flute is playing the tune as I sing. So yep, that was my zone conference. I would like to say I got the guts to do something like that from my father.

In other news, if you could email me some quick bread recipes that would be great. We don't really have an oven, but our microwave doubles as an oven. You just push the oven button. It's weird. So it's not big enough for a roast beef or anything, but I can cook bread. There is this whole culture here of giving people things...like banana bread, or little hand-made cards. I have never made so many birthday cards in my entire life. I have also never spent so much money on stickers in my entire life. But they're so cute!

Speaking of money, I got my bike fixed up for about $30. I think that's pretty good considering they had to order the part, replaced my pedals, and adjusted my bike stand so my bike wouldn't fall over when my basket was heavy. I don't see many more personal purchases in the near future. The rules are pretty clear about what comes from personal money and what comes from mission money. The only thing personal money is for is bike repairs, and souvenirs. Everything else like food and toiletries are covered by mission money. I think I will be good.

Other random things. Mom, it's Kaynor, not Kaner. Seriously! Since between letters is roughly a month, I'm not sure if she is going back to City Year this Summer. I think it's probably just a visit. I know a few of my friends read my blog, because I hear from the letters. But the blog isn't so much for their benefit, but for mine when I come back, you know? It's like a small little snapshot of each week. Reliving a year and a half is hard to do in a few sentences, so I have my blog to remind me step by step.

I wish I could send you pictures but these computers don't have an SD Card slot. I heard at the dollar store I can get a converter, but we haven't been there yet today. Maybe I'll send pictures for Father's Day. I tried to find something today when we were out, but Daddy is hard to shop for in Japan. Mommy would be easy, because the dollar store has aisles of scrapbooking things.

We went shopping with our investigator for P-day. Well, window shopping. She is the one that is slowly quitting smoking. Phew. I saw her smoke 4 cigarettes in about 3 hours, and that's a lot better than it used to be. She knows she needs to quit, but it's hard you know? Next is coffee and tea. Caffeine, as you know, is a real addiction.

Thank's for the update on the jobs. Good luck! I tell people that I:m from Kentucky because I don't know enough Japanese to explain how my family isn't really from anywhere in particular. Yep. That would be hard.

Well, I'm out of time, and things to talk about.

Sarah