Ume

You have been weighed. You have been measured and you have been found wanting ume.

Yesterday at my heretofore unnamed JHS... let's call it... My Big Challenge. Or, you guessed it, MBC for short...

Anyway, I wasn't looking forward to school yesterday for a variety of reasons, yet the day seemed to work out relatively well, and the best part came just when I ran out of things to do (due to a changed schedule, I only had 2 classes): a trip to pick Japanese plums. Mind you, Japanese plums look nothing like the the plums we have at home, except for the fact that they're round. They're small, green and hard. But they make great umeboshi!

Soooo, we walked down the hill to the community center, behind which is a small orchard of plum trees. In spite of being tremendously humid (especially under my raincoat which I wore to stave off the mosquitoes), it was great sport, and I even climbed a tree myself! ("Climbed" being used loosely here)

Looking down the hall from the entryway of the community center.
Old School!

I took about a million pictures, which I managed to narrow down to about 25 and put up on flickr. So if you care to see them, head on over. Most of them are private, so you may have to log in... if you're on the A-list.

A long row of bikes waiting patiently while we did our thing.