Rigdon Review: Our Adventures Abroad

**Here is the compilation of all the videos from that day.  Entrance, prayer ceremony, diploma receiving, songs etc.     https://youtu.be/J2WYoXlXdDk Yochien, the school that children in Japan attend for up to three years before entering elementary school in the 1st grade.  Most children attend starting at 3 years old.   When we moved here we knew we wanted our kids to go to Japanese school, and even though Holland had finished kindergarten back in Utah, with the difference in the start and end of the school year here, Holland needed to go back to Kindergarten.  I didn't really consider trying to get her on a list before getting here and that was.....very.....ignorant of me.  Yochien only accept a certain amount of students so that the classes aren't too full.  Unbeknownst to me, November 1 of the PRIOR year is when application and registration is.  So we were only...ya know...9 months late.   As I called around to every Y...

**I started a YouTube Channel for our videos that are too big to put on the blog.  First of all, I don't have a clue about video editing, compiling etc. so take it easy on me.  Second of all: here is the link for Lego! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J6MvDsA499A  GUYS! We made the crazy (but totally worth it) decision to jaunt up to Nagoya to go to Legoland over the weekend.  But there's SOOOO much more that goes into it! 1. Because we are "SOFA" status employees (essentially, people that work on the base and employed by the U.S. government) we are required to follow all of the rules of MCAS (Marine Corps Air Station) Iwakuni.  Due to COVID-19 the Air Station has had areas of Japan that are considered the RED zone, meaning there were too many COVID cases and so we were not allowed to travel there.  Recently, much of the previous RED zone was turned to GREEN, and people went berserk.  Within a day people were traveling all over the place.  2. I saw...

We are nearing the end of the school year (school in Japan ends in March, and the new school year begins in April) and so the kids have had their end of the year performances and observation days, and I LOVE THEM! There are often times that we wonder if we made the right choice putting our kids in the local schools here.  We did have the more "comfortable" option of putting them in school on base.  But when we go to events like the ones we have been to over the past couple of weeks I can't help but be so incredibly grateful that we made the more difficult, time consuming and uncomfortable decision.  The decision that stretches all of us, sometimes past our limits.  The decision that is physically, mentally and emotionally exhausting ever. single. day.  Why?  This one simple decision has allowed not only our children to learn and grow in ways they never would have been able to otherwise, but also myself, Andrew, our family all together. Some of the minor thi...