Chihiro- Part 2

July 25-26: Camping trip to Blue Lake

We were excited to take Chihiro camping. She said she camped with her family... but we weren't sure how rugged that had been. We kept trying to explain to her "No toilets..." but worried she would be shocked and/or mortified. But nope, she handled it like a champ.

First time fishing

She was the only one to catch a fish for a long time! 

 Chihiro braided the girl's hair and accessorized with real flowers. 

Up to this point we had enjoyed Chihiro's company and assumed she liked ours, but we hand't really connected until this trip. It was fun taking the time to learn more about her, her family, and her home. She showed us pictures and it was nice to really bond with her. 

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July 28th-- Fun day with the Japanese group
The family's were invited to attend the group's day activities whenever we chose to. We had gone to the Grotto up Payson canyon and played games at the park the 2nd day.
It didn't take long for a few of the male students to realize our little girls were really fun to tease and harass...Tianna and ESPECIALLY Adelia harassed them right back.  They didn't communicate with words because of the language barrier, but they sure could tease each other without saying anything. 

Those boys got excited whenever they saw the girls were tagging along.

This happened to be BYU campus tour day. 

 We went to the paleontology museum

 And the art museum

And walked through the beautiful campus

See, even the leader's took special interest in the girls. Nobody offered to carry me across campus :( 

Science center

 That's a whole lot of crystals! 

 An EFY group walked past (boys escorting the girls in typical EFY style) and these 3 wacky boys just linked up their arms with the boys as well and started walking. They didn't care what anyone thought about them! haha.

After we left BYU we went to a park and played game for several hours. It was really fun getting to know these kids from so far away. It was particularly cool for our daughters to be exposed to people different than us. 

July 30th.
The Payson Pool. 

July 31st

Chihiro wanted to make us dinner. Some ingredients she brought from home, some we bought and some we had to improvise with because America doesn't have them.
I am not very adventurous with strange foods, so i was a little nervous, but everything was delicious actually. Well... the seaweed salad wasn't a fave but the other dishes were very very good. 

*she was very  nervous to cook. I don't think she does much of it at home normally. 

The next morning Chihiro and the other students left for a whole week to travel to Arches, St. George, Zion National Park etc. We really missed having her around that week!

Although, I did NOT miss her laundry. Everything she wore went immediately into a laundry basket and brought to me. I thought maybe everyone in Japan did tiny loads of laundry every single day, but upon some investigation, they don't. I think Chihiro has some OCD tendencies. :)