Spreading holiday CHEER!
I cannot believe that it is already December!! I must say that time has been going by fairly quickly. My husband and I have officially been living in Sasebo, Japan for six months now! And what’s a better way to ring in December and the upcoming holidays than by hosting a holiday homestay for Japanese students!??! So during this first week of December, I took some time out to spread an afternoon of holiday cheer to my new Japanese friends- Aoba, Reina, Toko, and Mami. They helped me decorate our Christmas tree with ornaments, candy canes, and string popcorn, they helped put together dinner (a taco bar) and make dessert Pops, we decorated Christmas stockings, and enjoyed a cultural lesson about how holidays are celebrated around the world. I also made them puppy chow as a snack and they absolutely LOVED it!! We snacked on that while rocking out to Christmas music and enjoying our activities.
This group of students inparticular had been specifically studying English for the past year in order to come to Sasebo and experience a homestay. I was very happy to be a part of their experience! In order to make it even more special for them, I made them some gifts that they could take home as stocking stuffers: a book of Christmas stories, games, and activities and a CD full of English songs (with a few Christmas ones stuck in there), and of course some sweets 🙂 It turned out that they had each made me a thank you gift as well! Each of them had made a book, in English, introducing themselves- telling me about their families, favorite foods, famous places in Japan, and their fashion style, etc! One girl even found it important to put her blood type as well as her family members’ blood type in her book! Haha! They were very sweet and a great gift that I will surely cherish forever!!
Take a look at some of the memories that we made:
Lindsay View All →
Our roots will forever be from here, America, born and raised. Yet, life requires us to move more frequently than we care to count. Whether living stateside or abroad, you can always find us traveling somewhere. We scout out places that you only think you can dream of one day seeing and we seek out those that aren’t found in guidebooks. We then bring them to life here in our travel memos, so hopefully, one day you too can visit them or at least be able to live vicariously through us. This blog isn’t just about crossing off places from a bucket list. It’s about absorbing and learning how other cultures grow and fit into the same world that we do. Life is short and the world is big. Enjoy and get out there!
American Roots. Traveling Boots. 
Lindsay, that looks like so much fun! I think your students really loved making those gifts and spending time with you! Grandma GeBuys