The International Exchange Society New Year Party

Yesterday we attended the New Year pot luck party hosted by the International Exchange Society. When we attended last year, we were still fairly new to the area and hadn’t met many people outside of the university yet. I was pleased to recognize so many people this year from other IES events (like the mushroom party and the cooking class), and from the hula class, the ladies luncheon group and other local social events.  As it happened, Ted and I were the only two not from Japan at this party.

The event started with the food and it was all delicious.  Our contribution was Ted’s special potato salad. It was so good that there was none left to bring home.

 

Everyone ate and talked and ate some more. Many people in this group have English skills and like to practice with English speakers, like us.

 

 

There were Japanese games to play while the eating continued.  This was a very popular one.  A person is blindfolded, then given face pieces to place on the face.  It’s funny to see what the face looks like at the end.

This card game had pictures of people on the cards and the players took turns taking a card.  If you get the card that had the monk on a colorful tatami mat, you could slap other player’s cards and take them.  I think the object was to get the most cards.

This is like badminton, played with a hard paddle.

These little spinning tops are sumo wrestlers.  There were also some juggling packets and a few other things to play with.

One woman led the group in a couple of songs.  I think one song was about kites and the other was something about go away snow.

Ted and I had a very nice time and we appreciate how kind everyone is to us.  We look forward to seeing everyone again soon!