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Gerald & Lois Poppe

From Gerald:

While we were in Taketa City, our hostess and her daughter took us to a flower festival in a small town near where we were living.  They were having all kinds of food, dancing, and festive activities. They were
going to have a game and my hostess wanted me to take part in it. It took two people as a team, so she was trying to decide who could be my partner. Finally she was going to be my partner, so she was signing us up. The Daniels were there too, and somehow Duane and I were finally signed up as a team. We went over to this large field that had some huge white round objects
in it. They stood about waist high. We found out that, as a team, we were supposed to roll the object to a line about 150 feet away and back (It seemed a lot farther than that). We tried it out and the thing was very heavy. We found out that it was stuffed with hay. Like one of those huge round bales that you see in the fields. When they said to go, we started rolling the ball to the other end. Boy, was it heavy. It got heavier and heavier, and by the time we went to the other end and back we were really worn out. All I can say is that we didn't come in last.
Maybe it was third?
 

From Lois:

Remembering Japan Friends and Flowers.

After our first visit to Japan, our new friendships and flowers will forever be linked.  I love flowers! Japan and our new friends delighted me with flowers everywhere I went. At both our home-stay homes, there were lovely flowers arranged to greet us in our room and where we ate and visited. Flowers bloomed right outside the home entrances, too. Our new friends took us to flower festivals, flower gardens and flower greenhouses. There were flowers blooming around the castles and Buddha
shrines. Flowers lined the streets wherever we went. Pansies, tulips, camellias, azaleas, rhododendrons, carnations, roses. I saw more pansies there than I had seen during my whole life. I can see the flowers and even smell some of them as I remember Japan and our
Friendship Force friends. As a gesture of friendship, our host family presented us with fresh flower corsages as a farewell gift. What a gorgeous memory -- new friends and flowers linked together!
 
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