Here is the delightful message from Kayce Ericksen.

Hello JoAnn and Dave,
 
Thanks so much for your email, I really like reading about others experiences with the scholarship since it seems somewhat like a great unknown right now.  I was slightly confused when I first got your email since it was titled Peace Arch.  I opened it while I was at a hostel in Japan since I had just visited the Peace Arches in Hiroshima that day!  I spent the last week in Southern Korea and Japan which was incredible.  I loved Japan, I think I would really enjoy living there someday.  In college I spent some time studying nuclear proliferation so the monuments and the museums made it probably one of the top places I have ever visited.  I also got the experience of meeting with a hibakusha, someone who actually lived through the a-bomb, it was overwhelming to hear the story of someone who was actually there and lost her family there, definately an experience of a lifetime.  I also enjoyed vis iting shrines, castles, and temples, and of course getting throughly lost!  Thank goodness my traveling partner was as easy going as I, because we had many entertaining adventures!  At one point on an island called Miyajima we took a short cut to the beach and ended up on a two hour straight up hill then straight down hill journey.  There were spiders that looked like they could swallow us whole, it was about 90 + and humid, and I was wearing leather sandles with a bit of a heel and wool shorts!  But those are the parts of a vacation that you will never forget!  Anyways I am trying to figure out how to send my pics back home, but Ill attach a pic of the peace arches in Hiroshima and one of me and the water shrine in Miyajima.  Hope you all are doing well!
Kayse