Looking forward to a weekend at the beach

It is about a 400 km journey. Funny thing is the boys
 now poo-poo that length. They say,
"Ah, we drove 800 km in a day..."
After 8,000 km in 16 days, 400 km isn't all that much!

Tomorrow morning we're going to the beach at Takayama for a three-day weekend. It is a place where many missionaries take holidays in August, but we've never taken a holiday there.

It is also a place from which last year's tsunami was witnessed (it is high up, so the witnesses weren't swept away). It is not far from Sendai, on the coast. None of us have been up to the disaster-hit area. From all reports a huge amount has been done up there, but many of the areas decimated by the tsunami haven't been rebuilt. So, I'm not sure how I'll feel to see it with my own eyes.

There is another thing I don't know how to feel about. We've been invited by colleagues of David's to join them at their holiday cabin. I don't know them very well, I'm not sure how much better David knows them. But the context is that we rarely get invited even for a meal to someone else's house here in Japan. To be invited to stay with someone for two nights is pretty amazing.

There are a lot of unknowns and that makes me feel a tad nervous. But I'm also excited. The last couple of months have been crazy-busy. Not to mention our gut-busting 8,000 km journey! To stop for a couple of days at the beach is sounding pretty attractive. I just hope the boys are cooperative. Maybe, because we'll have an "audience" who holds authority in their lives at school, they'll put on their "good" faces. Here's hoping . . .