Happy Birthday America!

Well it is already July 5th in the land of the rising sun, but have no fear America I definitely celebrated your birthday! Well, a lot of Americans and non-Americans did!

This is kind of a funny story since nothing really went as planned.

SO, where shall we begin. Right, we shall begin with the weather of the past month, which has been rainy...nonstop. This past week it has been especially rainy, so much so that 2 landslides occurred on the mountain making the campus inaccessible from downtown. This forced the campus to cancel classes all day Tuesday! (So awesome)

So Wednesday rolls around and a Facebook group pops up looking to throw a big party in celebration of America's independence, so of course I am all for it. This party is scheduled to take place downtown in a vaguely non specified location where food would be cooked en masse, and beer would be distributed, also en masse. Well Vega, Kelvin (I interviewed them both), and I ventured downtown around 5:00pm thinking we knew which bus stop to get off of.



We didn't. We got off the bus about 2 miles too early and ended up just walking the rest of the way. Luckily at this point the rain had cleared and it was a surprisingly nice evening. Here are two pictures I took of the mountains.

So as we continued walking aimlessly down the shoreline hoping against hope we would discover the rendezvous point we decided it would be a pretty good idea to use our cell phones to get in contact with the rest of our group. We then discovered precisely where we were supposed to meet up and, alas, we successfully found our compadres!

There were about 10 of us at this point relaxing on the beach, waiting for even MORE people to meet up with us. Here is a video of us waiting. We were pretty bored at this point, so I tried to spice things up by filming them. The results were....well you decide.

So at this point we were finally contacted by another of our American friends Thom, who I have mentioned before, and he informed of us of another cookout location. So, with great sadness in our hearts, we departed the beach and headed up river with promises of greater spoils!

What we arrived to was NOT a disappointment! We met up with 10 or so other friends, most of which were not American, but were more than happy to join us in our merriment.

Behold my amazing photography skills.

Upon arrival

Too much movement!

WE. DISCOVERED. FIRE.

At this point everyone was in a great mood, assuming that we had found our cookout location.

We were wrong....again.

Right as we got our fire going. Two very non intimidating police officers showed up. These two police officers who were not carrying any weaponry, informed us that we could not cook our food because open flames are strictly forbidden in Beppu city.

So, did we let this news ruin our good time? OF COURSE NOT. We simply relocated to a park close to a friends apartment, who then proceeded to cook a lot of our food for us in his kitchen and ferry it out to us one plate at a time. What a guy!

Unfortunately this was not the end of our troubles. See, about 6-7 members of the full group never made it to the park. Some form of miscommunication led them to believe we were relocating BACK to the beach. So, where should we have gone from here? We SHOULD have told them to come to us because WE were near the apartment cooking our food. But, no, we did not do that. The "groups choice" was to walk a good mile and a half back to the beach to meet up with the 6-7 lost souls.

So we did, but only a few of us made it all the way to the beach. So, again, we were extremely separated! However the group at the beach had found some way to grill up some burgers before we arrived! So I was able to eat two small burgers! They tasted like heaven. Here is a random picture of me with two umbrellas hooked to my belt loops. One umbrella had light reflectors giving the appearance that I am getting attacked by a ghost.

After hanging out at this location for about an hour, it was about time to head to the bus stop to catch the last bus up to campus. Thus ends the story of our wonderfully hectic and unorganized cross city July 4th adventure!

But wait, the story doesn't end there. See my diet the past month has mainly consisted of noodles, eggs, fruits, milk, juice, and bread. Very little red meat since red meat is expensive and I am poor.

So at about 3am...my stomach decides to have a showdown with the red meat. My stomach, my sleep schedule, and my happiness lost this showdown for about 2 hours as I writhed in pain.

MORAL of this story. If you haven't had red meat or unhealthy food for a long period of time, DON'T GORGE YOURSELF ON ALL OF IT IN ONE NIGHT.

:) here is your song of the day, in honor of AMURRICA. It's not what you think, sadly.




HA!