Olympic Day Run

It's International Olympic Day! A bunch of us headed up to Shibetsu for the Olympic Day Run.

 The weather was great, maybe a bit too hot. My arms got a little red.

 There were a bunch of games for the kids before the actual run started. Here's a long jump. I didn't do this because I didn't want to get sand in my shoes and pants.

 Vetle had great form.

Here's tee-ball. There was also a high jump, hurdles, and foam football throwing.

 Here's everyone gathered on the field for the opening ceremony, which was more elaborate than I expected. They had a torch runner and everything. You can see the flame up on the podium.

Then, everyone did the radio exercises to warm-up. It was pretty great to do it in a group this big.

 And here we go. I was in the walking group. It was way too hot to run.

 Very nice scenery once we left the track.

 I was walking with Natalie, and we talked a bit with some of the other walkers. Natalie got a happy surprise when she told someone she was from Australia and they asked her about wombats, an animal other than kangaroos or koalas.

 Birch trees.

  After the main event, there was a talk session with the olympians who came to the event. This went on a little long, but not being able to understand most of it didn't help.

 Queens and Dominic posing with medals and the Olympic mascots.

 I finished the stamp rally! Four stamps for games, one just for staying to the end of the event. Natalie and I looked everywhere for that last one before we figured out they hadn't brought it out yet.

 Here's the free T-shirt we got. Not bad, all in English.

 After that I went down to Higashikawa.

 I spent some time at the library and art gallery.

 I don't know if this is a child's MS Paint art, but it's very cute.

 And we had a little dinner party in Higashikawa.

Look up at the top, next to the cutting board. That's Brunost, one of Norawy's most iconic foods! I've read about it on Wikipedia before, so I was pretty excited to try it. It's cheese made by boiling down whey until the milk sugars caramelize, which makes it similar to dulce de leche. It was pretty good, but I think the type of bread that was there paired better with the hummus. I'd like to try it again with a different kind of bread.