Flat Maya

We have the cutest, coolest and smartest niece and nephews ever. There, we've said it. We miss them bunches, especially when we skype them and they ask us awesome questions and sing us songs and make faces in the webcam and show us stuff they've made. We want to hug 'em not skype 'em!

This post is about our one and only niece Maya. She's in 2nd grade. Her class did a cool project where they read a book called Flat Stanley (where Stanley gets flattened and starts mailing himself places in an envelope) and made their own flat selves to send places. It's part of the Official Flat Stanley Project - basically it's like the traveling gnome thing but with a literacy component. Maya made a full size cut out of herself and sent it to us in Japan. We showed her around our town and wrote up a little report on it.

First we took her to the little fox shrine. Awkward smile alert!

We stopped by one of the big shrines. It was windy and it was hard to get Flat Maya to stand still for a photo.

Of course we had to show her the Buddha.

There were some women visiting from Tokyo at the Buddha who were courageous enough to ask us about Flat Maya. We explained the best we could. Then one woman said she'd once known a foreigner named Kyle and was John's name Kyle? Yes, all of us white foreigners may look the same to you, but no - we don't all have the same name.

We sent the pictures and the Flat Maya back so they can put them on the map at school with all the other flats. What a fun geography project!

Attention Twins fans: We're sorry Nishioka broke his leg already. Don't forget about him yet though - he'll be back better than ever. We promise! One of our adult students tells us that the field is harder in the US than he's used to. They play on softer dirt over here. That explains it right?