Me and some of my students and their mothers. The other white girl is Abby, the teacher I replaced. Man, these kids are cute! I teach 10 classes a week of really little kids like this where we sing and dance around and touch our heads and noses and stuff. The rest of my classes are students from elementary school to adults.

Here I am leading one of my classes.

When we visited that student's home in the mountains who's husband is learning samurai (see pix below) they decided to give me a name. Names are very important and very meaningful here. There are many ways to spell the sounds that make my name in Japanese "Se-ra". Because Japanese uses kanji characters, each sound or symbol is also representative of it's own idea or meaning. So after discussing it for a short while amongst each other, they decided on this one which they felt was most suitable for me as a woman and as a Christian. I was honored. The top kanji means "saint" and is pronounced "se". The bottom kanji means "good" and is pronounced "ra". The writing on the right side of the paper is where they showed me how to properly write it.