Maryandra is enjoying the spring blossoms in Hachioji, Japan!!!  Here are excerpts from her last letter:

Okay, I will tell you this. Being in a San nin has been just a little
bit like...... ONE OF THE BEST THINGS IN THE WORLD!!! And mom, you got
your wish. She is NIHONJIN!!! Her name is funakura Shimai, and she is
the cutest, bestest person in the world! She is from Kagoshima, which
she said is currently in the Fukuoka mission boundaries. How cool is
that! Anyway, it's been so nice having a third person around.

And funakura Shimai is, by the way, a spiritual giant!!! I
love her so much already! She has made all of our lessons a thousand
times better, and her testimony is so amazing! She is always nice to
me, and it's so nice that I have another friend!
Also, today, I might finally get my bike! That will be so handy for
housing, when we go to places that are to close for the train, but too
far for walking, of which there are a lot. I want it to get one of
those little ones that fold up, which will make it way easy when I do
transfers. If I get it today, I'll send you pictures. Okay, I love food cooked by
funakura Shimai, and it's really fun to help her cook the food, and
race to try nod get the dishes washed before her Japanese culture
asserts  itself and she insists.

We debated about whether to share these stories or not, but they made us laugh, 
so we're putting them in to help brighten anyone else's day!!!  I hope 
Maryandra won't mind!

So, I have a couple of funny stories to tell you. First, yesterday, it

rained really hard for a few hours, so our apartment steps were all
wet. I slipped and fell on my butt down two steps. I heard a
ga-thump-thump sound in my head. I got up really quickly and I was
okay, and forgot about it. It wasn't until last night, while lying on
my futon, when I felt the bruise, and I wondered where the heck did I
get that one from? Oh yeah! And then I just fell asleep.
Another story: we have this removable laundry pole that goes from wall
to wall in our apartment, and we moved it into the futon room to make
room for when we get funakura shimai's desk. Well, we must not have
attached it to the wall correctly, because it fell on brown shimai's
face the other night, and she woke up and screamed bloody murder. That
woke up funakura Shimai, who screamed, which woke me up, and I
screamed, but I was too tired to care, and so when we'd figured out
what'd happened, I just listened from my futon as brown Shimai
animatedly told me " at first I thought a burglar was beating me with
a pole! Then I thought funakura Shimai tripped and fell on me cause I
thought she was coming back from the bathroom! And it was crazy,
miller Shimai, because all of those thoughts flashed through my mind
in like... A SECOND!!! It was crazy!!!!" And then funakura Shimai
couldn't stop laughing for at least ten minutes after. And brown
Shimai sat up for a while, because she was afraid we woke up the
neighbors, and that someone would call the police or an ambulance. It
was really funny, because I don't think she was even totally awake,
since she went to sleep less than a minute after saying that.
Well, other than that, things have been relatively normal this week.

Love you all!

愛しています、!!!
Miller Shimai