At the Des Moines airport: the journey begins!

Landing at San Francisco!

We hear lots of speakers to help us learn about the experience.

Finally, I get to meet the group of people who will travel with me to Shizuoka.

We had a lovely meal and presentation in the evening. This is a group of people who are also traveling to Shizuoka.

...and here are more people from our group. There are 19 of us going to Shizuoka together. I am the techie nerdiest one in the group. Surprised?

Monday Morning.. Click for more pictures!

Dear students:

I am so excited to be here in San Francisco! The weather is beautiful. We have a wonderful view of San Francisco Bay from our hotel window. I am staying tonight with one of the other teachers from Iowa, so we are trying to decide how to share our pictures and videos after we get back home.

Our first meeting was a brief introduction on how to act in Japan. They assured us that we will have an experienced guide who will help us with understanding Japanese customs. We spent a lot of time discussing how bathing in different. I will tell you more about that......later!!

I also have the name of the family that I will stay with: Hoshihisa and Masae Yabe family. They have three children, two sons (ages 9 and 6) and one daughter (age 4). Iwill stay with them for one night in a couple of weeks.

I leave for Tokyo at 2:00 PM in Pacific Time. We cross the International Date Line, so we actually arrive in Tokyo a day later!

I will try to send more pictures later. I hope I can have a good internet connection in Tokyo!

Work hard in school! Let me know what is happening around Iowa. Ms. Hegstrom