Saturday

I began my day by rolling over to Jason's open laptop at 6 in the morning. Jonas was still asleep (surprise) and Jason was awake watching the US Open (not a surprise). He has been known to wake up in the middle of the night to catch a US sporting event. Jonas woke up soon after and I remained half asleep for a bit while Jason and Jonas drew pictures (you can only remain half asleep in this small apartment when the other parent is 'on duty.'). A few hours later, after breakfast, we felt an earthquake. I picked up Jonas who was happily playing with his legos and had the idea that we should all go outside. Nobody else was outside and afterwards I read on the internet that going outside is what NOT to do. When I picked up Jonas he started to cry a bit. I thought maybe the earthquake scared him; Jason thought he was just mad that I was taking him away from his legos. I think Jason was right.

The earthquake's epicenter was a couple of hours south of our home and we did not see any damage here in Akita City. It was Jason's and Jonas's first earthquake, my second. I felt one in El Salvador when I spent a summer there about 10 years ago.

Over the past month I had started to ask my co-workers a lot of questions about earthquakes and even talked to Jason about what our plan would be if there was one while we were at work and Jonas was at daycare. (Of course this caused Jason to wonder why I was waiting until a few weeks before our departure to decide we needed this plan.) We were lucky, because the earthquake did not affect us except for a minute of shaking and we were all at home together.

Switching gears, I will post a few pictures of Jonas with Uncle Mike and Aunt Lisa. They are safely back in the US visiting family in Texas after nearly 30 hours of travel (train, plane and automobile).



This is one of the reasons uncles are so much fun. They put you in laundry carts and push you around.



Aunt Lisa loves swimming and lakes and so does Jonas. She got in the freezing water with Jonas and he loved it.



This is at our campsite where Jonas split his time between exploring the area, playing with ants and drawing pictures.