My best summer -- AYF8 reunion

I'm wordless! It was just so great to reunite with my AYF8 family again in Japan. The original idea was to get together before the first three of our batchmates -- P'Kong, P'Pum and Nafis -- leave the country after their Ph.D. graduation. But at the end, the three plus a few members couldn't join us this time. That was the saddest part of the story. But anyways, half of us managed to make it, as well as Bandai Sensei and our batch in-law to be.

Nine of us met up at Kyoto station at 11 a.m. of Saturday, September 8, had lunch... then came back to Sheuo-Hui's house to prepare Vietnamese style fresh spring rolls for dinner :)

teamwork on spring rolls
great (mental) support for the spring roll team!
done!
After getting all the prep done, we moved to kamogawa for BBQ. Thanks Kee for delivering us the BBQ set nah~~ (see how much my AYF friends can speak Thai, huh? ^^)

Rizka is here!
happy faces ready to eat =P
setting up BBQ fire
our AYF8 members
It was originally forecasted to be sunny out these few days... but it actually poured last night. The heavy clouds stayed over til late morning before the sky cleared up and we got super bright sunshine. When we took off from Sheuo-Hui's house, it was completely sunny. It was still ok when we had our spring rolls before setting up BBQ fire. But all of the sudden... dark clouds replaced the bright sky and it started raining. We were lucky to have decided to move ourselves undershed. It was perfectly right in time!

our new BBQ location
(so many people who were also under the same shed waiting for the rain to stop probably really wanted to have our food. They kept looking at us (or maybe we spoke broken Japanese and also strange languages!!)
arh... I want to describe this picture.. but I think I should leave it for your imagination.. haha =)
*hint* : it has something to do with spring rolls... ^^

We also played games -- guessing the missing dialog from Minna no Nihongo Japanese textbook. When Mary told me she was preparing this game, I was thinking "who the heck would remember?? (cuz I apparently don't! =P)" But I was really wrong. It was amazing to see how we still can remember the lines even until now!! Thanks, Mary!! We had a simple birthdays celebrations for Sheuo-Hui, Pradith and Neri too.

After BBQ clean up, we sent off Bandai Sensei at the bus stop, moved to the hotel and had another movie clips watching time. What did we watch? Our VERY old movie clips from when we were in Malaysia!! The plays in Penang, the graduation speech... they were SOOOOO Hilarious!!! =)

alienated after a long day
hotel members (w/o rizka who left in the early morning)
The next morning, Iizuka sensei also came to see us and stayed for lunch. Such a great time catching up.

quick meet-up with Iizuka sensei
A bit more than 24 hours with AYF friends was just wonderful. It reminds me so much of our time in Malaysia. The longer we are friends, the more I feel grateful to our friendship. Thanks so much everyone!
沢山の山があっても、一緒に乗り越えていきましょう！

Lastly... I'm sorry to have made everyone walked A LOT during this 24 hours!! I really hope you had a great time. Special thanks to Mary for all the kind assistance from the very beginning of this reunion planning. Also to Trang for being so great in food arrangement! Two thumbs up!!

Nafis, Kong and Pum - Congratulations for another step of the success! We are so proud of you, doctors! It will be more difficult for us to meet when you leave back to your home country... but I believe the world is small. We'll surely meet again some time, somewhere. Stay in touch!

Tangin, Dwi, Mamun, Kyaw, Samol and Vutha - we really missed you! Better make sure we get to see you sometimes before you leave the country. Good luck with your researches. Next year, too many people are graduating. We'll miss you even more!

Btw, we watched our Penang play clips and had such a great laugh for Sakura-chan and her catwalk trainer, Mary and Pum's next door neighbor crush, the penguin dance, the gypsy fortune telling, and Cindy-chan. How I wish we were all here.

Fujimoto-san -- thank you so much for a lovely postcard. It's so touching :)
Mito-sensei -- enjoy Hong Kong. Come back for a visit too, k!
Inomata-sensei -- too bad you cannot come. let's meet in Tokyo instead, then!

Thanks again everyone... you guys had made my summer very memorable. Miss you!!!

(Members for this reunion: Sheuo-Hui, Trang (and Haoi-san), Neri, Mary, Pradith, Phao, Rizka, Mai, Bandai-sensei, Min and Nini (our in-law-to-be AYF9)