This week in our Monday morning circle, Patricia told us that last week, she went to two meetings, one was in Toronto and the other was in New York state. While in New York, she visited Camphill Village Copake, that does the same kind of work that we do here. She also visited Camphill Communites in Hudson New York and a Camphill elder community in Ghent.

In the afternoon, we practiced our Japanese dancing for Carnival.

On Tuesday and Wednesday everybody worked in their workshops. In the afternoon, we broke into our eurythmy, clay, painting, reading and writing groups.

This week in our Thursday morning college, Takashi taught us about the Japanese language. We learned that there are three different ways to speak and write in Japanese. The first style of writing, Kanjii came from China.
It is like a river that has lines going up, down and across. The second is Hiragana that is like the alphabet but it has forty-eight letters. The last one that we learned about is called Katakana. This form of writing is in pictures and symbols.

After that Takashi taught us how to say words in Japanese like
Good morning is ohayo
Good afternoon is Kanichiwa
Good evening is Konbaowa
Thank you is Arigato
After a short break, we broke into two groups. One group did Japanese dancing and the other group did Origami.

On Thursday afternoon, some companions went to the Lynn Valley main library to see Jeff’s uncle Neil Macdonald’s artwork. We saw many scenic paintings of Lynn Valley. It takes Neil about six months to complete a painting.

n1

Painting by Neil Macdonald

This morning, we sang Happy Birthday to Jeff.
Then the garden group and the candle-makers worked together picking out seeds.

In the afternoon, a group stayed back and sang with Forrest while another group went swimming.