Sachiko Nagano was in my Survival B Class for a couple of years. She was the entertainment for our "yellow table" group, sharing lots of stories about her (mis)adventures in America. We enjoyed a potluck farewell and gave her a photo of our group with a "We Love You" sign - we will really miss her this year in our class!
Mihoko Yoshihara was also in the Survival B yellow table group a few years ago. More recently, she's been in our Thursday afternoon "Chit Chat Club." CCC had a joint farewell for her and Tomoko Nakanishi (who was an original "yellow table" group member from 10 years ago!) at the beginning of August.
It was a crazy party (typical), filled with a bunch of laughter - as well as tears. We laughed at the charades game (Mihoko & Tomoko had to try to make us guess things like Olympics and Detroit Tigers).
Tomoko passed her old Mexican Halloween costume on to Jan... and had to complete the look with a hand-drawn mustache (thankful for washable markers!).
We had a smaller farewell for Mihoko at our house one evening - utilizing our new campfire pit. We enjoyed s'mores, sausages, and hobo pies. Yum!
But first the kids, led by Sam, went on a frog hunt. Sam proved to be an expert frog catcher!
The other kids were pretty impressed. Micah got his first look, up close and personal, with a frog. Mihoko's family moved to LA, so we're hoping that they come back for a visit to MI sometime soon!
We also had a super silly farewell event with Tomoko. In her 10 years of living in MI, she'd never been to our capitol, Lansing. So we made a "bucket list" for her to complete and went on a road trip.
After every photo taken from the list (like "outside the state capitol"), she got to check off the items on her shirt.
We also took a self-guided tour through the capitol building, where Tomoko attempted to break into the Governor's office.
At the end of our capitol tour, Tomoko's bucket list shirt got stamped as well!
Tomoko got her photo taken with someone walking a dog...
...and a policeman in uniform (she had to chase after him down the street to get his attention).
We stopped at Auro's adorable shop, October Moon.
And had a great dinner at the Soup Spoon Cafe.
Danielle and Karie met us there, bringing along a U of M t-shirt, which came in handy later that evening...
... when Tomoko posed with Sparty!
We hit the Jazz Fest and enjoyed an elephant ear, as well as dancing.
The one bucket list item we struggled to fulfill was to ride on a boat. We had intended to take the river boat cruise, but frankly, we couldn't find the spot where we were supposed to board - even though we RAN all through the park in an attempt to find it.
Finally we found a rusted old boat on the shore, behind a construction fence. We knew we couldn't scale the fence, so we tried to stage the photo with Tomoko standing on the legs of Jan and Karie, doing her best "titanic" pose (though you can't really see the boat behind them).
Of course, before she could hoist herself up there, Tomoko paused to "stretch" first (see the video).
All in all, it was a crazy and memorable night. We will certainly miss these lovely ladies. Though it's hard to say good-bye, we are so thankful for the years of friendship!
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