APAC and stuff!

This one is long overdue...but for our APAC volleyball tournament this year (pretty sure it stands for Asian Pacific Activities Conference?) we got to go to Kobe, Japan! It was such a neat experience first of all just to be able to go to Japan, but also to be able to coach in a volleyball tournament there AND get to go there with my friend Kirsten who actually grew up in Japan. Just a cool deal all-around. We got there on a Wednesday after having left the school at 4:30 a.m. (woof) but it was nice to have a good part of the day once we got there. The school hosting the tournament was the Canadian Academy so we went straight there so the kids could be picked up by their host families. Then the next three days were filled with lots of volleyball. We played teams from Korea, Japan and China, all of them being international schools as well, so it was really fun to watch the games during our downtime for both boys and girls.


On the first day they had an opening ceremony and in the elementary, there was a class assigned to each team at the tournament. So our girls got to go and meet our class and answer questions and they were so awesome with the kids:) Throughout the tournament, the class would come watch and cheer for us during our games and they were so so so cute!


Some of our wonderful girls


and some more:)


They gave the coaches these awesome 80's/early 90's waterbottles so Will and I thought a pose was necessary...


Our boys team getting ready to play. In the Asian leagues, teams bow to each other before and after games and I think it might be one of the coolest things ever.




The area around our hotel was gorgeous


including the spaceship...


One night they took all of the coaches out to an awesome dinner in Kobe. Afterwards we wandered around for a couple of hours so here's some pics from that night.






At one point, Will and I started walking down this one street and we soon realized we were in a red-light kind of district...haha oops.


Don't go down this street if you're ever in Kobe




Apparently Larry is a big deal







It was kind of a bummer to come back, especially since we didn't get to see a ton of Japan. But it was such a great experience! Not gonna lie, based on the 5 days we were there I definitely could live in Japan. Even though it's so expensive that even McDonalds will make you broke I thought it was a really neat place. I love Korea but it definitely had a "cleaner" feel to it and I liked the architecture alot more...less neon too if you know what I mean. Anyways! It was such an amazing opportunity and I'm so glad I got to hang out with a bunch of amazing girls for 5 days in Japan! I mean seriously, who gets to go to Japan for a volleyball tournament? So awesome.

Talent Show Osomness

I've been super bad at updating this diddy, mostly because I've been super busy with volleyball...but it's a really good kind of busy because I looooove it. I'm so glad I've had the chance to coach out here this year. It's crazy how God worked that all out and I loved every minute of it. We finished our season this last Saturday and finished 3rd out of nine in the league and also took third in the conference tournament so all together an awesome season! We also got to go to Japan for our APAC tournament a couple weeks ago which was so super sweet but I'll save that one for another post. Anywho. The week that we left for Japan fell perfectly in line with my school schedule so that I could be away from school since we had a festival that took place from Tuesday through Friday. We left for Japan on Wednesday morning but I was able to be here for one day of the festival which was probably the best part by far. The school rented out this huge theatre in downtown and we had a giant talent show. About two months ago, students went through two seperate phases of auditions to be a part of it and eventually it was narrowed down to just 20 acts. Classes were cancelled for the day so everyone just met at the theatre in the afternoon for the show and it was pretty sweet. I took my video camera and recorded almost the whole thing but here are a few different ones:

This was the first act of the day and the two MC's are two of my favorite students ever. The one on the right is Donald Duck and the one on the left is Blair (named after Blair Waldorf from Gossip Girl, haha)

Untitled from ashleigh houlton on Vimeo.

This one is from a K-Pop song (Korean Pop)

Untitled from ashleigh houlton on Vimeo.

And this one...

Untitled from ashleigh houlton on Vimeo.

This one is a skit of I have no clue what...but it's funny

Untitled from ashleigh houlton on Vimeo.

Welp, that's all for today but hope everyone is doing well! I can't believe it's November already. Kerzy.