Well, the trip is officially over so I'm sure that just about nobody is reading this anymore. However, if anyone out there is, I'd like to let you know that I just uploaded a whole ton of photos to my PhotoBucket account. There are really a lot, so don't expect to look through them all in under half an hour. Better get out the popcorn!
Check it out here http://s197.photobucket.com/albums/aa149/russellchamp/Japan%20Trip/
Oh, I almost forgot. Here's also a link to the "Supporter Thank-you letter" I just sent out. http://docs.google.com/Doc?id=dg923g5s_1cjpwhw
Thursday, August 9, 2007
Tuesday, July 10, 2007
Home again!
Hey all!
First off, thanks for all your prayer and support over this entire trip and over Steve as he was feeling bad a few nights ago. Miraculously, Steve's fever of 103F broke the very next morning and didn't affect our flight whatsoever.
Yeah, so I'm back home now, yaaaah! This trip was TREMENDOUS! Hopefully now that I have more free time, I'll be able to post some photos of the trip. Also, PLEASE send me emails or leave comments here on the blog to tell me what you think.
First off, thanks for all your prayer and support over this entire trip and over Steve as he was feeling bad a few nights ago. Miraculously, Steve's fever of 103F broke the very next morning and didn't affect our flight whatsoever.
Yeah, so I'm back home now, yaaaah! This trip was TREMENDOUS! Hopefully now that I have more free time, I'll be able to post some photos of the trip. Also, PLEASE send me emails or leave comments here on the blog to tell me what you think.
Sunday, July 8, 2007
Important Prayer Request!
Hey all! Right now we're still in Kore, packing for our return flight to the States early tomorrow morning. However, there is an urgent prayer request that I have for you all. One of my team members, Steve, is feeling quite bad right now; suffering from shortness of breth, weakness, and several other symptoms. He has been feeling poorly for the past few days but he's really feeling it now.
Please pray for his quick recovery and restoration to full health. Please... wherever you are right now, send up a quick prayer for him. I know that nothing is impossible for God so your prayers are greatly appreciated right now.
Thanks!
Please pray for his quick recovery and restoration to full health. Please... wherever you are right now, send up a quick prayer for him. I know that nothing is impossible for God so your prayers are greatly appreciated right now.
Thanks!
Thursday, July 5, 2007
Debriefing
Ok, so we're still in Bussan, Korea now. CM 2007 has finished officially and we've moved out of our hotel, the Seacloud, to another one for the next three days for debriefing. This one is called the "Rivera Hotel" and seems quite nice. It's also perty nice! The hotel actually dosen't start in the building until the 9th floor. Below is this shopping mall type place with overpriced clothes and such because they know tourists are staying there. I'm staying on the 16th floor in 1604 with David and Bo. That's nice because in the Seacloud I had to share a room with Gen, Chad, Beau, and Kris with only one bed! Wait... did I mention that before? I can't remember now, I'm a bit tired. We stayed up until like 3 or 4 am talking and stuff with some of the guys other friends from USC (University of Southern California). Ya know, I still am really disapointed that nobody else from Lawrence Tech came to CM07. I was the only one hear who had to REPRESENT!! YEA-UH! Uuurrmmm-hrmmm... anyway, we have 3 days left for debriefing before we fly back to the States. According to Greg (the team leader), we'll be ariving in LA 2 hours after leaving Bussan! And most of that will be the layover in Japan!
Sheeeeewwwww... I think I'll head back to my room now. I have to relax a bit before 6pm (in 4 1/2 hours) when debriefing will actually start. We get to debrief with the far east Asia team so that'll be cool.
Oh, wait! I just heard that they're giving out our per diem now so I have to run! I'll write later if I get a chance. I REALLY want to talk more about the conference!
Sheeeeewwwww... I think I'll head back to my room now. I have to relax a bit before 6pm (in 4 1/2 hours) when debriefing will actually start. We get to debrief with the far east Asia team so that'll be cool.
Oh, wait! I just heard that they're giving out our per diem now so I have to run! I'll write later if I get a chance. I REALLY want to talk more about the conference!
Monday, July 2, 2007
CM2007
Hey y'all, this is Russell comming to you from Bussan (aka Pussan), South Korea! I don't have much time to write this because we're limited to the time we can spend on the cafe computers so I'll have to make this quick.
We arived in South Korea 3 nights ago late in the afternoon and made our way to the hotel we're staying at. It's called the "SeaCloud" and is right next to the beach! Just earler today we visited the beach and swam in the Japanese Sea (or gulf or something...). It was really cool! The waves were a lot of fun to swim in.
Yesterday, we had our first real day of conference. I went to 2 seminars and met a lot of new people. Oh, worship was GREAT, too. We were in an audience of about 10,000 people and we're expecting to have more later today as the Korean CCC students register and such.
OH! Before I forget, I was told to advertise the website that they are right now running. Apparently they're recording everything and broadcasting it all live! You can see the live video stream from the website at http://www.cm2007.net
I was also told about another one of the sites they have that has a bit more of a missions focus. Check out www.everystudent.com Well, I think that's it, at least.
Anywho, I got to go. I'm over the time limit! I'll write later!
We arived in South Korea 3 nights ago late in the afternoon and made our way to the hotel we're staying at. It's called the "SeaCloud" and is right next to the beach! Just earler today we visited the beach and swam in the Japanese Sea (or gulf or something...). It was really cool! The waves were a lot of fun to swim in.
Yesterday, we had our first real day of conference. I went to 2 seminars and met a lot of new people. Oh, worship was GREAT, too. We were in an audience of about 10,000 people and we're expecting to have more later today as the Korean CCC students register and such.
OH! Before I forget, I was told to advertise the website that they are right now running. Apparently they're recording everything and broadcasting it all live! You can see the live video stream from the website at http://www.cm2007.net
I was also told about another one of the sites they have that has a bit more of a missions focus. Check out www.everystudent.com Well, I think that's it, at least.
Anywho, I got to go. I'm over the time limit! I'll write later!
Thursday, June 28, 2007
Leaving Japan
Well, we're finally leaving. I feel sad, yet happy at the same time. It's hard to explain...
Right now we're finishing our packing and cleaning the apartments. We meet in from of the building in about 1 hour 20 minutes at 12:30. I think we have a train or something to catch at 1pm or so. I do know that we leave on our plane from Narita airport at 6pm so that should give us plenty of time to get there and checked in and such.
As you may or may not know, my team and I will be going to South Korea on the next part of our overseas trip. There we'll partake in CM (Campus Missions) 2007 (a conference/praise/fellowship celebration) with like 20,000 other Christians from Korea and around the world! It'll be great!
I got to go now! Some of my roomies were late in getting up and I think I'll have to help pick up the slack. I'll try to write from Korea. Toodles!
Right now we're finishing our packing and cleaning the apartments. We meet in from of the building in about 1 hour 20 minutes at 12:30. I think we have a train or something to catch at 1pm or so. I do know that we leave on our plane from Narita airport at 6pm so that should give us plenty of time to get there and checked in and such.
As you may or may not know, my team and I will be going to South Korea on the next part of our overseas trip. There we'll partake in CM (Campus Missions) 2007 (a conference/praise/fellowship celebration) with like 20,000 other Christians from Korea and around the world! It'll be great!
I got to go now! Some of my roomies were late in getting up and I think I'll have to help pick up the slack. I'll try to write from Korea. Toodles!
Tuesday, June 26, 2007
More detailed Disney Land trip update
Well, last Saturday a bunch of the people on my team and I went to Tokyo Disney. It was pretty fun, but the best parts were those spent with my friends.
Anyway, we had to take a train to get there. It was about an hour, hour and a half ride. The train stop that we got off on seemed to have the sole purpose of being the Disney Land stop. There was even a little Disney souvenir vending machine at the station. Heh, I guess that's for some last-minute purchases. When we got off the train (along with the vast majority of the people on it) we had to walk along this long, elaborate outdoors bridge then down some stairs to the main gate. At this particular location, there is both "Disney Land" and "Disney Sea" (whatever that's supposed to mean). We went to just the normal "Disney Land". The price was 5,800Y (which is about 50$USA). Once we finally got into the park, my friends made a beeline towards Space Mountain where we waited in line for quite some time. An hour or two in the sun is really not a fun experience when it's not intentional. Luckily, I remembered to bring some sun screen. Space Mountain was really cool! For those of you who don't know what it is, it's basically a little roller coaster all indoors and in the dark. It was a lot of fun because you didn't know which way you were going to go. I found out later that Space Mountain was the favorite of most of my friends that went. I think it is mine, too! While we were in line, one of the people in our group (Heather, I think...?) took all of our park passes and went to get some "Fast Passes" for Splash Mountain. Basically on each ride there are two lines. One for the "normal" people., and one for the people who got fast passes. The fast pass line is about 1/4 the size of the normal line but after you get a fast pass it only becomes active after a bit more than it would have taken you if you had stood in line the entire time.
After riding Space Mountain, we visited the Pizza Port (yes, same as the one in Toy Story) and got (duh!) pizza! We hit up the Haunted Mansion after that. They had a bunch of cars that would slowly take you through the ride into different rooms that had things that would either pop up or make sounds or just act creepy. I thought the entire think was a bit hokey but I enjoyed trying to find out how they did certain special effects. I think it was finally after that that we went on Splash Mountain. That was a lot of fun. The theme was brier rabbit and went through the story. The best part was the big drop at the end. They also took a picture at the bottom of the drop. My train/log decided to do YMCA. It was fun, cuz the ride was playing "Zippie-de-do-dah" in Japanese near the end but my friends and I were singing it at the top of our lungs in English. At one point we passed some of the people looking down at us so we all waved while singing and they just snickered at us. Japanese people are so funny sometime.
After all that we all went to get Fast Passes for Thunder Mountain in "Western Land." The park was divided into like 4-5 parts and the part that is normally called "Frontier Land" is called "Western Land" here. It was there that I remembered that I had brought my umbrella with me. I have to say that I think that was the first time I've used a personal umbrella for shade and not rain protection. Anyway, while we were waiting for our Fast Passes to become active, some of the guys and I went over to "Tom Sawyer's Island" to play sardines. Steve (aka "Daywalker") was the first to hind but I think that was a bad thing cuz he has almost no inhibition on places _not_ to go. After over an hour of looking for him unsuccessfully, he found us. It ends up that he hid past the fence, behind an artificial rock, in a bush, near a speaker at the top of the island for about 40 minutes then got bored and hid over a fence in a bush by the lake for the next 30 minutes before being found by a security guard. He said the guard was real cool about it and just asked him to get out of the bush and when he made the folded hands by his head gesture the guard went "Oooh! Sleeping!"
When we went back across the little river/lake to the main park we met up with some of the other people and did some other stuffs. I distinctly remember eating turkey legs, visiting the castle, and taking "jump" photos but a lot was a blur as well. Oh, by the way, the castle was the Cinderella castle, for those who care. Under the castle, they had a Disney themed glass blown trinkets and statues store. It was funny, but three people on our team received a little glass pig (really guys, they ARE pigs!) bough from there for our June 24, 1/2 Christmas Secret Santa gift exchange all unbeknownst to each other. After it got a bit darker, we watched as the big lights parade go by through the middle of the park. They had all the ost prominent characters from Disney movies represented like Cinderella, Peter Pan, Snow White, etc but also some of the newer ones like Boo, Mike and Sully from "Monsters, Inc." and Nemo from "Finding Nemo". When the parade finished, everyone went over in front of the castle for the fireworks display only to find out after another 10 minutes of waiting that it was canceled. A LOT of people were bummed out about it and quite vocal in expressing their dismay. So, instead of a fireworks display, we went of a number of the kiddie rides. The first one we went on was the Peter Pan ride. They put you in a boat-shaped car suspended from an overhead track and "flew" you over these gorgeous dioramas of scenes from the Peter Pan movie. My favorite on in there was the "above London" scene. They had tons of little houses, Big Ben, the London Bridge, and even little laser pointer dots on the ground to simulate cars. I think that one was my 2nd favorite ride. The next kiddie ride we went on was the Snow White ride. Each car held 4 people but we had an odd number of people so I sat alone in the bench right behind Cherie and Maria. It was SO funny how they screamed at everything that popped up at every turn. I think they got more scared there than in the Haunted Mansion! I basically laughed the entire time. The last ride we went on was the "Small World" boat cruise thing. They had the little singing children, doll things throughout the ride all dressed in stereotypical outfits and such. After the ride was almost over, I leaned back and asked my friends "Hey! Where's the Americans kids?! I want to see the overweight kids waving hamburgers!" It seemed I spoke too soon, though as there were some Americans: a cowboy kid and a native American kid standing right above the final tunnel of the ride. Haha!
Psheeeewwww! It was perty fun there, yup, yup! ...dang this took a long time to write... nearly an hour! In an case, I got to get going. We have English lunch at Gakusuyuin today. Yesterday was the last day we spent at Waseda. (tear...) I can hardly believe it. I was so sure that we'd be fed up with this trip after about 3-4 weeks but here it is on the 5th week and none of us really want to leave at all! I... meh! what am I doing? I have to go! I'll write soon. Hopefully before I head to Korea, but maybe there. TTYL! Bai bai!
Anyway, we had to take a train to get there. It was about an hour, hour and a half ride. The train stop that we got off on seemed to have the sole purpose of being the Disney Land stop. There was even a little Disney souvenir vending machine at the station. Heh, I guess that's for some last-minute purchases. When we got off the train (along with the vast majority of the people on it) we had to walk along this long, elaborate outdoors bridge then down some stairs to the main gate. At this particular location, there is both "Disney Land" and "Disney Sea" (whatever that's supposed to mean). We went to just the normal "Disney Land". The price was 5,800Y (which is about 50$USA). Once we finally got into the park, my friends made a beeline towards Space Mountain where we waited in line for quite some time. An hour or two in the sun is really not a fun experience when it's not intentional. Luckily, I remembered to bring some sun screen. Space Mountain was really cool! For those of you who don't know what it is, it's basically a little roller coaster all indoors and in the dark. It was a lot of fun because you didn't know which way you were going to go. I found out later that Space Mountain was the favorite of most of my friends that went. I think it is mine, too! While we were in line, one of the people in our group (Heather, I think...?) took all of our park passes and went to get some "Fast Passes" for Splash Mountain. Basically on each ride there are two lines. One for the "normal" people., and one for the people who got fast passes. The fast pass line is about 1/4 the size of the normal line but after you get a fast pass it only becomes active after a bit more than it would have taken you if you had stood in line the entire time.
After riding Space Mountain, we visited the Pizza Port (yes, same as the one in Toy Story) and got (duh!) pizza! We hit up the Haunted Mansion after that. They had a bunch of cars that would slowly take you through the ride into different rooms that had things that would either pop up or make sounds or just act creepy. I thought the entire think was a bit hokey but I enjoyed trying to find out how they did certain special effects. I think it was finally after that that we went on Splash Mountain. That was a lot of fun. The theme was brier rabbit and went through the story. The best part was the big drop at the end. They also took a picture at the bottom of the drop. My train/log decided to do YMCA. It was fun, cuz the ride was playing "Zippie-de-do-dah" in Japanese near the end but my friends and I were singing it at the top of our lungs in English. At one point we passed some of the people looking down at us so we all waved while singing and they just snickered at us. Japanese people are so funny sometime.
After all that we all went to get Fast Passes for Thunder Mountain in "Western Land." The park was divided into like 4-5 parts and the part that is normally called "Frontier Land" is called "Western Land" here. It was there that I remembered that I had brought my umbrella with me. I have to say that I think that was the first time I've used a personal umbrella for shade and not rain protection. Anyway, while we were waiting for our Fast Passes to become active, some of the guys and I went over to "Tom Sawyer's Island" to play sardines. Steve (aka "Daywalker") was the first to hind but I think that was a bad thing cuz he has almost no inhibition on places _not_ to go. After over an hour of looking for him unsuccessfully, he found us. It ends up that he hid past the fence, behind an artificial rock, in a bush, near a speaker at the top of the island for about 40 minutes then got bored and hid over a fence in a bush by the lake for the next 30 minutes before being found by a security guard. He said the guard was real cool about it and just asked him to get out of the bush and when he made the folded hands by his head gesture the guard went "Oooh! Sleeping!"
When we went back across the little river/lake to the main park we met up with some of the other people and did some other stuffs. I distinctly remember eating turkey legs, visiting the castle, and taking "jump" photos but a lot was a blur as well. Oh, by the way, the castle was the Cinderella castle, for those who care. Under the castle, they had a Disney themed glass blown trinkets and statues store. It was funny, but three people on our team received a little glass pig (really guys, they ARE pigs!) bough from there for our June 24, 1/2 Christmas Secret Santa gift exchange all unbeknownst to each other. After it got a bit darker, we watched as the big lights parade go by through the middle of the park. They had all the ost prominent characters from Disney movies represented like Cinderella, Peter Pan, Snow White, etc but also some of the newer ones like Boo, Mike and Sully from "Monsters, Inc." and Nemo from "Finding Nemo". When the parade finished, everyone went over in front of the castle for the fireworks display only to find out after another 10 minutes of waiting that it was canceled. A LOT of people were bummed out about it and quite vocal in expressing their dismay. So, instead of a fireworks display, we went of a number of the kiddie rides. The first one we went on was the Peter Pan ride. They put you in a boat-shaped car suspended from an overhead track and "flew" you over these gorgeous dioramas of scenes from the Peter Pan movie. My favorite on in there was the "above London" scene. They had tons of little houses, Big Ben, the London Bridge, and even little laser pointer dots on the ground to simulate cars. I think that one was my 2nd favorite ride. The next kiddie ride we went on was the Snow White ride. Each car held 4 people but we had an odd number of people so I sat alone in the bench right behind Cherie and Maria. It was SO funny how they screamed at everything that popped up at every turn. I think they got more scared there than in the Haunted Mansion! I basically laughed the entire time. The last ride we went on was the "Small World" boat cruise thing. They had the little singing children, doll things throughout the ride all dressed in stereotypical outfits and such. After the ride was almost over, I leaned back and asked my friends "Hey! Where's the Americans kids?! I want to see the overweight kids waving hamburgers!" It seemed I spoke too soon, though as there were some Americans: a cowboy kid and a native American kid standing right above the final tunnel of the ride. Haha!
Psheeeewwww! It was perty fun there, yup, yup! ...dang this took a long time to write... nearly an hour! In an case, I got to get going. We have English lunch at Gakusuyuin today. Yesterday was the last day we spent at Waseda. (tear...) I can hardly believe it. I was so sure that we'd be fed up with this trip after about 3-4 weeks but here it is on the 5th week and none of us really want to leave at all! I... meh! what am I doing? I have to go! I'll write soon. Hopefully before I head to Korea, but maybe there. TTYL! Bai bai!
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