Hello from Asahikawa!​!

Hello friends and family!

Just in case you were worried after I said I was moving up further north in the frozen tundra, I am still alive. It was kind of an adventure to get here though... it took two days! We were supposed to come up here on the third at the begining of the transfer, but it turned out to be the first day of a big blizzard up near Asahikawa that took out all of the trains and buses heading up here.

We loaded our luggage into the car (carrying everything up and down three flights of stairs each time) and headed to the train station three times before successfully making it here. It was crazy! But we were able to have fun visiting some members and such in Ebetsu (Ebetsu was actually Tsuchida Shimai`s bean area) so it turned out to be ok. And the weather hasn`t been too bad here yet since then!

So far things here seem really busy and fun here. I`ve only been here for around a day and a half so far so I`m still learning the ropes, but so far it seem super fun!

I do have some unfortunate news though... the place that we use for e-mail in Asahikawa is this cool international library type place, but it`s only for 30 minutes and you can`t attach any pictures to the emails! So... we`ll be going back to the old school picture sharing style. If you think about it in a positive way though, we were super lucky for the past 10 months with lots of picture sending every week!

So we`ll be ok.

I only have a few minutes left, but first one more fun thing we had three days after Christmas -- a huge Messiah Concert! It`s the second time they`ve done it here. Basically Evans Shimai is super into music, so she helped organize a production of Handel`s Messiah at the Atsubetsu church. It had an orchestra and the choir, and they have been practicing since the summer so it was really excellent quality. Her daughters, who are all pretty much professional at the violin and singing, participated too. It was also a really great experience because I got to meet one of my favorite families who came to English classes in Atsubetsu for the first time in 6 months!

Ok, anyway I am out of time, but know that I love you !!!!