Over the August break I went back to the US to go to my friend’s wedding. He finally got married after dating his girlfriend for about ten years!

The wedding took place in Iowa City, Iowa, which is a small college town surrounded by hundreds of miles of farms. I decided to fly into Minneapolis, Minnesota, which is where my brother lives, and then drive the 300 miles (480 km) south to the wedding.

So, I got to see my brother and take him to the wedding, which was nice.  I made sure to rent a good car for the drive.  The wedding was at the concert hall for the University of Iowa, which was really nice and spacious. There were maybe 100 people there. I was lucky enough to be chosen as a groomsman (付き添い役), so I got to participate in the wedding and sit at the table in front for dinner.  It was a great time!

The groomsmen.

The wedding dinner.

My rental car.

We had a party on Saturday evening to say hello to Ryo and goodbye to Manami. Thank you to everyone who came out to dinner at the yakiniku restaurant as well as the live karaoke after-party! We had a lot of fun. We will miss you Manami!

Here are some pictures from the party:

Dave-sensei was on "Let's Enjoy English" on Radio MOMO (79.0 FM) last week. Dave and D.J. Chiaki Kamibeppu talked about traveling in Japan and around the world. Click the button below to listen. 

For summer vacation this year, I was lucky enough to have a chance to go to Mongolia. A friend of mine recommended a good tour company, and we went together. We had a driver and a guide, plus 3 other travelers.
 

We drove over 2000 kilometers during our 12-day tour, mostly on unpaved roads. We saw beautiful, varied landscapes and had some kind of adventure every day, so it's difficult to show it all. 

For me, one of the highlights was the giant Khongor sand dunes in the Gobi Desert. We rode camels here. The dunes are beautiful and enormous, with the largest ones at 190m tall. They were very hard to climb, but we made it to the top!
 

These are the photos from my phone, but I have many better ones on my camera. It'll take me some time to sort them, but I hope to share them with you sometime soon!

Dave-sensei will be on Radio MOMO (79.0FM) with D.J. Chiaki Kamibeppu on Thursday August 30th at about 6:15 pm. They will talk in English and Japanese about traveling in Japan and around the world.

8月30日（木）6時15分ごろにDave先生がRadio MOMOに出演します（DJは上別府千晶さん）。英語と日本語の両方で日本と世界中の旅行経験について話します。

http://www.fm790.co.jp/

This year, we went to Florida for our summer vacation. Usually I take Tatsuki and Satoshi to Pennsylvania to visit their grandparents and uncles, but this year my parents wanted to take the boys to Disney World, so we all met in Florida. Ayumi also came with us this year, for the first time in about 5 years.

We flew from Okayama to Haneda. We took a bus from Haneda to Narita and flew to Dallas, Texas, changed planes and flew to Palm Beach in Florida. My parents and oldest brother Anthony took a train to Florida. It was a special train that also took their car with them. We spent the first 4 days at a beach resort in Palm Beach. It was fantastic! We had an ocean view from our condominium on the 6th floor with beautiful sunrises every morning. We spent time relaxing on the beach and at the pool and recovering from our jet lag.

During our second night, the fire alarm went off in the middle of the night. It was so loud! We all went outside and found out that it was a false alarm. The fire department came anyway. Satoshi was happy to take a picture with the fire truck.

Ayumi and I went kayaking around the bay.

We had some excellent seafood for lunch one day.

We rented a car to drive from Palm Beach to Orlando. It was about a 3 hour drive. We stopped for lunch at a restaurant called Steak & Shake. They had the biggest milkshakes that I have ever seen.

Then we spent 5 days at Disney World. Disney in Orlando has 4 different parks: Magic Kingdom, Epcot, Animal Kingdom and Hollywood Studios. We had a great time at each park and visited the Magic Kingdom twice.