Red Sox in Japan

Evan and I were lucky enough to be able to go to Tokyo to see the two Red Sox games against the A's. It was great. It is not a short flight; about 6 hours. Basically, door to door it is an all day proposition. Monday and Thursday were travel days, so we had Tuesday and Wednesday in Tokyo. The games were each night and during the day we managed to get around a bit. Tokyo is quite a bit different than Singapore because English is not so widely spoken. Still, with the help of the hotel, we found our way around on the subway and also were able to eat at some good restaurants.

On Tuesday, we made our way over to the Wellington Tokyo office to pick up the tickets. The office is right next to the Imperial Palace and after getting the tickets we went over to the palace grounds. It was really nice with some amazing stone walls - the biggest I have seen - see the pictures. Also, the highlight was seeing Mike Timlin and his family. He was nice enough to pose for a picture with Evan.

After the Imperial Palace, we went over to the Tokyo Dome. We spent a few hours outside the dome where they have an amusement park, a mall and souvenir stores. The roller coaster had an amazingly steep drop and both Evan and I declined to try it. The game that night was really good. Red Sox fans were everywhere. Most of the Japanese favored the Red Sox because of Dice-K, so it felt like a home game! Manny had a big night including admiring a long double (barely) off the top of the wall for a full 2-3 seconds before beginning to run. The Sox won in extra innings.

There was a big pre-game show with traditional Japanese dancing. There was one point where Youk was doing his running and stretching in the middle of the ceremony. I got it on video and have tried to post it here, but could not. I also posted it on youtube. If you search under "Youk" or "jedpetty", you should be able to find it. Also, the beer girls were great. They carry mini kegs in a backpack and pour your beer right at your seat when you order it. There were multiple girls selling different brands of beer and they were all dressed in the appropriate uniform.

On Wednesday, we went to the Meiji Shrine, which is the most important shrine in Tokyo. It is part of a huge park with amazing grounds. At the shrine, we were lucky to see a wedding ceremony with some traditional dress. Check out the pictures. Later is was back to the dome for game two, which was underwhelming. It was a bit boring and the Sox lost. Still, the atmosphere was special.

As for food, we had some great sushi and tempura. I also bought this street food which I think was basically a seafood cake. It was quite tasty.

We will post a few sets of pictures to try to show you all we have explained here.

Hi Everyone, I MISS YOU ALL SOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO MUCH!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! (SO DOES BOUER)

*LEAH*

Spain Interim

These are some pictures of my school interim trip to San Sebastian, Spain. This was about 3 weeks ago in the middle of February, sorry for being so late to update.

This was a class trip of about 20 kids who were mostly Sophomores and Juniors but some Freshman and Seniors. We stayed with a Spanish family at their house. Me and my roomate, Jordan, stayed with a single mother and her 15 year old son, Eneko. They had a small apartment but it was plenty of room. We got to stay in a loft area with two beds on it. There was also a TV and Playstation that we played with Eneko a few times.
During our first weekend we went to two cities; Pamplona and Bilbao. Both were within about an hour bus drive of San Sebastian and were much fun. In Pamplona we saw a famous street where the Running of the Bulls is held. There were many tourist shops on the street were you could buy shirts with bulls on them. We explored the city and saw some amazing architecture and mountains. The weather was about 50-60 degrees which I found very refreshing, most of the other kids were very cold even in their jackets. In Bilbao we visited the Guggenheim Museum which was really fun actually. I was thinking a museum would be boring but the art was really fun to see. We couldnt take pictures inside so I dont have any pictures from there.
The rest of the week in San Sebastian we followed the general schedule of Spanish classes for about 3 hours in the morning and then sightseeing in the afternoon. We did things such as aquariums, visit a seaport, and go to panoramic viewing areas. After we stayed as a group doing something for the day we could have some free time to explore the city. The food was amazing and I probably made up for all the bread I had not eaten while in Singapore. San Sebastian overall was an amazing city, it was right on the water and the shops were really fun. There were cafes and bakeries all over the place too. It was kind of sad to go back after just over a week, I definitely could have stayed there longer but it was nice to be back in my own room again. It was a long flight to France, then to Singapore but I was fortunate to only have much jet lag coming back to Singapore (the day after I slept to 1 in the afternoon). It was a great experience to get to go to Spain, my Spanish is still very much a beginner but it was fun to experiment and see how much I could actually speak in a Spanish speaking country.




Im having trouble uploading pics right now but I'll keep trying


-Evan
-Evan

Women's golf championship

Evan and I attended the final day of the HSBC Women's Championship at Tenah Merah Country Club in Singapore. It was a beautiful course, but the day did have a few thunder showers. Still, when the weather was good, we spent most of the time behind the 9th green. The 9th was a par 5 that almost every player went for in two. Because there was water guarding the left side, many players went into the bunker guarding the right front. A few players made it safely on the green, but had long eagle putts. We did not see any eagles, but lots of birdies.

Lorena Ochoa ran away with the win. She played in the final group with Annika Sorenstam and Paula Creamer. Earlier on, Natalie Gulbis came through. We used most of the pictures on her.

Leah's favorite part of Sri Lanka...

was going to a sea turtle hatchery where we were able to release 7 baby sea turtles to their home in the sea. Also here is a picture from the tea plantation (factory portion) and the moonstone mine.

More Sri Lanka Pictures

We also watched this man climb the coconut trees at our hotel to "clean" them up by trimming them. He climbed with no equipment except a loop of rope he held around his ankles to provide some support against the trunk of the tree. He was amazingly adept at going up and down the trees!

Sri Lanka Trip

Hi everyone, We hope all is well. This past weekend was Chinese New Year so there was no work or school on Thursday and Friday. Gong Xi Fa Cai. Enjoy the year of the Rat. As you know, Jane is in Switzerland. Evan left on Thursday for a school trip to Spain. Thus, Leah, Lauren and I decided to spend the long weekend in Sri Lanka. Sri Lanka is a teardrop shaped island just off of India. Most of the people are Sinhalese (sp?) and are Buddhists. However, about 11% of the population are Tamil and they are Hindu. There has been unrest in Sri Lanka for years as the Tamil want their independence and take terrorist action. We were somewhat hesitant to go, but the troubles are almost exclusively in the North and East and we went to the South coast. The language was not a big issue. A fair amount of english is spoken, but also Sinhalese and Tamil (see the picture of the Women's Prayer Room for all three languages)

It was a great trip. Sri Lanka is third world, so you see all the elements we have seen in other places: poor living conditions, lots of stray dogs, cows wandering around the streets and crazy driving by cars, motorcycles, tuk-tuks and bicycles, all while lots of pedestrians are around and no sidewalks! Tuk-tuks are 3 wheeled mini taxis, by the way.

However, you also see much beauty. We were on the southern coast in an area called Galle. We visited the Galle Fort, an old Danish fortress. Our hotel was lovely and was recently on the cover of Conde Nast Traveler. The people are very nice. They loved to talk with us and were willing to share their experiences of the Tsunami. The Tsunami hit Sri Lanka hard and 35,000 were killed.

Other highlights of our trip included seeing the stilt fishermen, a tour of a tea plantation, the only blue moonstone mine in the world and another surprise that Leah will write about.

It was a quick trip, but well worth it. Enjoy the photos.

Happy Valentine's Day

Jed and Lauren