go through the fire

Welcome to the World, Skylar Rain Graumann

2007-09-27T02:08:00.001+09:00

On June 29, 2007, I became an aunt once again!!! Michael and April Graumann had Skylar in Omaha, Nebraska. We didn't get to meet her until we went to visit a couple of weeks later, but I loved her even before I met her. I love her name, and when I saw her for the first time, I loved everything about her. She's blessed enough to look like her mother (and not my dear brother), and she has quite a set of lungs!

It sucks that they live 8 hours away. My dad often calls me and boasts about her, but he makes up for it by sending darling photos and videos of her. Like this one:

I barely even recognize her! It is amazing how fast they grow up. Isn't she a doll? I keep telling Mike that I am going to spoil her and that when she grows up, she will want to travel around the world doing missions with her favorite aunt Jessica. Mike doesn't like that, but he will have no choice....

I'm very proud of my brothers. Both are now married and have daughters. Mike and April bought their first house in Omaha and Jon, Brandy and Kaylynn moved back to Virginia (where they met and where Brandy's parents live). I hate that my brothers and their family are so far away, but if it weren't them leaving, it would be me leaving for some foreign country. That's life! So now I live for the pictures they send and the phone calls that I get from them.

Sadly, in the middle of July, my mother's mother passed away. It was a very difficult time, and the only joy that many of us had was that family came in from everywhere. Both of my brothers and their families were here. It was really nice to have both of my nieces in the same room. It was also great to see aunts, uncles and cousins that I hadn't seen in years.

My Calling

2007-09-27T02:08:00.000+09:00

From May 2 - 10, I went to Patzicia, Guatemala. As it seems to be with every mission trip, it was a very impactful, God-filled time. We were a team of six - two young women and four men - and the only person that I really knew before the trip was Pastor Alejandro (my pastor).

I can't express how much God impacted our lives! Lauren and I were kind of tag-a-longs, but we were still very productive. We helped teach English at the Christian school we were staying at (we stayed with the live-in missionaries Pastor Gregorio and his wife Nati), we helped Mark and Jack build onto Alicia's (the principal of the school) house, we helped minister at every church that we visited around Patzicia, and I got to help translate between English and Spanish.

I was considerably blessed by the students at this school. They ranged from first to eighth grade and they had an amazing ability of memorizing and regurgitating large blocks of scripture. I was impressed, blessed and convicted to memorize more scripture all at the same time.

The spiritual climate of the churches we visited is tangible and Spirit-filled. Every night we worshipped, prayed, and ministered to the Body of Christ, and I was honored to watch how God moved before my very eyes. We traveled to a different church every night, and each church has its own flavor, but all have a hunger and thirst for God. In one church, we prayed for the pastoral family and for unity of the people. In another, we prayed for the churches' dream of building a bigger church and the pastors that were with us gave prophetic and encouraging words to the pastoral family and the congregation. One night at a youth service, all the youth came forward to be prayed for and I watched as a demon was cast out of a young teenage girl.

Of course, one of the best parts was getting to know people. I have a Guatemalan family now, and they are pictured above. Pastor Julio, Liz, Gabriela and Gabriel are forever in my hearts. They blessed me more than I could ever imagine and took care of me as if I were their own (I was pretty sick the couple of days I spent with them). They are an example to me in that I could see how God intends a family to be. The love they have for each other is real, sincere, encouraging, and edifying. And they met me and shared it with me also! I cannot wait until the day that I can return to Guatemala to see them!

All the people that I came into contact with in Guatemala were an encouragement and a blessing to me. The native Guatemalan pastors, teachers and missionaries are on fire for God and are working tirelessly in the vision God has given them. And because of that, many are being saved! The young students gave me an energy in my soul that I didn't know I lacked. To actually witness several generations being taught the living Word of God and to see and hear how those children live it is something that I will carry with me always. And to come together with 5 other people, 4 of whom I did not know beforehand, and to work with them, to learn from them and to befriend them, is yet another blessing I don't deserve that God has given me.

I thank God that He has reaffirmed once again His calling in my life. No matter where I am sent to, I am simply content in going. Everyday I realize I am a missionary, whether it is to my family, my co-workers, the Hispanics in my community, people in Mexico, or people halfway around the world. I thank God for this calling and that I get to do what I love and enjoy.

Welcome to this world Kaylynn Lizbeth Graumann!!!

2007-03-30T13:21:00.000+09:00

Kaylynn was born on March 27, 2007 at 3:27 PM to my brother Jon Graumann and his wife Brandy. She weighed 7.1 pounds and measured 12 1/2 inches. Even though her head was the shape of an egg and her hands and feet were blue (typical of newborns), she is a perfect, beautiful baby girl. I'm so glad that she is finally here!!

This picture was taken when she was about 30 minutes old. Just look at those proud parents!

Mommy Brandy did a good job!

First time grandmother.

This is my first time to be an aunt. I'm going to be the best aunt ever (to all of my nieces and nephews when they come)!!! I'm going to help Kaylynn grow up knowing God (I know that her parents will also), I'm going to teach her Spanish, take her on mission trips with me, and give her really noisy toys so that can she can irritate her father. She will love being with her cool aunt Jessica.

More of Kaylynn....

2007-03-30T13:14:00.000+09:00

The proud grandmother with the proud great-grandfather.

The very protective father.

Baby's first bath.

Mr. and Mrs. Glen Fenimore

2007-01-15T14:02:00.000+09:00

On December 9, 2006, my mother and Glen were married in Rey de Gloria Iglesia Cristiana. It was the first wedding in English that my pastor did and the first wedding that I have ever planned. But it was a great wedding regardless. My mother is happier than I have ever seen her and I thank God for their matrimony. I love my new step-father and I am very thankful to God that my mother is so happy.
Congratulations mom and Glen!!
Oh, and if anyone would like their wedding planned, I've got one successful ceremony under my belt. If I know you, I'll even do it for free.

More Wedding Pictures

2007-01-15T13:52:00.000+09:00

Mike, Jon, Todd (Glen's son), and me were up there with them. My mom's mom was too. She always has to be in the action!!

Two become one....

The bride, groom and all of their family.

Mr. and Mrs. Mike Graumann!

2006-12-01T13:24:00.000+09:00

BACK L-R: Glen, Brandy, Susie

FRONT: Mom, me, Mike, April, Jon, Dad, Grandpa/ma G.

This blog is dedicated to Mike and April who finally tied the knot in early October. The wedding was simple but beautiful and pretty much all of the groom's family drove up to Omaha, Nebraska for it.
April was an absolutely beautiful bride. Now both of the twins are married. You know what, both have babies on the way also!!! Brandy (Jon's wife) will be having a baby girl sometime in April and April is only a few months alongs, so we don't know much except that she is pregnant.
I'm going to be an aunt!!! I am going to spoil the fire out of those babies. I also hope to teach them the Bible, some Spanish, maybe a little Japanese, take them around the world if their parents will let me. I'm pumped that I get to become an aunt twice in one year.
I'm already praying for these little ones that are on the way, for their parents, and for their mother's whose wombs they are in now. Babies are such miracles!
P.S. I'm wearing that gold dress because I was one of the bridesmaids.

And this wonderful picture is of my father. This is the first time I have seen him wear a tux. He looks really good, doesn't he? He didn't wear a tux to Jon's wedding, but somehow Mike got him to wear one. (I really wonder what Mike gave him in exchange for wearing this tux....)

Dad, you looked good. And this won't be the last time you are going to wear a tux, because if I ever get married, I expect you there in a nice, snazzy tuxedo of my choice.

A Wedding, A Baptism, and Fun, Fun, Fun!

2006-12-01T13:21:00.000+09:00

Here's a quick rundown of a few other things that have been going on.....

My high school friend Raquel (a.k.a. Rocky) got married in a beautiful gazebo that her parents constructed in their backyard. I've been to A LOT of weddings the past couple of years, and none of them were as easy-going nor hilarious as this one. But it was still beautiful, and we could all see the love radiating from both the bride and groom's faces.

Oh, and they are now expecting also! I'm not sure when the baby is due. I can remember back in our High School days how much Rocky always wanted to have a bunch of kids and be a stay at home mom. Well, here's the start of your dreams coming true, Rocky!

The first friend I ever made in my university days, Joshua Valentine, was baptized in November. Praaaaaiiiiissssse God! This is answered prayers right here folks! But not just mine. His wife, Amy has been praying so long and I believe that God used her to bring Josh to Him. I'm so happy that God has given me Josh and Amy, a Christian brother and sister to share everything with. I've known Josh for a long time, and now I feel that we can connect on a level that we have never been able to connect before. And I haven't known Amy for very long, but her and I are two peas in a pod.

Thank you God for answered prayers and for dear friends!

When I'm not working or sleeping, I'm usually at church. And I'm usually hanging out with the people you see in the picture above. This is a picture of the group of us that went to Mt. Scott near Lawton, OK a couple of weeks ago.

Pastor asked me why I haven't really blogged about our church yet, so Pastor, this next blog is dedicated to the youth of King of Glory Christian Church.

Los Jovenes de Rey de Gloria Iglesia Cristiana

2006-12-01T13:19:00.000+09:00

I love church. Especially the one I go too. I'm the only white girl there, but they don't hold it against me.
Currently I am one of five youth leaders. I love it! The youth are on fire for God, and although I am one of the oldest members (age-wise and Christian-wise), these young people teach me more about what it means to follow Christ then I have learned in a long time.

The first three pictures here are from the Halloween alternative party. Halloween just happened to land on a Tuesday night, the night we have youth group anyways. So we decided to throw a huge game night and make it incredibly fun and messy.
The first picture shows the game where each team had to try to take as many bites out of the apples hanging from the ceiling as possible. As you can see, one person had to be carried by two other people, and the person being carried couldn't use their hands. Needless to say, I was laughing so hard at their creative ways to take a bite out of the apples that I couldn't take very good pictures.
The second picture is of a chocolate-marshmallow game. They had to walk blindfolded and drop a chocolate covered marshmallow into the mouth of their teammate. The goal was to get as many marshmallows into the mouth of the person on the floor as possible. By the end of the game, the faces of the two on the floor were covered in chocolate.
The third picture was the best game. Each person on the teams had to stuff the contents of a bag into a soda pop bottle. The thing is, the contents of the bags were nasty. We let the two guy leaders make the bags and we ended up with stuff like mustard, oatmeal, and dill pickles in one bag, sardines, green beans, and beans in another and so on. One girl actually barfed in the bathroom. You can see Pastor Alejandro enjoying the nice smell of whatever bag he's holding.
Anyways, we all enjoyed the night. I can never wait to do stuff with this great group of Christ-centered, down to earth youth. It is a blessing to see their hunger and fire for God.

Happenings

2006-08-25T23:41:00.000+09:00

A LOT has happened in the three months since I have last updated.

First things first, I want everyone to know how incredibly thankful I am to God! He answered prayers that I began praying 4-5 years ago when I was just finishing my degree - prayers asking Him to help me pay off my $23,000 college loan debts within a relatively short amount of time. By opening up the opportunity for me to go and work in Japan, I gained a sufficient amount of money to pay it all off in three years! And not only did He provide for me to do such a thing as pay off a great debt in so little time, but I also got to experience, learn, and enjoy the many things that living and working in Japan provided. And I could gain experience in mission work, in dealing with a culture almost completely opposite of my own, I could travel to many interesting countries, I could meet awesome people, I got the pleasure of teaching great students, of teaching with great teachers, of having great friends, etc., etc., etc.
This is a 'No duh!' statement, but God is great! He has continually been answering my prayers, and I know that He will continue to do so, and this week, when I made my last payment to Sallie Mae, has just been a testimony to the faithfulness of God.
Now I will begin in full force seeing what doors are open for me to go and finally do my calling from God and my dream to be a missionary in Mexico. I've already had a few doors shown to me through the people I go to church with. I praise God because He has lead me to a great Body of Christ that I can be a part of in my transition time. (Most of you know from other posts that I am attending a Hispanic congregation in SW OKC where everything is in Spanish and nothing is preached but the Bible.) I'm enjoying the freedom I have to be as involved as possible with this congregation since I am only working about 30-35 hours a week at Joe's Crab Shack as a waitress.
Since my last post, Junko and Yutaka, two of my very best friends from Japan, came to visit and stay with us for 10 days. It was so much fun! We went to Missouri to visit RaeLynn and her family, and from there went to Silver Dollar City (Travis went too!). All the people who are back from Japan came together and we had a great time catching up, speaking some Japanese (some better than others (Peter Rice!)), and eating Japanese food together. We showed Junko and Yutaka around beautiful OKC and got them fat on American food. They also went to my church and I tried my darndest to translate from Spanish to English and sometimes Japanese for them. It was great fun to have them here and Junko herself said she had an excuse to come back to the U.S. - to buy shoes at Payless because they have just her size and they are cheap!
A tragedy also occurred in our family a couple of weeks ago. My stepbrother, Brandon Perryman was shot and killed at the age of 20. My mother and my stepfather had gotten together when I was 7 and Brandon was 2, and we had all been raised together until we went our separate ways about 3 years ago. Brandon, unfortunately, got involved with the wrong crowd and did things he shouldn't have done. That put him in the position he was in the night he was shot. But he died protecting his friend, the one who was being shot at. His friend is alive and well, but Brandon is not. Everybody who knew Brandon is naturally devastated. He had a big heart that loved people with a great love. The funeral was a beautiful memorial to him. Please pray for my family.
But this summer has been a great one. I find that I am perfectly content with where I am. God is good and I am pleased to see that He is using this transition time to teach me more, to give me lots of time with my family, and to prepare my heart more for what I have been wanting and preparing to do for a long time.
I honestly don't know when my next update will be. I don't spend much time on the internet these days and things are not as exciting as they were when I lived in Japan. So, I hope you have enjoyed this post.
Dios les bendiga!

A Visit from my Japanese "Father"

2006-05-20T23:50:00.000+09:00

My landlord from Japan, Mr. Uetake, came and visited me and my family this week. It was awesome fun and I really enjoyed showing him around OKC and pointing out all of the cool culture differences to him. He was really amazed that there were so many junk cars driving around on the roads (In Japan, you never see somebody driving a junkie car). He was also amazed that the state of Oklahoma only requires its people to put a license plate in the back, not in the back and front like they require in Japan. We would be driving and he would read all of the license plates. It’s amazing to me the little differences that you notice when you are in a foreign country.
Anyways, I think he had a good time and I know that my family and I really enjoyed having him here. He is a kind man and I was very happy to get to treat him to many things. During my two years in Japan, him and his family constantly took care of me. They took me to festivals, to Disney Land and Disney Sea in Tokyo, invited me over for dinner or just tea, threw me a birthday party two years in a row, and above all other things, accepted me as part of their family. I love them and I praise God that He has blessed me with them.

Happenings

2006-05-05T02:18:00.000+09:00

I went to visit my mentor Clyde Antwine and his wife Gwen (Queenie) last week. Mr. Antwine, a veteran of foreign missions and a beloved professor at Oklahoma Christian was responsible for increasing my understanding of the Bible through weekly, tough-question-filled Bible studies when I first transferred to OC (though I had been a Christian for about 4 years at that point, I was still lacking considerably in Biblical knowledge and he would “hash it out” with me, handling my difficult questions and difficult moods). Before I went to visit him, Queenie told me of the surgery he had on his neck two weeks before because of cancer tumors and the quadruple bypass surgery he had on his heart a week after that because of a heart attack. Praise be to God that he survived both and that he is on the road to a quick recovery.
Even though he was a little weak, he happily received me and relayed all of the great things God had been doing for him and others related to him through those two big ordeals while Queenie was buzzing in the background doing 50 things at once (checking on her beloved Clyde making sure he was comfortable while confirming all he said and making us lunch). Then, both Mr. and Mrs. Antwine sat down and listened to what I had to say about two years of living, working, and being in Japan. I knew that they were listening with understanding hearts, especially when they validated what I felt about my Japan experience and how I had been feeling since I returned and gave advice about how to acclimate back to life in the U.S.
I praise God for those two! Mr. Antwine, since I have known him, has always been there to guide me spiritually, to openly share his experiences - the good and bad of mission work (and life in general) – with me, to be someone who listens and who cares. That is why he is my mentor. And I have always been refreshed by Queenie’s God-given, beautiful spirit and smile. Her hugs and her love have always lifted me up, even in the beginning when I only knew her through the stories her husband would tell in his mission classes.
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I have a job! I will now be a Joe’s Crab Shack waitress. I’m pretty excited about being around a lot of people again. People who are looking to have some fun while they eat (we actually have set dances that the whole wait staff will occasionally do) and people I can understand when they speak (I never realized how in-the-dark I felt all the time while I was teaching in Japan). And I’m looking forward to not having to work 8 hours a day, 5 days a week behind a desk.
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I have a new church home!! God has blessed me with a Hispanic congregation near my house that goes by the name Iglesia Cristiana Rey de Gloria. I prayed for a church family and God has shown me them. They are evangelistic, pure in their love of God, loud in their worship, and diligent in preparing the Body that meets there to go out and spread the Good News through the consistent teaching and studying of the Gospel. God has blessed me with them and they are more than I could have hoped for. I am very happy that I can begin to be a part of them. They all come from various Spanish-speaking countries and the services are held in all Spanish. I praise God that He is opening my mind so that I can understand the majority of what is being said and that the Christians there are kind, sincere people who already have made me feel like I belong.

I Love Oklahoma(ns)!

2006-04-25T12:34:00.000+09:00

It has been three weeks to the day since I've come from Japan. It feels like it's been longer.
Tonight is the first time in two years that I've got to see, smell, hear, and feel a supercell thunderstorm. I was afraid that it wouldn't be as great as an experience in the city (as opposed to the little town we lived in 30 miles outside of OKC before I went to Japan), but it was a little more interesting.
Here is the scene: About 7pm all of the basic channels and the Weather Channel were freaking out because there were thunderstorms with a large potential for tornados popping up all over the state. So my family, my good friend Stephanie, and I set down for a nice game of spades keeping one ear tuned in to the weather report in the background. About 20 minutes later, all of the weathermen were freaking out because a line of storms had popped up diagonal like across the state with a huge, rotating storm going through El Reno - a small podoc town just west of OKC - and heading straight east towards the city. Shortly after, there was pandemonium coming from all of the weather men as a weak, unorganized tornado was sighted just east of El Reno. In fact it tore the roof off some buildings at the towns local airport. Of course all of the news channels got the footage at all sorts of different angles - from helicopters, from the ground, etc. As the tornado danced back up into the clouds, the storm kept on a straight, slow path towards OKC. The supercell kept rotating, and as it slowly crawled into Oklahoma county, it started lowering, threatening to drop another tornado. I didn't know this before tonight, but if a tornado is sighted anywhere within Oklahoma county, tornado sirens will go off all over the county.
Sure enough, they went off. We did what any Oklahoman would do when a tornado siren goes off: run outside to see what can be seen. As we went outside, I noticed that many of our neighbors were already out on their porches looking at the menacing skies while keeping their ears tuned to the voice of Gary England blaring on their TV's inside their houses. There were people out walking who didn't seem in a hurry to be anywhere even as the wind was blowing, lightning was flashing, thunder was booming, huge, black clouds were coming, and tornado sirens were going off.
As I walked off the porch to catch a better glimpse of the oncoming storm, I felt myself being in a perfectly nostalgic moment. I remembered a 4th grader who had gotten over her absolute fear of severe weather after learning about storms and how tornados were formed, and how several days later, when a Spring storm came, for the first time in her life she looked up at the clouds in amazement instead of fear. How, from that point on, she would dream of learning more about this awesome force of nature and perhaps unlocking some of its mysteries. How she would spend many years with her head in the clouds (literally), soaking up everything she could about severe weather and getting yelled at by her mother every time a storm came through because she needed to come in or she would get struck by lightening.
As that storm approached, it was the perfect moment: the wind with the smell of rain on it, the ominous clouds filled with lightning, the deep, rolling thunder, the weathermen freaking out on the the TV (with Gary England leading the way), the tornado sirens. Yes, it was a very nostalgic moment.
When the sun went down, the storms lost their fury. After replaying the little tornado footage they had over and over again (most with the damage done at the El Reno airport included in it), the basic channels finally went back to their regularly scheduled programs. As I sat with my family and got beat at a game of spades because I am not daring enough to take the chance to go blind neal, I felt thankful - thankful to God for family, friends, storms, and that I am an Oklahoman living in the great state of Oklahoma.

Back in Oklahoma

2006-04-22T05:51:00.000+09:00

The past three weeks have been a whirlwind of packing and unpacking, leaving and returning, goodbyes and hellos, happiness and sadness. Over three weeks ago, I packed up everything in my little Japanese apartment, said goodbye to it, went on a five-day, fun-filled adventure with my two pals Peter and Travis to Vietnam, returned to Japan and stayed six days with my two favorite Japanese people Junko and Yutaka, said a wrenching goodbye to them and many other Japanese people, took a very long flight to the U.S. (I believe that was the first flight I really didn’t enjoy), was met in the airport by my very best friends and my dear family, went the very next day to the emergency room where my grandfather had just been taken, helped him and my mom out as he had a pacemaker put into his heart, and have finally started to unpack and settle down in my new room in my mom’s new house (actually it is a very old house built almost 100 years ago, but it’s new to me).
As soon as I find the cord that allows me to put pictures from my camera onto my computer, I will post pictures from Vietnam and my last six days in Japan on my picture page and then blog about them (for a little taste of the Vietnam experience, check out Peter’s entry), but for now, I will construct a top 10 list about the ins and outs of returning to my “home” after having a life and a “home” in Japan for two years.

10. Hello to television that I can understand. I missed shows like Star Trek (here’s a shout-out to all of the Trekkies out there!) and TV channels like the Weather Channel. And now I can watch Lost when it actually comes on.

9. Hello public libraries full of books that I can actually read.

8. I love Oklahoma weather. It is so beautiful. The sunsets are breathtaking, the air has a sweetness to it, and the storms make my blood boil. It’s good to be back in Spring.

7. It’s good and bad to be eating American food again. It’s good because it tastes so good: chips and queso and salsa, BBQ, enchiladas, All-you-can-eat Chinese buffet, All-you-can eat buffets period (for example Golden Corral or “Golden Trough” as I affectionally call it), real pickles that don’t smell like feet (I think that Japanese “skemono” or pickles smell like feet), Hostess treats, powdered-sugared donuts, and tons of other things that are deep-fried, add 10 pounds with each bite, clog your arteries, and are so yummy.
It’s bad because my stomach has been revolting against all of this good food (or maybe that’s a good thing).

6. I am so happy to be have dogs again. They are so great, even though they sling drool all over me and I can’t get away from their shedding hair.

5. Americans are so stinking opinionated, which isn’t that bad except they throw it around every chance they get. It is completely opposite of the keep-your-opinion-to-yourself or your-opinion-is-better-than-mine mindset of the Japanese. Besides, I’m the only one who’s allowed to let my opinion be known all the time. It’s right anyways.

4. I love the U.S., but when it comes to customer service it’s hit and miss. In Japan, 99.9% of the time customers receive exceptional customer service. Ever since I left Japanese territory, I haven’t been more aware of the disparity between customer service here in the U.S. and in Japan. I can’t say it any better than Denver has…

3. Hello to Southern kindness. In the Oklahoma City airport alone there were four people who kindly offered to help me with my bags and one big, muscled man with a fork lift who actually did. It put me into reverse culture shock! That doesn’t really happen in Japan. And I haven’t been able to count how many doors that have been held open for me. Most of the time I don’t need people to help me or hold doors open for me, but it sure is nice when they offer. I love the South!

2. Good-bye to all of my dear friends in Japan. My heart hurts that it can’t see you and be with you. Good-bye to my great students (most of the time). I miss trying to deflect your konchos and trying to communicate with you in anyway possible. Good-bye to the adventure, the good times, the bad, my apartment, those crazy roads, the crazy trains, the food, worshiping in church with Japanese and foreigners together, the obliging Japanese the challenges…. I mourn it all.

1. It’s good to be home with family and friends. I’ve considered many places “home” but they aren’t home simply because I live there. They are home because the people I love and care for are there. Thank you God for family and friends.

It's so hard to say goodbye!!!

2006-03-28T18:12:00.000+09:00

But that's what I've been doing for the past two weeks. I said good-bye to all of my students (all 600 of them), to all of my teachers, and now to some of my best friends. Praise the Lord I get to hang out with my closest friends a little longer before I return to the U.S.
In two days, I leave early in the morning with my two buddies Peter and Travis for Vietnam. We are going to spend some fun days there sightseeing and relaxing. This will probably be my last chance to travel around Asia and I am thankful to God for the opportunity.
As Peter and Travis fly off for a three week travel marathon around the beautiful country of Australia, I will fly back to Japan and camp out at my two best friend's (pictured below) house for 6 days. These two are going to be the hardest to say goodbye to, but the wonderful thing is they will come to visit in the U.S. at the end of June.

This is Junko and Yutaka helping me pack up my apartment. They brought over a yummy lunch and we picnicked on my bare floor in my apartment. They are so kind to help me out so much!
Well, I will be back in the U.S. on April 10th. I am sad to leave the land of the rising sun, but am very happy to come back to many great family and friends. And I'm glad that I have great family and friends to help me adjust back to America, teach me to speak fluent, normal speed English again, and to just be with.
I love you all!

Preparing to Return

2006-03-21T22:38:00.000+09:00

I will return to the U.S. on April 10th. Thus, I have been VERY busy preparing for that return. Life has been hectic but enjoyable. My mother came to visit from February 31st to March 6th and we did all sorts of great, fun things. I've been busy trying to wrap things up at my schools, and I've already said goodbye to one of them. It was a sad, present-filled goodbye as every grade gave me presents of pictures and goodbye cards. I've already said goodbye to the small church in Shiro-satou that I've been attending for a year. More goodbyes are yet to come, and I will miss everybody terribly.
Please pray for me in this transition.
If your interested, I've posted over 100 pictures on my picture page (jrgbubbles.smugmug.com) for your viewing pleasure. Enjoy them and sit tight. I'm not sure when I'll be able to post again.
Later alligator!

Clumsy twins

2006-02-28T23:15:00.000+09:00

Today, as usual on Tuesday mornings, I taught a kindergarten class full of 18 five to six years olds. I’ve been teaching these kids since I came to Japan, and they have a very special place in my heart.
Well today, for the first time, I noticed that two of my students (or at least one of them) are clumsy. They are twins - Naoki and Masaki - and they are so identical that even their teachers who teach them every single day get them both confused. And they are always dressed identically.
These two boys love to play in their own little worlds, building stuff with tissue boxes and toilet paper rolls and really never paying attention to much else. They are quiet and never much of a hassle.
We played a very typical game today called fruit basket. Each student is given a fruit card and they all sit in a circle. The person in the center says a fruit and whoever has that fruit gets up and tries to sit in another chair so that they aren't the last one. We played this game for about 15 minutes today.
For some reason, near the beginning of the game, I was watching one of the twins and he full on fell right out of his chair! He just shifted a little and plop! - he was on the ground. I had myself a little chuckle until my attention was quickly turned back to the game. Not even a minute later, I saw of the twins running for a chair because his fruit was called and he tripped and fell right in the middle of the circle. I don't know who noticed, but nobody laughed but me. He picked himself up and kept running like nothing happened.
A couple of minutes later, I was watching one of them and again he fell out of his chair, this time knocking his head on the knee of the kid sitting next to him. The kid he hit acted like it was nothing atypical and so did the fallen twin. He picked himself and his chair up and sat back down like nothing happen.
I don't know if this was the same twin I saw fall everytime or if they took turns falling, but everybody certainly acted like it was nothing unusual.
Is that what I look like when I fall all the time?

It's BEAUTIFUL, people!

2006-02-23T22:31:00.000+09:00

Here I was again tonight sitting across from a good Japanese friend of mine – a 32 year young woman with impeccable English, a very kind spirit, and a beautiful yet tired smile. We have been friends since we were introduced to each other about a year and a half ago, trying to go out to dinner and talk about life when there was time in our busy schedules.
And here I was again tonight sitting across from her and praying like crazy to God to use me. Ever since I have known her she has been seriously thinking about entering a relationship with God. I met her about the time in her life when the divorce to her husband went through – a time where she was at rock bottom where she would remain for a little over half a year. In her great time of despair, anger, loneliness, and immense pain, a Christian couple (the very missionaries who began the small country church that I attend every Sunday morning) who had known her for a while reached out to her and took her under their wings. They supported her, provided so many things for her, and showed her real, Christian love. From them, she began to be very interested in the One True God.
When we met, I could see the sadness and brokenness in her. I remember a whisper inside of me that said “Invite her to lunch and get to know her.” And so, when her busy schedule and my busy schedule had a day a couple of weeks down the road when we could both meet, we met for a lunch that ended up being three hours of emotional conversation about despair over a broken marriage and then hope in God.
Tonight, almost four months later, I sat across from her again, knowing where she has been and eager to know where she is now, and finding that she has been slowing getting up off of that rock bottom, cold floor, that God has prepared her heart through her trials, and that He will grab it soon. He is going to grab it soon, people!
I need you to join me in prayer for her. She is holding back because she doesn’t understand some things, and she feels that she’s got to understand it all before she makes the commitment. She is asking, seeking, knocking. Pray that God will answer and open the door for her.
Being the dufus that I am, I forgot my Bible tonight. But we discussed things from it anyways and God has opened her heart more. We are going to meet again next Tuesday (I will NOT forget my Bible this time) and we’re going to hash it out together.
Y’all know that I am not the best person to convey complete thoughts to other people. I have not been used by God through the majority of her long road to Him, but hopefully God can use me a little now since I will be meeting her again next Tuesday.
Are you praying yet?
I can’t express to you how beautiful it is to be able to witness and to understand what God has done and is doing to bring a life to Him.
It’s beautiful, people. BEAUTIFUL!
Please pray.

Please pray

2006-02-17T22:19:00.000+09:00

My brother Jon and his wife Brandy found out Monday that they lost their unborn baby. Jon and Brandy were married last June and were excited when they found out about three months ago that a baby was on the way.
Please lift them up in your prayers. They are young and this was their first, but it is always very difficult to lose a child, unborn or not.

What to look forward to

2006-02-17T22:15:00.000+09:00

This is not a very comforting news article, especially since they have been expecting the ‘big one’ for a while now.
http://mdn.mainichi-msn.co.jp/national/news/20060216p2a00m0na024000c.html

Happy Valentine's Day

2006-02-14T21:21:00.000+09:00

Almost 2,000 years ago, the apostle Paul wrote this prayer in a letter to the Ephesian church. Today, this is my prayer for you, whether you know your Creator or not:

For this reason I kneel before the Father, from whom his whole family in heaven and on earth derives its name. I pray that out of his glorious riches he may strengthen you with power through his Spirit in you inner being, so that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith. And I pray that you, being rooted and established in love, may have power, together with all the saints, to grasp how wide and long and high and deep is the love of Christ, and to know this love that surpasses knowledge - that you may be filled to the measure of all the fullness of God.

Now to him who is able to do immeasurably more than all we ask or imagine, according to his power that is at work within us, to him be glory in the church and in Christ Jesus throughout all generations, for ever and ever! Amen.

Praise the Lord!

2006-02-11T09:37:00.000+09:00

I woke up with the first verses of this Psalm in my head:

Sing to the Lord a new song;
sing to the Lord, all the earth.
Sing to the Lord, praise his name;
proclaim his salvation day after day.
Declare his glory among the nations,
his marvelous deeds among all peoples.
Psalm 96:1-3

Then I found this one:

Praise the Lord.

Praise God in his sanctuary;
praise him in his mighty heavens.
Praise him for his acts of power;
praise him for his surpassing greatness.
Praise him with the sounding of the trumpet, praise him with the harp and lyre,
praise him with tambourine and dancing,
praise him with the strings and flute,
praise him with the clash of cymbals,
praise him with resounding cymbals.

Let everything that has breath praise the Lord.

Praise the Lord.
Psalm 150

Today is a beautiful day - outside my window and inside my heart. I can't help but think that many days will be quite the opposite of this day, but God will take care of me no matter what and I praise Him that I have Him to cling to.
I don't know if you believe in our Creator or not. My prayer today is that you do and that you will feel the praise in your being on the beautiful days and that on the ugly days you will feel peace and comfort as your soul clings to Him .

Courage

2006-02-04T22:16:00.000+09:00

One of my 8th grade students wrote this during a short writing assignment yesterday in class. I think it is awesome and I wanted to share it.
I can't help but imagine what he needs courage for. I know that I need it, also.
I love it when my students become my teacher.

Some random things

2006-02-04T22:02:00.000+09:00

Yesterday at lunch time, after I finished drinking my milk, I began folding my milk carton as usual. (In Japanese schools, the students fold up their milk cartons before they throw them away.) Well, I didn't realize that there was still a little milk in it, so when I folded the bottom and pressed it against the body of the carton, milk squirted out of the open end across my desk and two other student's desks. The milk only got on one boy's hand, but it was all over the desks and their food (luckily it was near the end of lunch so they were pretty much finished eating). All of the six students in the lunch group that I was eating with immediately stopped talking and stared at me dumbfounded. Then I busted out laughing and so did they. We all continued to laugh as we broke out the tissues and cleaned up my mess. I kept saying sorry in between fits of laughter and they would tell me it's okay in between fits of their laughter. It was a pretty humorous occurrence and I'm still laughing now as I write this.

+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

Yesterday was a pretty exciting day. Not only did I squirt milk across my student's desks, but we had a pretty good earthquake and several aftershocks after lunchtime. It was a pretty shaky afternoon. I counted four pretty good-sized earthquakes, but a friend of mine counted six. Earthquakes never cease to amaze me, or to make my heart stop beating. I am kind of getting excited about them, though; similar to the feeling I get during those stormy days back in Oklahoma.

+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

Almost every night this past week I have gone out with Japanese friends. I want to spend time with so many people before I return to the States, so I'm cramming weeknights full of dinner at restaurants and I'm hoping to get some karaoke in soon. I tell you, there is no other way I would rather be spending my nights right now. I love these people so much and I am going to miss them. I keep telling them they should come and visit me in Oklahoma City and I could show them around (I know some of you scoff at this because you think there is nothing to see in OKC, but you are wrong. There is a good days worth of stuff to see....).
Anyways, after leaving their company, I have found myself praying a lot. Praying for them and their lives and struggles and thanking God for blessing me with them.

Blessings

2006-02-02T20:30:00.000+09:00

My students, or kids as I affectionately call them, are great. I'm not worthy to be blessed with such great students to teach everyday, especially since my first thought every morning last week when I woke up to my alarm was "I don't want to go to school today." But that was last week and God has once again showed me how blessed I am with my job, everything that He has given me here, and His Awesome Love. So this week has been a lot better. Here's why.
Almost every time I open the sliding door of an Elementary school classroom, I am greeted with huge smiles, an air of excitement, and sometimes exclamations of excitement like "Jessica sensei da!" (Yeah, it's Jessica teacher!) Of course, my kindergarteners and first graders are the happiest to see me, and the older the students are, the less excited they are to learn English (naturally). So I never get the reaction from my Junior High classes, but even my fifth and six graders mostly are excited that I've come to teach them English for a whole hour. Several of the fifth grade classes actually cheer when I come (can you guess why they are my favorite classes?).
For some reason, some of my elementary school students, when they see me all the way at the other end of the hall, yell "Jessica sensei!" and actually run all the way down the hall just to breathlessly say "Hello!" to me. This phenomenon still amazes me, but it makes me feel loved. And for that, I am very thankful for those precious, crazy students.
The more Japanese I'm learning, the more I can understand of what my students are saying (duh!). It's kind of like a whole new world opening up to me. Here is a conversation that two of my second graders had together and then with me while we were eating lunch together.
Natsumi to Daigo: Miss Jessica speaks really good English.
Daigo: Yes, she does.
Natsumi to me with Daigo slurping his ramen while watching the exchange: Miss Jessica, you speak really good English.
Me, said in simple Japanese with a hint of "No duh!" in my voice while I set my ramen bowl and chopsticks down: Of course I do. I'm from the U.S. and we speak English there.
Natsumi and Daigo in one accord with serious looks on their faces and in the tones of their voices: So de o ne. (This phrase could be translated as "I guess your right." or "That's right." or "Oh, I see.")
As I broke into a fit of laughter, Daigo and Natsumi looked at each in utter confusion as to why I was laughing so hard.
Maybe this simple exchange between me and two of my students isn't funny to those of you who have never been to Japan, but for those of us who live and teach here and are constantly getting complemented on how great our English is, it's pretty funny. Or it could just be funny to me.
Here is another conversation I had with one of my students last week. This student is a sixth grade boy. He can say to me all the time "I want you to be my girl." but when I ask him any review questions of the English he supposed to know like "What's your name?", "How old are you?", or "How are you?", he looks at his friends and says in Japanese "What'd she just say?" So this little sixth grader whose name is Satoshi was obviously excited that I got to sit in his lunch group and right next to him for a whole lunch period. Here is our conversation in the middle of lunchtime, in Japanese of course:
Satoshi to me kind of out of the blue: Let's get married.
Me, finishing the bite of rice I was in the middle of eating and calmly replying: Okay. When?
Satoshi with a bit of excitement in his voice: Tomorrow.
Me, about to take another bite of rice: I can't, I'm busy.
Satoshi, not in the least bit phased: The day after tomorrow?
Me, after finishing the bite of rice I just took: Nope. Busy.
Satoshi: How about Saturday?
Me: Busy.
Satoshi: Sunday?
Me: Busy.
Satoshi, starting to catch on: Anytime next week?
Me: Busy, busy, busy.
Satoshi, obviously shattered: Oh.
And so went the first marriage proposal I have ever received. Sure I initially led him on, but he deserved it considering the only English he ever speaks/yells to me is "I want you to be my girl." Satoshi didn't seem too shattered (deterred?) because later when I saw him after school he once again yelled to me his token phrase.
These great things are just the tip of the iceberg. My kids make this job worth it. Nothing else could. They are great and everyday they teach me something new. And they never, never cease to amaze me.
Here is something else that blessed me, and I want to pass it on to you. Before Christmas time, we took a break at the Elementary schools from the regular teaching and gave the students a blank stocking to draw a Christmas image on. As many of you may or may not know, Christmas is a very secular holiday here in Japan. So you could imagine my surprise when I saw this picture:

I must've seen at least 1000 of these drawings from this Christmas and last, and this is the first one I have ever seen like this. Of course I gave her drawing first place.
My prayer is that you are continually seeing God's blessings as I have been.

Down in the Mumps

2006-01-19T21:43:00.000+09:00

Did you know that even if you are vaccinated for the mumps in America that you could still get them while living in another country - say like Japan? Well, I didn't. And a lot of my fellow AETs/foreigners here didn't know that either.
It turns out that the Japanese strain of mumps is different than the American one, so if you aren't vaccinated for the Japanese one, you can get them. Guess what? None of us gajin are vaccinated for the Japanese strain! Well, two of the girls I went to Thailand with came down with the mumps about a week after we returned from our trip, and I believe it was spread to the missionary at our church and his son (they have puffy cheeks and fevers).
So please pray for Marianne, Holly, Chris, and little Heath. The mumps are painful, antibiotics won't get rid of them (it's a virus, so your body has to take care of it naturally), and they are quaranteened in their apartments for a week.
So we are all checking our cheeks daily and praying we don't get them too. Us gajin spend a lot of time together outside of school doing church activities and just hanging out, so a bunch of us could have contracted it and still be in the incubation period. It's pretty contagious too (from sneezing, coughing, any form of saliva exchange).
So please keep us in your prayers.
Don't know much about mumps? I didn't until people I knew started getting them (you don't worry about what you've been vaccinated for as a child). Check out this link to learn more.

2006-01-14T21:14:00.000+09:00

Here has been the verse in the Bible that I have looked to for some time now (about two years it really spoke to me, and it's still speaking today):
And we know that in all things God works for the good of those who love him, who have been called according to his purpose. Romans 8:28, NIV.
I really like the way the Worldwide English Bible puts it:
We know that God works out everything for the good of those who love him. They are the people who are part of his plan.
I love God, and He loves me. I'm glad that I'm a part of His Plan, and I am blessed to know so many people that are a part of His Plan.

Coming back from paradise to some good news and some bad news

2006-01-07T12:06:00.000+09:00

The trip to Thailand and Taiwan was absolutely awesome! We all had the time of our lives, and I will especially cherish the experiences of that vacation for the rest of my life.
I have talked to some family and friends the last two mornings since I came back, and have learned some good and bad stuff.
My grandfather - my mother's real father - passed away by a massive heart attack this last week. I didn't see my Grandpa Robertson very often throughout my life, but anytime we visited him or he came to visit us, all my family and I received from him was love and kindness. He loved us so much, and he loved the Lord also. I know where he is now, and I take comfort in that. Please pray for my mother and her sisters and his wife and their adopted children.
My dear friend Ann White is still struggling with an illness that doctors can't quite diagnose. She got to spend Christmas with her family (Praise God!) but suffered another major setback that sent her back to ICU. Please pray for her.
God is answering prayers for my dear friend Stephanie. Although she is fighting a cancer that is spreading through her body, He is providing her with supportive friends who are really showing her Christ's love (Praise God!) by doing what they can to provide her with her many needs. He has also provided much-needed money for her through a very kind, rich woman that is helping her pay for her rent and other costs that being in and out of the hospital creates (Praise God!).
My brother Jon, and his wife of 9 months, Brandy, are expecting their first child at the end of September (Praise God!). I am going to be an aunt! We are all VERY excited about this, and I made sure my brother knew how much I'm going to spoil that baby. The baby is due right around the time my other brother, Mike, is going to marry his long-time girlfriend April. We are hoping that the birth and the wedding won't be too close, especially since the birth is planned to occur in Oklahoma and the wedding in Nebraska.
God is so good. Bad things happen, but that's part of life.
To end this blog, here are a few things pertaining to our trip to Thailand and Taiwan that I am thankful to God about. Over the next few days, I will post the hundreds of pictures on my picture webpage, so look at it in about 3 days, when I have the comments and the order all set.
Thank you God!
Thank you God for no plane, scooter, truck, boat, scooter, tuk-tuk (motorized rickshaws), bus, van, ferry, train, taxi, and elephant accidents. Over the thousands of miles we traveled, only you fully know the dangers we were in while using the mostly sketchy and sometimes dangerous transportations of our choice. Thank you for answering our many silent prayers on the many scary roads, oceans, and skies that we traveled.
Thank you for being among us and keeping us from anger with and about each other. I was so afraid that we would hate each other by the end of this trip. But it has been the complete opposite and I praise you that you could bring eight totally different people together in harmony, especially during very stressful, exhausting times. Thank you God for letting me know and love deeper Marianne, Holly, Catera, Lacey, Chisato, Peter, and Denver.
Thank you for the Bangkok Christians. I pray that they will grow in number and in harmony.
Thank you for sending Gary Kuan to us in Taipei. If it weren'tÂt for him, we would have never made it to our hotel, tried some delicious Taiwan food, or made it back to the airport for our early morning flight. Lord, I pray that you provide for him fellowship and a life moresubmergedd in you.
Thank you God for sparing us from any major injury or sickness. Aside from minor sunburns, bruises from unknown sources, minor scratches from a sea urchin and barnacles, minor stings from only you know what while snorkeling, numerous bites from mosquitoes, and numerous bites from some unknown sand bug, you kept us safe and healthy. Thank you so much.
Thank you God for keeping us from getting the bird flu. Also thank you for keeping us from malaria, really bad stomach problems, and any other illness we could have easily contracted in the places we visited. And thanks for keeping Holly from being car sick most of the trip.
Thank you for the beautiful weather you provided us. The respite from the inescapable cold of Japan was a refreshing and rejuvenating experience.
Thank you for all of the amazing things we got to see and experience. It was such a blessing to be able to see other peoples and their societies and to experience their culture and way of life. And thank you, as always, for the gift of beautiful sunsets.
Thank you for white sand beaches and riding elephants and snorkeling. It was my first tropical island experience and I really loved it.
And thank you again for the seven wonderful people I got to travel with. We laughed the whole time, which made everything more enjoyable and unforgettable.
Thank you God!

Merry Christmas and Happy New Year

2005-12-25T20:44:00.000+09:00

What I wore for our Christmas English classes at Iitomi Elementary school. My kids thought it was great!
Merry Christmas everybody! I hope that it is a glorious celebration of our Lord Jesus Christ’s birth for all of you. It certainly has been a great Christmas here for me, even though I am far from my immediate family and my good friends in the U.S. I spent Christmas Eve and Christmas day with the part of my spiritual family that is here in Japan.
At Mito Church of Christ there was a beautiful Christmas Eve candlelight service and afterwards a hand-bell concert. I enjoyed immensely singing Christmas songs in Japanese right along with many Japanese and foreign brothers and sisters and the hand-bell concert afterwards was absolutely stunning! Then, all of us foreigners who did not return to our respective countries for Christmas stayed the night in two separate apartments (one for the boys and one for the girls of course) together so that we could bring in Christmas by opening up the stockings that we stuffed for each other. It certainly wasn’t the Christmas I have experienced for the last 23 years with my family, but it was a blessed, enjoyable one regardless. God is so good!
Christmas here in Japan is nothing but a commercialized, materialistic holiday that has quite a different meaning to those here in Japan. If you ever want to see Christmas without Christ, come to Japan (and then even the atheists in America would think twice about all the crap they are trying to do in taking Christ out of Christmas). Anyways, the main concern of most single people is who they will go on a date with on Christmas Eve (it’s shameful to not have one on this special night). Christmas morning, Japanese children wake up to a present on their pillow, where Santa had sat it. Families gather and have a Christmas cake (I saw them in the store and do you know how much they are? The cheapest is about $25!!) and eat fried chicken (Kentucky Fried Chicken was REALLY busy today). Christmas is just not a special a holiday here like it is in many other countries around the world, but New Year’s certainly is.
I did a Christmas Power Point presentation to 6 classes of fifth and sixth grade students at one of my elementary schools about Christmas in the U.S. It was full of pictures and as many facts about our Christmas as I could cram into it (it was a good 45 minute presentation). It might interest you to hear some of the questions I was asked afterwards:
Was Christ a boy or girl?
How old is Santa Claus?
What does Santa do if there is no chimney?
Can Santa bring you a real baby if you want one? A handsome boyfriend?
Will Santa bring you gifts if you have been bad?
Was Santa rich?
Elves help Santa make presents?
Santa has a wife?
How do the people who put up so many Christmas lights afford the electric bill?
You put Christmas presents under the tree?
What does a girl do when she doesn’t want to kiss the boy who holds mistletoe over her head? (I told them they should run away very fast.)
You don’t eat Christmas cake in America?
Are there boy angels?
How old are angels?
Some of these questions are understandable questions, while others show differences in celebration. And the others, well the others show the thing that saddens me most – the serious lack of knowledge of their God and Savior. People don’t know about God and Christ here – but isn’t that why God brings so many of His believers here to Japan?
Onto the next subject. I will say Happy New Year’s now because I won’t be writing any blog for about 11 days (I know that’s typical anyways). I will be in Thailand! Yup, I’m going to Bangkok for three days, a tropical island named Koh Chang for five days, and then to Taipei, Taiwan (where I’ll get to meet up with my good friend Gary Kuan) for two days. The 8 of us who are going will leave bright and early at 5 in the morning tomorrow.
I am very much looking forward to it. But I want you family and friends back in the U.S. who actually read this blog to know that I am sad that I couldn’t spend these special holidays with you. I love you very, very much and I wish that I could bring all of you along with me to experience this.
Please pray for us and our safety. Again I will say MERRY CHRISTMAS and HAPPY NEW YEAR!

The Things My Students Say

2005-12-17T10:51:00.000+09:00

During the time I have been here in Japan, I have overheard some very interesting English words randomly thrown out in Japanese conversation, and I have also had many students say some very funny English.
Once, I was teaching at Iitomi Jr. High with a really good teacher – Sunaoshi sensei – and we asked the seventh grade students to make some sentences with the grammar pattern “Do you know ~?”. I demonstrated with a few sentences, and then it was their turn. They were throwing out all sorts of famous Japanese people, most of whom I didn’t know since I don’t have a TV, when one of the boys shouted out, “Do you know Bump of Chicken?”. I started laughing and everybody stopped talking and looked at me, the strange foreigner laughing her head off. Through fits of laughter (and a few snorts), I managed to ask the English teacher who or what was Bump of Chicken. After she and the class explained to me that it was the name of a famous rock band here in Japan, I tried to explain to them that it was some very….interesting English.
Well, there is a lot of English around in Japan. Down the street from church, there is a shoe store that is named At the Breast. I have seen a restaurant named Men and Sushi (men is the Japanese word for noodle). There is a brand of car around here called Naked.
Unfortunately, the English that a lot of my students are exposed to comes from American movies, which isn’t always good English. I cringe every time a student – or any Japanese person – says “Oh, my G--!”. I never realized how much that phrase was said in American movies/TV shows until I came to Japan. I have been flipped off by my students a number of times (usually by my upper Elementary school students). I know that most of them don’t completely understand what it means to give the bird, but they do know from the movies that it is offensive to Western people. So, when they flip me off, I usually don’t respond because they lose interest in trying to see if I would respond like they do in the American movies. After the first or second time, they stop.
I have one sixth grade student who says to me every week: “I want you to be my girl.” I ask him in Japanese if he knew what he was saying, but he never answers me. Now I just say, “OK!” and he runs away from me as fast as he can go. So maybe he understands what he is saying.
The other day I was teaching the eighth grade communication class with Sunaoshi sensei. This class is a pretty genki (energetic and fun, sometimes crazy) class. We were doing an activity where pairs of students had to make a conversation using English verbs they had drawn from a pile. They also had to include the grammar patterns ‘will’, ‘have to’, or ‘must’. The first time they had to make only two sentences, the second time, four, and so on. Here are a couple of the conversations that made me chuckle:
S1: I will walk to school. S2: No, you must not walk to school.
S1: Ok. Will you drive me to school? S2: Sure.
S2: How are you? S1: I’m fine, thank you.
S2: Do you have any friends? S1: Yes, I do.
I was totally confused about the randomness of this conversation and I told them so. Then they explained to me that it is a conversation between a mother and son, the second part of which occurs in the car on the way to school.
Here is my favorite conversation. This one was constructed by the coolest boy of the class. Since he is so cool, he had no problem constructing these sentences without a partner (whom was absent). He also has the best English of the class, so he always creates some very interesting conversations. Here is the conversation he had with himself:
A: What do you do? B: I will give love to you.
A: Really. B: Yes, I will give big love to you.
A: Oh, thank you.
Many times, my students fire questions at me in Japanese, especially my younger elementary school students. Today, a first grader showing me something so I could admire it, stopped in mid sentence and said, “Jessica sensei no me wa aoi des.” (Your eyes are blue). I responded with a “So da yo ne!” (Yup, that’s right!) and then asked him to say it in English since he knew the words eyes and blue. On the playground, one of my fifth grade girls asked me why my hair wasn’t black. I told her in broken Japanese that it’s because my father’s hair isn’t black either. Quite often, my students ask me if I have a boyfriend or if I’m married and when I say no, they start asking me who I like and start listing off all the names of the male teachers. They are all about the “hook up”, even more than the people I met during my Oklahoma Christian University days.
I will end with the phrase “Kids say the darndest things.” The more Japanese I learn, the more I’m opened up to their world and it is quite often hilarious. Now, since I can follow some basic conversations in Japanese, I really enjoy laughing with everybody else where before, I just sat quite because I had no idea what was said.

Things that make me happy:

2005-12-09T19:16:00.000+09:00

1. God. He’s number 1. He is my Savior, my love, and my life. I prayed and He answered by whisking me off to Japan. What a blessing!

2. My family. I love them. No matter what, I love them.

3. My friends. I’ve got so many of them. God has given me many in every situation and place, and He has taught me a lot through them all.

4. Close friends. I’ve got a few, and they mean more to me than I could ever say.

5. Church family. God has blessed me by showing me a part of His family in any part of the world I have lived in/traveled to. I am currently being blessed by His wonderful children here in Japan.

6. My students. They are so funny. Through them, God always reminds me how great teaching English in Japan is, especially when I am going through times of not liking it.

7. Japanese people. They are nice, helpful, and giving. They are also very funny to me and do very interesting things. The greatest thing is, I am very funny to them and do really interesting (weird?) things.

8. Chocolate, curry and rice, umeboshi, and katsudon. Oh yeah, and dill pickles.

9. Thunderstorms and Oklahoma sunsets.

10. My futon. I love sleeping, especially on a comfy futon. Even though I have to take that blasted thing out of the closet every night and fold it up and put it back in the closet every morning, I love every fluffy inch of it.

11. Heaters, stoves, hot carpets, and hot blankets. There certainly isn’t much wall between a person and the outside here in Japan, so these things make the winter bearable.

12. Hokkairos. I swear, these things have kept my feet from getting frostbite during the Japanese winters.

13. Christmas. I love everything about Christmas, except the unnecessary stress.

14. Dogs.

15. Books. I love books. The Bible is #1 (the ultimate action-packed, change your life love story), with fiction novels coming in second.

16. Riding on airplanes. I love being in the atmosphere. There’s so much interesting stuff to see and so much cool stuff that goes on there.

17. Water. Nothing quenches your thirst like water.

18. Green tea. Even though I thought it smelled like marijuana the first time somebody put it in front of my face and I didn’t quite like it, I have grown to really like it and look forward to a couple of cups of “ocha” everyday. Besides, it’s helshi (Japanese for healthy).

19. YahooBB. Without this wonderful phone service, I wouldn’t be able to call the U.S. for a mere 3 cents a minute, nor would I have high-speed internet that keeps me connected to the world.

20. Mexico. Even though I’m not there yet, the people are still on my heart and I want to go and live there more than ever.

None of these are really in order (with the exception of the first ones). What makes you happy?

Duh!

2005-12-06T21:51:00.000+09:00

Anyone who denies that The Chronicles of Narnia book series have allusions to the Bible (not just some, but a whole bunch in each book) either knows absolutely nothing about the Bible and the Life of Christ or has never actually read the books.
I simply can't believe that there are people out there who don't really think that these wonderful children's books written by C.S. Lewis have a lot of parallels to the story of Christ as recorded in the Gospels and to they way God has worked in this world since He created it.
I really hope that the movie is true to The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe, even though many critics and even the very actors/actresses in the movie don't really think there is a Christian connection.
Come on people - open your hearts!!

Gotta Love Culture

2005-12-01T22:56:00.000+09:00

I like learning about other cultures. They really fascinate me. I consider myself an amateur anthropologist, though it goes no further than a hobby (and it also really comes in handy when you are a missionary, so I’m very thankful that God has made learning about and knowing other cultures a joy to me). So I like to read stuff about other cultures. Since I am in Japan now, I have tried to read anything written in English about Japan that I could get my hands on – books, internet articles, English newspapers in Japan - which give me insights into this very foreign culture.
A couple of months ago, I started a book called The Japanese Mind written by Robert C. Christopher. It was published in 1983, and this man obviously knows what he’s talking about since he has studied Japan’s language, culture, and whatever and since he has lived in Japan. Experiencing Japan for the past year and 8 months, I’d say he knows what he’s talking about. And the book has made me aware of some things I didn’t know and put words to things I knew, but couldn’t formulate words (in my head or vocally) for. The one problem with this is that it has really brought things to the front of my mind that bother me (and almost despise) about Japan. Things that I think a lot of foreigners that live/stay in Japan for an extended period of time really have problems with. I won’t list those things because A.) That’s not the point of this blog and B.) If you are really interested, you can read the book or come to Japan and see for yourself.
The point of this blog is that living in a foreign culture can really suck, especially when there are things about that culture that really go against the grain of what your own culture has taught you to do and to be.
This particular book has helped me to really understand things about this culture and the Japanese people better, but I found that the more I read it, the more frustrated I got about a few things that I just don’t want to accept or even condone. I found myself dwelling on this frustration, sometimes allowing it to go into anger and even worse, discontentment. Reading about and thinking about the negative truths of the Japanese culture in this book, together with less sun, it getting colder, and having a couple of bad culture stress weeks really made me discontent all of the time. Actually, it didn’t make me, I allowed it to have this affect on me.
Don’t worry, the worst most complaining part of this blog is over because I am doing something about this. First, I prayed/am praying more. Second, I stopped reading that book. I think I’ll finish reading it sometime after I leave Japan (maybe like 10 years after I leave Japan). Third, I started reading another culture book – one that takes a more humorous look at Japan and its culture – Dave Barry Does Japan written by none other than Dave Barry. I am happy to say that while Dave Barry spent only three weeks in Japan, never learned Japanese (though he did try to learn a little), never went to school to study about Japan, and he isn’t even an anthropologist, his book was pretty insightful and very funny. I laughed out loud quite often while I was reading that book. And reading that book has helped me to see the humor in the differences between my culture and the Japanese culture – even the differences that frustrate me most. Now instead of getting frustrated or angry, I laugh (usually inside because if I did aloud, they might think I’m laughing at them). Sure there are things about this culture that are just really difficult (I’m not talking about sinful things, though there are those. More like “Why do this?” kind of things). But what’s the point of allowing those things to get in the way of caring, loving, and sometimes simply liking these wonderful, God-created people? Your right, there is not point!
And of course, God is hearing my prayers (praise Him!). I’m not content, but God is listening to my prayers and He is changing my heart (praise Him always!). He is also opening my eyes wider to all of the blessings in my life. Take our Thanksgiving Dinner for example. Just take a look at this picture and see how blessed I am.

Yummy food!

Pictures are up!

2005-11-26T10:23:00.000+09:00

I've got some more pictures up of some happenings of the past couple of months. There are pictures of church activities (EBC, apple picking, picnicing), a trip to an amusement park at the base of Mt. Fuji, some school festivals, and of a weekend trip to some historical places near here with my Japanese family.
As the Japanese say, "Enjoy!"

One of Those Days

2005-11-24T22:55:00.000+09:00

I saw this picture and I couldn't help but think it epitomizes the kind of days that I have been having lately - I'm tired, worn out, and so cold a lot of the time that I seriously want to hug a heater.

But what's worse is that many people I know are really having bad times. One of my best friends has cancer in a pretty advanced stage and another one has been sick (almost more than a year) and has recently had some more pretty bad setbacks. Every week and sometimes day I hear of other people's struggles - many I know and some I don't.
I say all of this to beseech your prayers for them. I haven't gone into specifics, but I know that won't stop a lot of you for praying for them.
For those of you that I know that are suffering, know that recently, more than ever, I have been lifting you up to our Father in Heaven. Maybe I can't be with you physically right now, but I am certainly there in prayer. I love you and I hope to be by your sides physically again soon.
For now, I hope these jokes bring smiles to your faces. They did to mine.
You can't read this and stay in a bad mood!

1. How Do You Catch a Unique Rabbit?
Unique Up On It.

2. How Do You Catch a Tame Rabbit?
Tame Way, Unique Up On It.

3. How Do Crazy People Go Through The Forest?
They Take The Psycho Path.

4. How Do You Get Holy Water?
You Boil The Hell Out Of It.

5. Why Did Pilgrims' Pants Always Fall Down?
Because They Wore Their Belt Buckle On Their Hat.

6. What Do You Call a Boomerang That Doesn't work?
A Stick.

7. What Do You Call Cheese That Isn't Yours?
Nacho Cheese.

8. What Do You Call Santa's Helpers?
Subordinate Clauses.

9. What Do You Call Four Bullfighters In Quicksand?
Quatro Sinko.

10. What Do You Get From a Pampered Cow?
Spoiled Milk.

11. How Are a Texas Tornado And a Tennessee Divorce The Same?
Somebody's Gonna Lose A Trailer.

12. What Do You Get When You Cross a Snowman With a Vampire?
Frostbite.

13. What Lies At The Bottom Of The Ocean And Twitches?
A Nervous Wreck.

14. What's The Difference Between Roast Beef And Pea Soup?
Anyone Can Roast Beef.

15. Where Do You Find a Dog With No Legs?
Right Where You Left Him.

16. Why Do Gorillas Have Big Nostrils?
Because They Have Big Fingers.

17. Why Don't Blind People Like To Sky Dive?
Because It Scares The Dog.

21. What's The Difference Between a Bad Golfer And a Bad Skydiver?
A Bad Golfer Goes, Whack, Dang!
A Bad Skydiver Goes Dang! Whack.

Now, admit it. At least one of these made you smile! And if they didn't, just picture me trying to walk in a straight line (or even trying to walk without falling).

CHRISTmas is in the air.....

2005-11-09T22:11:00.000+09:00

I went to karaoke with some old Japanese and Indonesian friends and a new Malaysian and two new Bangladeshi friends. The three new friends haven't been in Japan for more than a few weeks, so they couldn't sing any Japanese songs, but they could sing some English songs (they speak great English, by the way). Guess what they sang.....Yup, Christmas songs! It was the one thing that all of us - Japanese, Malaysian, Bangladeshi, Indonesian, and American - could all sing together. How awesome is that!? It really got me happy because I was reminded that Christmas is near.
And that isn't the only place I am hearing Christmas songs in Japan. I listen to KLove via the internet every morning and night, and they have started playing Christmas music.
I love Christmas because people truly are different during this time of year - different for the better. People are nicer, more giving, more loving, more appreciative, and many more great things. I have no doubt that people are better because, whether they consciously realize it or not, Christ permeates this season. Man, I love Jesus. I love this season. I love Christmas. Oh yeah, did I say that I LOVE CHRIST!

P.S. Blakewell, you know what I'm talking about!!!!

The Chronicles of Narnia

2005-10-30T14:37:00.000+09:00

I just finished reading The Chronicles of Narnia by C.S. Lewis. It has taken me about two months to read all seven of them (because they weren't always available and I didn't always have the time) and they have been some pretty blessed months. Before I graduated college, I was not able to read anything I wanted except for the books I had to read for classes and what not. But now, I'm not really studying anything (except Japanese, but I don't study it as much as I need too), so I've pretty much been reading anything that I could get my hands on: all of The Lord of the Rings, almost all of Jane Austen's books, A Wrinkle in Time and a few of its sequels, all of the Harry Potter's again, plus the new one, and so many others I can't really remember. But they were all good. As you've noticed, these are all mostly fiction books. Unfortunately, I haven't read many non-fiction books - though I am in the process of reading several different books on Japanese culture. I regret that I am not reading more non-fiction books, such as some of C.S. Lewis' other great books, Passion and Purity again, books on the lives of missionaries, and what I like to call "Thinkers" - books that make me really think about my life and my relationship to our Glorious creator because they more often than not point me to God (my whole reason for living, by the way).
But The Chronicles of Narnia are not only wonderfully written, highly imaginative and descriptive fantasy books, they are "Thinkers". No matter what anybody says, these books are oozing God. These books not only kept my full interest because they are adventurous, but they made me think really hard about my life and how God is a part of it. Most importantly, they greatly increased the longing I have to follow Christ because they somehow managed to increase my love for him (that Aslan is just so lovable).
I don't know how to describe it. In fact, I'm going to pull a C.S. Lewis. Quite often in TCoN, Lewis says "It's difficult to describe...." how this fruit tastes or what it is like at the end of the world in Aslan's country or what it is like in the new Narnia past the Shadow Lands, but then Lewis goes on and tries to describe things that really puts many great, sometimes horrid, but mostly glorious pictures in your head. But then he will say "If you ever come to this land and taste it yourself, you will know what I mean." or "If you ever get there, you will know what I mean." I'm sorry, most of you know that I don't have a knack for getting things out in words very well, so you are just going to have to read the books and go through those wonderful adventures yourselves. For those of you who have already read them, you know what I mean.
After I read good books, I always like to talk to other people about them. If you have read TCoN, please leave a comment and tell me what you thought about them, your favorite part/book or whatever. It would help me to relive them again.

Dangerous "Hachi"

2005-10-24T19:45:00.000+09:00

One day last Spring when I was teaching one of my Elementary classes in the gym instead of in the classroom, a huge bug flew in through the open door. It looked like a really big bee to me. Since most of the students had their backs to its meandering in the back of the gym, they couldn’t see it. But one student heard it, turned around and saw it, and then yelled in a terror filled voice, “Hachi!!” Immediately, everyone broke into a panic as they ran as far away from the bug as possible. Of course, I just stood where I was amazed that everyone, including the teacher, was running away from a bug like it was the Black Death. The teacher shouted some command at the students (probably something like, “Don’t go near it! It will kill you!” by the way they stayed away from it) while he ran out of the gym. He came back not even 30 seconds later with a can of bug spray and a broom. When the bug stopped on the gym floor, he ran up to it and sprayed it until it didn’t move and then he smashed it with the broom. After the mess was cleaned up, class resumed.
I remember how amazed I was on that day at their reaction to what I thought was just a big bee. They acted like it would kill them. It turns out that it is a very dangerous and painful bee. I don’t know if it can kill you, but I do know that it can give you a lot of pain if it stings you. After that incident in the gym, I asked the teacher of that class why everyone was so afraid of that bug. He showed me a round scar on his arm about the size of a penny and said, “Because this is what they do to you and it hurts a lot.” He said that when he was a child, he was stung by a hachi and it was incredibly painful. They had to cut the stinger out of him at the hospital.
I tried to do some research on these things and amazingly, the only thing I found about them is that they are dangerous. Maybe I’m not doing a very good google for them, but I really can’t find anything more about them. But ever since the day that my teacher showed me his scar, I do like everyone else when I hear the word “hachi” and I run like it’s the most painful thing in the world. Also, when I see a flying insect in the room and it looks anything like a bee, I go to the nearest teacher and ask if it’s a “hachi”. Over the past year and a half, I’ve seen many battles with hachi, but the most interesting one happened several days ago.
I was in the teacher’s room at one of my Elementary schools preparing for the next days classes when I saw a huge bug flying around on the ceiling. I quickly went to a teacher, pointed at the bug, and said in Japanese “Is that dangerous?” Several teachers inched a little towards it and immediately said “Hai!” As we all started running for our lives to the other side of the room, manly Oshima sensei went and got the bug spray. The hachi landed near one of the fluorescent lights on the ceiling, so he turned off the lights in case some of the spray got on the electrical stuff, he took his stand, and started spraying. When he took his stand to spray, I thought that he wasn’t close enough to reach the sucker with the spray because he was on the floor and that thing was on the ceiling. But all doubts were taken away when he sprayed. I’ve never seen such a stream of bug spray come out of a can in such an abundance and with such power that it not only reached the bug on the ceiling, but it sprayed within a whole 1 foot radius of the bug. It sprayed the light and started raining down onto the floor and lunch table. Then I understood why he stood at such a distance from the bug. I wish I could explain how manly and brave he looked spraying the high-powered can of bug spray at a dangerous (deadly?) bee. It was also quite surreal and humorous because I never expected to see a stream of liquid that looks like it’s coming out of a fire hose come out of a regular-sized can.
So, if any of you who read this blog know anything about the Japanese “hachi”, please feel free to comment some info or a link about it. I’m awfully curious. I should probably just ask a Japanese person….

Stupid Spam

2005-10-11T22:09:00.000+09:00

How irritating is blog spam. That's not a question, it's a comment. It is so stupid and if I even take the time to read the stupid spam they put on my blog or somebody else's, I will make a point NEVER to click on their links or buy their products or whatever. I encourage everybody else to also. Stupid spam. I don't know why it makes me so angry. Maybe because I get all excited because someone cares enough to leave a comment and then it is just stupid spam.
Stupid spam.
Well, now there will be no more stupid spam on my blog, because I just turned on the stupid spam blocker thingy. So there! No more stupid spam!

Asoubimasho (Let's play!)

2005-10-11T21:38:00.000+09:00

A couple of Sundays ago, after evening worship time, a little 6 year old by the name of Mitsuki came up and put a note in my back pocket while I was talking to some people. Then, as she always does, she proceeded to use me as a human jungle gym and we played together until she had to leave. Later that evening, I remembered the note in my pocket (luckily considering how forgetful I seem to be about things in my pockets) and the above picture is what I pulled out. It says, "To Jessica: Thank you for always playing with me. Mitsuki."
Mitsuki and I always play together after evening worship (and sometimes during it). I can't explain to you how much love I feel for this little girl. Everytime she sees me, she yells "Jeshika!" and runs and jumps into my arms. Then we play and she laughs and laughs and laughs. I love her laugh and will do whatever I can to make her do it, which doesn't take much.
Her young mother, Satomi, was just baptized a couple of months ago (praise be to God!). Her father is not a Christian, but he comes to church with his wife and daughter when he can and regularly studies the Bible (pray that he will become a child of God soon). I thank God that this beautiful little girl will at the very least be raised by a Christian mother. She has so much love in her and I know that God will use it to impact so many lives in His Name.

Such as these.....

2005-10-11T21:30:00.000+09:00

Rina and Kento
Last weekend was a three day weekend, and Mito Church had their church camp at the church. Near the end of it, Rina and her brother Kento were taking their daily nap on the pews in the back. Look how little Rina is holding the hand of her little brother.
Matthew 19:14:
Jesus said, "Let the little children come to me, and do not hinder them, for the kingdom of heaven belongs to such as these."

How God changes my sucky attitudes:

2005-10-06T23:06:00.000+09:00

Today was a great day at school! Of course, when I got up this morning, I really didn’t want to go to work (I go through these phases where I don’t want to work at all). But when I got there, God blessed me all over again with my students. In all of my fifth and sixth grade classes, we have been learning school supplies, the grammar “Do you have a pen? Do you have a ~?”, and transitioning into learning body parts. Today we played the same game we played last week one more time because it is good practice for them. The game is essentially a spin-off of “Go Fish” and has been used to teach different English conversations within the AET circle long before my time here. The students make groups of six and then each student gets six cards, each with a different school supply on it. They must go around the group and each person asks another “Do you have a ~?”. The other person answers “Yes, I do.” and gives them the card(s) or “No, I don’t.” and the asking student has to draw a card from the pile. The whole goal of the game is to get as many sets of four as possible. The prize for every winner is a big sticker.
I knew they liked this game, but when the students of my first class actually started clapping and saying “Yatta!” (All right!) when I told them we were going to play the game, I felt tingly all over. My students liked this game and they were more than happy to play it. What’s better, most of them really tried to speak the English. They even begged me to allow them to play longer when I told them that time was up! I can’t tell you how good it is to a teacher’s soul when students are excited about something that you want them to be excited about.”
After we stopped the games (much to their disappointment), we started learning/reviewing body parts. Of course, the perfect song to go with teaching body parts is Head, Shoulders, Knees, and Toes. This particular version sings it over and over 6 times, but each time, it gets faster and faster. The students loved it! They tried to sing with it and to keep up with it when it got incredibly fast. Even the students who never pay much attention really were trying. I can’t tell you how amazing it is when 6th graders respond well to anything. Generally, since it is their last year in elementary school, they are now the cool sempei’s (upperclassmen), and they are transitioning from immature elementary students to cool jr. high students, it is hard to find something to snare their interest. But this magical, once irritating-to-me song has done it, and I couldn’t be more blessed. The topper of the day was when one of the 6th grade classes actually asked to borrow the CD so they could sing the song before lunch. I couldn’t teach them today because I had to take a business trip during their class, but they had already learned it the week before. They heard the other class doing it, so they wanted to do it to. How wonderful is that!
God is so good. He blesses me like this even though I don’t deserve it because of the sucky attitudes I can take on sometimes. God is so good!

Beat this blunder!

2005-09-29T22:32:00.000+09:00

You’ll never guess what I did last night! Before I went to bed, I was going to hang the clothes that I had just washed earlier that evening. But when I opened the lid to my washing machine, I noticed a strange smell coming from it that I have never smelled coming from a washing machine before. I thought, “This doesn’t smell like freshly laundered clothes. It smells like…..” And as I investigated by taking out some of the clothes, my eyes immediately confirmed what I thought I couldn’t possibly be smelling: CHOCOLATE! I had washed two bars of Meiji chocolate with a full load of clothes! I laughed hysterically as I looked at the pieces of chocolate scattered throughout the washing machine and all over my clothes. And I laughed even harder when I pulled out the clothes and they smelled heavily of chocolate. I thought, “Well, instead of scratch and sniff stickers, I’ve got scratch and sniff pants and shirts.”
Perhaps what made it so funny to me at the moment were the events leading up to this scrumptious discovery. The night before, we had a bonfire devotional/Bible study on the bank of a river just outside of Mito City. It was quite enjoyable, especially since we made S’mores (the ingredients of which aren’t so easy or cheap to come by in Japan). At the end of the night, there were a lot of chocolate bars left over, and being the chocolate lover that I am, I bought two of them at the bargain price of 100 yen each. I stuck them in the pocket of the my huge fleece jacket, and when I came home, I immediately put all of the clothes I was wearing into the dirty clothes basket because they stunk like smoke and needed a good washing. Somehow, I completely forgot that the chocolate bars were in the jacket pocket.
The next day when I came home from work, I was craving chocolate really bad (which isn’t unusual). I remembered those chocolate bars and started looking for them everywhere. I thought I had put them in the fridge, which is the first place I put any chocolate that I keep for more than one day (which is rare), but they weren’t there. I looked in my car, all over my little apartment and even thought in my head “Travis stole my chocolate because he thought it would be funny.” (He has done it to me before and I had taken him home after the devo, so I thought he saw them and swiped ‘em as a joke.) I eventually gave up my search, considered them lost or stolen, and contented myself with a few precious chocolate chips from my special chocolate chip stash (chocolate chips are really expensive in Japan, so I had bought a whole bunch from the U.S. so that I can make chocolate chip cookies without spending a fortune). After I finished the chocolate chips, I started the load of laundry (somehow not finding the chocolate bars in the jacket pocket) and went to dinner with some friends. You could imagine my surprise when I later opened my washer and thought I smelled chocolate.
So there’s my crazy blooper for the week. Not only am I very sad that I lost two perfectly good chocolate bars to such a horrible fate, but I owe my good friend Travis Powell an apology. Travis, if you are reading this, I’m sorry that I blamed you in my thoughts for stealing my chocolate bars. As for my clothes, I have already washed them a second time and I think that I will have to wash them a third time tonight because they still smell like chocolate. Luckily, they are dark clothes, so there seem to be no stains on them.
Can anyone beat this blunder?

100% Okie

2005-09-28T22:07:00.000+09:00

I am not the person to forward forwards, but this particular forward deserves some attention. My momma forwarded it to me, and it made me think a lot about my home state of Oklahoma. I was born, raised, and went to 4 different colleges within the Oklahoma City area, and it is a place that I love very much. Most people who move to Oklahoma want to move back to wherever they came from, and even those who have lived there all of their lives want nothing but to get out, but I have always considered it a place that I could live for my whole life. Besides the fact that a lot of my family lives within the OKC area, Oklahoma is also full of really nice people (anybody who says different doesn't know what they are talking about). And perhaps one of the greatest things about Oklahoma is the weather: you've got unbeatable sunrises and sunsets, gorgeous summers, and grrrreeeaaatttt thunderstorms (huge thunderheads, electrifying lightening displays, and terrifying tornadoes).
Without further ado, here is the forward I received this morning and the real reason I am writing this post:
You are 100% Oklahoman if:
1. You can properly pronounce Eufaula, Gotebo, Okemah, and Chickasha.
2. You think that people who complain about the wind in their states are sissies. Yup.
3. A tornado warning siren is your signal to go out in the yard and look for a funnel.
To get an idea of how true this is, check out the website of some of my greatest friends at www.stormgasm.com.
4. Your idea of a traffic jam is ten cars waiting to pass a tractor on the highway.
5. You've ever had to switch from "heat" to "A/C" in the same day.
6. You know that the true value of a parking space is not determined by the distance to the door, but by the availability of shade.
7. Stores don't have bags, they have sacks. Who calls them sacks?? Weirdos...
8. You see people wear bib overalls at funerals. Never seen it, but I know people who would do it.
9. You think everyone from a bigger city has an accent.
10. You measure distance in minutes. ("I'm about 5 minutes away.")
11. You refer to the capital of Oklahoma as "The City." It is the only city I knew for most of my life.
12. It doesn't bother you to use an airport named for a man who died in an airplane crash.
Will Roger's Airport...I knew he died in a plane crash, but I never thought how strange it was to name an airport after him until now.
13. Little smokies are something you serve only for special occasions. That's right!
14. You go to the lake because you think it is like going to the ocean. And most of them are man-made.
15. You listen to the weather forecast before picking out an outfit.
16. You know cowpies are not made of beef. My brother's would make anyone who didn't know this the butt end of a very bad joke.
17. Someone you know has used a football schedule to plan their wedding date. Boomer Sooner!
18. You have known someone who has had one belt buckle bigger than your fist. My brother Jon.
19. A bad traffic jam involves two cars staring each other down at a four-way stop, each determined to be the most polite and let the other go first. A very common occurance.
20. You know in which state "Miam-uh" is and in which state "Miam-ee" is.
21. You aren't surprised to find movie rental, ammunition, and bait all in the same store.
22. Your "place at the lake" has wheels under it.
23. A Mercedes Benz is not a status symbol. A Ford F350 4x4 is. Amen!
24. You know everything goes better with Ranch. French fries, pizza, mashed potatoes, spaghetti, tacos....
25. You learned how to shoot a gun before you learned how to multiply. My brother Brandon is a fine example of this.
26. You actually get these jokes and are "fixin" to send them to your friends.... Hence this blog.
27. Finally, you are 100% Oklahoman if you have ever heard this conversation:
"You wanna Coke?"
"Yeah."
"What kind?" Get that? "Coke" is a general term for any type of carbonated drinks.
"Dr. Pepper." Don't forget to ask an Okie what kind they want.

Undokai!!!

2005-09-24T12:08:00.000+09:00

This past month has been busy. Not only did my students, fellow teachers, and I have to get back into the swing of things after the summer, but we had to prepare for the undokai (sports festival). Since I am an AET at three schools this year, I was expected to go to all three undokais. Unfortunately, the two Elementary Schools that I go to had their undokai's on the same day , so I only went to two (actually, I feel pretty fortunate about this). This is my second year to go to the Junior High undokai, but it was my first time to go to the Elementary one. You can swing over and take a look at some of my pictures of the events, but I am going to elaborate a little on the amazingness and the exhaustiveness of this event.
The undokai is usually held on a Saturday or Sunday so that parents and school officials can come and watch the students compete against each other. As with most things that are going to be shown to other people outside of the school (e.g. parents, education board officials, etc.), teachers and students spend an amazing amount of time preparing and "practicing" (I call it rehearsing) for the undokai. It starts during the summer break with students making team flags and choreographing dances and making "fures" (cheers Japanese style). Once school starts, there are classses, but they are on a shortened schedule and the afternoon part of the days are spent "practicing" (again, rehearsing) the events the students will compete in. Oh, I forgot to say, there are two teams - white and red. This is usually an even split of the students with an equal amount of each grade on each team. The sempeis (upper-classmen) usually take the great leadership roles of being the leaders of the their teams since this is their last year in Junior High/Elementary School.
Anyways, the weeks up to the event itself seem pretty stressful to the students and especially the teachers. I wouldn't know the full extent of the stress because, being a foreigner, I am usually forgotten about (which really doesn't offend me. It comes with the package here and I quite understand how much time it would take them to explain everything and they are just busy anyways.), so I usually sit by and watch and try to help when I see it is needed (the Japanese way is to help when their is an opportunity. You aren't usually asked to help.). This year, I was happy that I could understand more of what was going on because I had already experienced an undokai last year and my Japanese was better.
The day of the event came along with everybody up and at the school really early on Saturday morning. There was the usual opening ceremony (they seem to have a ceremony to begin most things in Japan) then the fun began. My students performed cool Japanese stlye dances, had cheers and dances for each team, and competed in some very interesting games. My favorite for the boys is what I've called the "Horse Game". Three boys would make a horse through linking arms where a fourth boy can sit in. This fourth boy has a bicycle helmet on with a Japanese paper balloon on it. He also has a rolled-up wad of newspaper in his hand and the whole point is for the boys to run around and pop the balloon on top of the other team's heads. Of course the boys just swing that stick of newpaper as hard as possible and sometimes the horse boys and the rider himself were smacked in the head and face. It seemed pretty dangerous to me, but it was great fun for the boys and really fun to watch.
In fact, us foreigners often talk about how the events at the undokai would never fly for any event involving kids in America. There would be a lot of sueing going on. For example, there is a popular past-time event they play every year at most Junior Highs. It is like the three-legged race except you tie up a whole bunch of students in a line instead of just three. I just happened to be at school the day they first started "practicing" this event, and there were some pretty nasty spills. It was scary and hilarious all at once to watch a whole line of them running with their legs tied together and then fall over onto the ground in a domino effect kind of way because one person got tripped up. Its amazing how the idea of what's "safe" in one country is totally different in another.
This is becoming a very long, boring blog, so I will just wrap it up in saying that the Elementary School undokai was similar except there was a lot more parent attendance and participation (from the fourth grade down, parents participated with their children in the events). Both of the undokais I attended were held on different Saturdays, and after each undokai, all of the teachers went to a "nomikai" (drinking party) to relax and say "otsukaresamdeshita" (something like "good job, you worked really hard and now your work is finished"). Someday, in a different blog, I will talk about Japanese nomikais.

The Flying Gokiburi

2005-09-12T21:02:00.000+09:00

Tonight, as I was cleaning my apartment, out of the corner of my eye I saw something fly and land upside down on my ceiling. I immediately looked and saw that it was a huge cockroach. Now, before you judge me as somebody who lives in filth because I have a cockroach, let me tell you that the cleanest apartments can have a cockroach - especially if you live in Japan where there is nothing but thin walls that separate you from the outside world.
The girly-ness inside of me immediately went to my door (giving the cockroach on the ceiling a wide birth), into my flip-flops, and out the door to get one of my manly neighbors, Peter, to come and kill the nasty pincher-baring thing (yes, it had pinchers!). But half way there (about 4 feet outside of my apartment) I thought, "Wait a minute! I don't need no man to take care of a bug. I am a big girl and I can kill it myself." So, I marched right back into my apartment, took off the flip-flops and grabbed one of them to do the dirty work. The plan was to get on the stool (not directly under it 'cause it could take revenge in its last dying breath and fall on me) and use my powerful right arm (the one that I can smack a ball out of the ballpark with (okay, I only did that one time in my whole 9 years of playing softball - but my right arm is strong)) to kill that gokiburi in one, powerful strike.
This apartment wasn't big enough for the both of us, especially since he was as big as my index finger (seriously) and he could fly. So he had to go.
I moved the stool into position all-the-while watching him taunt me with his pinchers. Before he could see my intentions and fly off (possibly at me), I mustered all of my power and thrust the flip-flop towards the ceiling intending to smash him on the spot. Unfortunately, I didn't calculate well enough my shortness as compared to the height of the ceiling so I only succeeded in swiping him off the ceiling (it was a really good swipe, though) in a ninety degree angle from me. To my horror, he turned around the whole ninety degrees and flew right at me! I let out a scream as it was coming at me. It was heading for my chest. I started swinging the flip-flop around trying to get the horrid creature away from me as a series of screams proceeded from my mouth (I laugh now at what it must have sounded like). It bouned off of my chest and I started flailing - I mean swinging - harder and faster trying to get it away from me. I think that it was actually attacking me! The rest is kind of blank in my mind. All I remember is coming to my senses turned the opposite way I had been on the stool, with my feet planted firmly on the ground, and the horrid gokiburi writhing in front of me on the floor. For fear that it was still well enough to fly at me again, I quickly finished it off with one swing of my flip-flop. It was no more and now it is happily flushed down the toilet.
I didn't come out of the whole battle unscathed. Somehow I managed to get two good-sized welps on my left arm that obviously came from the flip-flop (knowing myself, I'm just lucky that I didn't slap myself in the face with that weapon) and one of them is staring to bruise slightly. But it was worth it to get rid of that horrid creature. I thought about pinning the dead thing to my cork board as a death message to any other cockroach that should choose to be in my apartment in plain sight, but then I figured that was stupid because then I would have to see it everytime I came into my apartment and it would give me flashbacks of that life threatening moment when it came flying at me. Too much trauma....so I decided that I will buy those little roach motel killer thingies tomorrow as soon as I get up.
So that was my showdown with the flying gokiburi. To any women out there who are reading this, I hope that this story is encouraging to you in that you have the courage inside of you to take care of a huge, flying cockroach. You don't need no man to take care of it for you. Just don't forget to always have a flip-flop handy....

Those Summer Nights

2005-09-09T18:43:00.000+09:00

Summer vacation is over. In fact it has been over for about two weeks now. Everytime I have tried to sit down and write a post, something has happened and I didn't do it. But here it finally is.
Some of you might not know that in Japanese schools, the students have a little over a month of summer "vacation" where they don't have to go to school. They call it vacation, but the students still come to school to do their club (sports) activities and to get help with their summer homework. The teachers still must go to school. Last year, I thought it sucked, but this year I just simply accepted it. Sure we must go to school and sit in the sweltering, humid heat (two of my three schools don't have air conditioners - but I would still rather it be hot than cold), but most of the time we can go in late, get off early, and go play sports with our students. At my two elementary schools, the students don't come to school, so I spend most of the day trying get really creative with a few lesson plans so that I can fill up my day with a lot of "work". And it is a really good, relaxing time to get to know your fellow teachers better. This summer wasn't as bad as last summer in that area because I can speak a little more Japanese this year. On top of all that, we got to visit nursery schools and teach English to 4 and 5 year olds (yeah, it was really basic, but dang they are soooo cute) and we had two whole weeks of AET training which is always a good time for me to learn how to teach my students better.
And this summer, our wonderful bosses gave us 5 whole days of paid vacation. As far as I understand, they have never done this for the AETs before, but they did this year because they have really worked our butts off last semester (as I think they should) and they will continue to do so.
So, with two weekends and five days of vacation, I took 9 whole days off and it was awesome. I did a whole bunch during that time and during other times throughout the summer. Take a look at my webpictures and see for yourself my experiences at Tokyo DisneySea, Yokohama, Kamakura, Saitama City, different festivals, AET training, Latin dancing, and Oarai Aquarium. It was an awesome and exhausting summer.
Also, I have added some new links to the websites of some good friends and acquaintances here in Japan. You should check them out if you have the time. Most of them are witty and just so darn interesting, so I don't think it would be a waste of your time.
Adios for now.

Disney Sea

2005-08-12T20:08:00.000+09:00

Chie, Mrs. and Mr. Uetake at Disney Sea
Last Sunday, I went to Disney Sea with three of my favorite Japanese people - the Uetake's. They took me to Tokyo Disney Land last summer, and promised to take me to Tokyo Disney Sea this summer. It was awesome! I got to watch the Little Mermaid fly through the air and confront the evil Sea Witch, Aladdin and Genie fight of the evil Jafar, and even go through Indiana Jones's Temple of Doom on a crazy roller coaster. It was an amazingly fun and interesting time, especially since most of it was in Japanese. The place was simply beautiful, but it looked like it was Disney and Universal Studios all smashed into one.
Of course the best part was hanging out with the Uetake's. They are so nice to me and they always take care of me. As most of you know, they are my landlord's, but more than that, they are my Japanese family. I usually walk over to their house next door to our apartments and hang out with them at least once a week. Chie, the youngest daughter, is a couple of years older than me and one of my good friends. She speaks great English and loves sweets as much as I do. Mrs. Uetake has been like a mother to me, showing me how to eat fruits the Japanese way (you have to peel the skin off) and how to cook rice. She is so patient with me though I know I appear like a child to her, having to learn things that most Japanese people inherently know. And Mr. Uetake is like a father. From lecturing me because I didn't shut my curtains at night ("You are foreign girl! People can see you! Close your curtains!") to always helping me decifer my mail and bills and paperwork to always inviting me to musical and cultural art performances, he has truly helped me to become more accustumed to this culture and way of life. They have made me feel loved and accepted more than anybody else here in Japan. And don't even get me started on their grandson. They have an older daughter - Kanai - who lives in Tokyo with her husband and son. The five year old Ryuta is such a violent little tyke, but I love wrestling with him. Though he is American by birth (his father worked in Chicago for a while, when Ryuta was born), he speaks very little English (though his parents speak it marvelously). Anyways, they are a huge blessing to me here and I love them so much. They are truly kind, caring people and I pray that God will bless them as they have blessed me.

It's Festival Time!

2005-08-12T19:41:00.000+09:00

Group picture taken with Mito Komon (the dude with the yellow scarf) - the man of whom Mito City was named after. (To learn about the awesome Mito Komon, click on his name and scroll down to "The History".)
With the beginning of August comes many festivals here in Japan. I love this time of year. This is my second time to experience the festival season in Japan, and I must say that it is not as strange....or I should say different....to me this year. Don't get me wrong, it is completely enjoyable, just very foreign compared to anything experienced in the Western Cultures.
Anyways, thanks to two good Japanese friends who actually took the time to explain to me as best as they possibly could the origins of such festivals: small tidbits as to why many people shake small shrines no their shoulders up and down the streets, why they go along in dashi (similar to parade floats) full of masked men, women, and children as wolves, funny-faced men, or round-faced women and shout "Soran!" at the top of their lungs, etc., I still have a very small understanding to most aspects of these festivals. In fact, anytime I ask a Japanese person why there is this or that going on during the festival, the typical answer I get is "I don't know."
It's not so amazing to me this year that most Japanese people don't understand why the things that go on during festivals go on, probably because I have become accustumed to living in a culture where many things are done just because "it has always been done that way." When I first came, I was told that it was best many times not to ask the question "Why?". I thought then that I could never stop asking that question, because that is one of my favorite questions, but I have noticed that I don't ask it as much anymore. I have gotten too many stumped expressions on Japanese people's faces to really want to ask anymore. Though I do find that I am still incredibly curious, just more cautious of when I ask that three letter question.
So, back from that tangent. My favorite is this festival - the Mito Komon Matsuri. It lasts for three days, with Friday night being a two hour firework show over Lake Senba, Saturday being a day of dance performances up and down the main street of Mito, and Sunday being the big shrine shaking day. It is even more fun when I get to go with my good friends (as you can see in the picture above). I am going to see how many festivals I can go to this summer. They go on at different times in different cities all throughout the summer. They are great fun and a good way to really soak in some culture, even if nobody understands why things are done the way they are done.

Let's Do the Mambo

2005-08-12T19:16:00.000+09:00

Two Saturdays ago, I went with many good friends of mine to Oarai Aquarium (Oarai is an oceanside town about 40 minutes from Mito). It is a really awesome aquarium and I got to see many sea thingies that I didn't even know existed. I was especially interested in seeing the mambo fish - or as it is called in English, the Oceanic Sunfish. I wanted to see it so much because of something that happened while I was co-teaching one of my Jr. High classes a couple of months ago. (Keep in mind, you will probably not find this story as humorous as I do. I have told it to many people and nobody laughs but me.) In the class, I had to critique the students on short little English presentations that they gave. My biggest critique for the whole class was that they shouldn't mumble. When I told them this, many of them looked at me and laughed. I looked at my Japanese English teacher and she was trying to suppress her laughing. She didn't quite understand what I was trying to say either. Well, I explained to her what "mumble" meant, she understood, and then relayed it to the students in Japanese. Anyways, after class, I asked her why everybody laughed when I said "Don't mumble." The other Japanese English teacher that had been in the room tried to explain to me what everybody thought I had said. He said that 'mumble' sounded like 'mambo', a type of fish that most Japanese know about. I told him I had never heard about it and he started doing gestures of what the fish does (I guess he thought I would understand him after that). He puckered up his lips really big and started doing what looked like the Hawaiian dance, except to only one side. I still didn't understand, and eventually there were several teachers trying to explain what a mambo fish was through broken English and the very entertaining gestures. Eventually, they just looked up a picture on the Interenet and showed it to me, which was a lot more efficient, but not as humorous as their gesturing around the teacher's room.
So the students thought I was telling them "Don't mambo." When they hear 'mambo', they don't think of the Latin dance, they think of this cute little (actually, it's pretty big) fish. When I saw the tank of them, I was mesmerized for quite a long time. They are really cute, big, and slow. They just moved around the tank with the huge bulging eyes and puckered lips looking at you and they would often float sideways or almost upside down. And they look like huge, flat bullets with fins. They were so cute and definitely my favorite at the aquarium.

Downtown Mito City

2005-08-02T18:10:00.000+09:00

This is a picture of downtown Mito City taken from the Mito Art Tower. It really is a nice city. I like it a lot.

Star Festival

2005-08-02T18:09:00.000+09:00

Here is a picture from the first festival I attended this year. The festival season in Japan has officially started, and those of us who go to Shiro-sato church decided to kick it off by going to the Star Festival in the small town where our church is. We invited many of our readers and we all had the time of our lives getting to know each other. The men dressed up in their manly yukatas while some of our female readers kindly wrapped Ally and me in our own yukatas. Us women had a good time getting all prettied up. Then we spent a fun couple of hours together watching tyko drum performances and eating yakisoba (a type of noodle eaten especially during barbeques and festivals). It was great fun. I can't wait for the rest of the festivals in August. August is the festival time in Japan, so stay tuned because I will surely blog about them after I attend them.

Another summer church camp

2005-08-02T18:08:00.000+09:00

church camp
Well, even though I am going to another church on Sunday mornings, I still do lots of stuff with the Mito Church. Recently, we had our annual summer Church camp where we spent two days at a camp just outside of Mito having small group Bible studies and getting to know each other better. This is my second one to attend and it was awesome!
There was something very interesting that happened when we had just gotten to the camp. Japan really doesn't have thunderstorms. There are the occasional ones, and while we were all arriving at the camp and getting comfortable in our cabins, the third one that I had experienced while I have been in Japan was occuring. We were all in the cabin trying to escape the excessive heat and the lightening and talking away. Then all of a sudden, there was a blinding flash immediately followed by a loud boom. We all screamed and I tried to jump into the arms of my good friend Chisato. A bolt of lightening had struck very near the cabins. Thank God that nobody was hurt, though it gave everybody a good scare. Of course, I enjoyed it immensely.

2005-08-02T18:07:00.001+09:00

Karaoke
Karaoke in Japan. What can I say? Well, I love it! There is nothing like spending a couple of hours singing yourself hoarse. And it is a great way to bond with people (and you don't even need alcohol). In Japan, thay have massive buildings full of Karaoke rooms - big and small - devoted to giving people moments of glamour (or embarrassment depending on how great their singing is) as they belt out their favorite tunes. They have songs in all languages, though mostly in Japanese. You should see us English speakers trying to sing along with some Japanese songs. It is just as funny as watching the Japanese trying to sing English songs. To my great surprise when I first came, "The Carpenters" songs are among the most popular English songs to sing. Of course, I had no idea who "The Carpenters" were before I came to Japan, but after doing some research on the Internet and receiving a Carpenters CD as a gift from my landlord, I am happy to say that I can now sing several songs when we go to Karaoke. They really are pretty good songs.

Stickers - the greatest gift

2005-08-02T18:07:00.000+09:00

A couple of weeks ago, I had this last English class with my 1st graders before the summer break (this was at Watari Elementary school - the biggest school I teach at). I don't completely understand why, but the teachers decided to have me teach all three of the 1st grade classes together. Usually I don't like combining over 75 first graders together, but since the teachers are actively a part of the class and we were going to have it in the gym, I gave the thumbs up. So we spent the whole hour reviewing the English they had learned during the semester with games. Of course, we all had a complete blast (maybe I enjoyed it more than them!). I especially enjoyed watching them enjoy colors. We made up this very simple game where I would shout out a color and the students who were wearing that color would get up, run to the other side of the gym as fast as they could, and sit down. They loved it and so did I. I think that I ran with them every time even though I only had on about three different colors. I don't know why, but I especially loved it when they came to me (every single one of them) and pointed out I had said the color on their clothes.

And of course, since it was the last class, I gave them a sticker as a departing present. Tons of thanks to a great friend for sending me a whole bunch of stickers for my birthday. As you can see, the students LOVED them. The joy on their faces when they received those stickers made me so happy. It is amazing the power of a sticker. The younger they are, the more they love them. Of course, I have some six graders who full on beg me for stickers. So if anybody had any extra stickers floating around (prefferably with English on it), send it my way. It is a very inexpensive way to make some Japanese student's days.

When it rains, it pours....

2005-07-26T22:54:00.000+09:00

A typhoon is coming through right now. I love typhoons. I don't like the damage they do and all that, but I really just like them. My mom made the point that typhoons are so cleansing, and she is right. Days before a typhoon comes here, it is so humid and stifling, especially right up until it comes. And then the strong winds come and the torrents of rain come and it is amazing the crazyness that goes on outside. But when it is gone, it is so clear and fresh outside. The sun comes out and it is so beautiful. Perhaps it is more beautiful because of the furious tempest that just went through.
It seems like it is pouring in the lives of many people that I know right now. A friend's mom who is in a very intense battle with cancer; a good friend who can't return to Japan to teach because she is still very sick from a physical illness that has followed her for several years now; a best friend who had some very scary surgery to repair and revive a punctured lung; and so many more people who are close to me who are hurting.
I myself am doing fine. But so many people are having typhoons in their lives, right at this very moment, all at the same time. I wish that I could endure the typhoons for them, or that the typhoon would leave now and the sun would come out for them. But I can't. All I can do is pray and walk beside them in it. I know that the sun will come out for them again, I just pray that the typhoon doesn't damage too much as it runs its course.
For those of you who I am talking about - I am here talking to our Creator about you. I love you and I want to walk with you in this (even though I am physically so far away). I know it is pouring right now, but that sun is going to come out someday, and things are going to be so fresh and clean and beautiful.

English Interactive Forum

2005-07-14T22:47:00.000+09:00

This is a pretty bad picture, but I wanted you to see some of my Junior High students and the English teacher that I have taught with since I came here. I am proud of all of my students, but I am especially proud of these four. Today they stepped out of their comfort zone to have group conversations IN ENGLISH ONLY at the Mito City English Interactive Forum. Now, if you know anything about the Japanese, it is a pretty big step for most out of that good 'ol comfort zone and into the world of English conversation all by yourself, in front of your peers, and in front of two judges - one of whom is a native English speaker. Actually, it's more like a huge leap off of a big cliff.
But four of my students - two eight graders and two ninth graders - made that huge leap (mostly because my English teacher told them they had too) and went through 3 five minute rounds each of English conversation. Of course the English teachers and I practiced with the students (even if it was only a few), so they were somewhat prepared. But it is still difficult and nerve-racking for them. Sometimes the English conversations are funny simply because they are so nervous. One of my 8th grade boys was in a conversation group with two girls. The girls were talking about school uniforms and went on for a good couple of minutes about how they didn't like theirs because they were too long and they liked short skirts better, etc. Then they both looked at him and asked him what he thought about skirts. He gave them this look and said, "I am a man! I don't have skirts!"
Well, even it isn't funny for you, I and the whole room had a good laugh. I am proud of these kids and pretty happy because two of them are going on to the next level (including the boy who was asked about skirts).
So now it's back to more training. That makes me happy because it gives me more of a chance to know them better. And here ends another interesting, yet enjoyable day in the world of English teaching in Mito City, Japan.

The Here and Now

2005-07-08T21:58:00.000+09:00

It has been a rainy week. Considering that we are in the middle of rainy season here in Japan, that makes perfect sense. I am always amazed how closely my emotions are linked to the weather. Winters are very hard for me because they are so cold and dreary (and I really hate the cold). The past two weeks have been pretty down because it has rained every day except for two of them, and those days were still cloudy. Add that on top of the end-of-the-semester busyness and some of my friends going through hard times also, and my thoughts wonder off to anywhere but here. The past two weeks, my thoughts have been full of wishing and hoping that the future of being in Mexico would come sooner because things are so busy and complicated that I want to be anywhere but here.
Then God rightfully slaps me in the face with the big fat realization that HERE is where I am supposed to be NOW. Right now has been given to me for a reason. Every moment is given to me to fulfill a greater purpose – whether it be to teach English to very excited four year olds and then to very apathetic ninth graders, to make time to meet with a Japanese person who really wants to speak to me in English, to make myself go to bed early so that I can be well rested and then devote more of myself to my students, and to just be fully content with the life I have been given here (even when the expectations are incredibly high).
God blesses me with daily reminders of why it is so good to be here, now, and to be contributing to the work of God (even though it is in very small ways). Last Saturday was awesome! We had our first get together with our readers from Shiro-sato church outside of the English Bible Class we have on Sunday mornings. We grilled American hamburgers at a beautiful park, played some games, and got to know each other. It is a blessing to have people want to know me, because I want to get to know them just as bad, if not more. That night, I hung out with my friends and we celebrated my birthday by watching a movie. Sunday, our cell group took some time after church to go to a secluded park and spend time alone with God. What a refresher! Monday after work, some of the newbie AETs down the street invited me over for dinner. It is a blessing to know them and to get to laugh my head off with them. Tuesday, I did the weekly visit to Iitomi Elementary and Kindergarten. Those adore me almost as much as I adore them. They always raise my spirits because they are so eager to learn and to have fun with me. And I always look forward to my time with the kindergarten students because it is one of the few times that I get hugs (my little girls always hug me and make strange hairstyles in my hair). They do my soul good. On Wednesday after work, our cell group had a fun night. We went to karaoke and I think that it was the funnest karaoke time I have ever had (Queen’s Bohemian Rhapsody never gets old!). On Thursday, my ninth grade choice class and I cooked Mexican Food. The weren’t really fond of the guacamole, but they gobbled everything else (much to my dismay – I was wanting some of it for dinner :-P). Right before school was finished, I was blessed by a full-fledged thunderstorm! They don’t happen often here (this is the second one I have experienced in my year and three months here) and boy did it make me excited to see the lightning and to hear that rolling thunder. I even enjoyed Japanese class that night. I always dread going to it beforehand but enjoy it immensely while I am there, even though I get a headache from learning this difficult language. And here I am today looking forward to a trip to Yokohama tomorrow (Saturday) to see one of my best Japanese friends tear it up on the piano at a piano concert and to do some sight-seeing on the side. And this is just a small recount of my daily blessings.
The moral of this long blog? I have every reason to be content (the main reason being that God has saved me through His Son Jesus and that I can have a relationship with Him) and very few reasons not to be. I hope that you are as blessed as I am to know the blessings given to you.

Why it's good even when it's not so good...

2005-06-30T22:18:00.000+09:00

Well, it has been a while. Since I got back from my brother’s wedding, it has been pretty hectic and exhausting. But not so much for me as for two of my good friends here. One of them is Ann White. Ann and I were friends when we were at OC together and now she is here teaching English in a city about 30 minutes by train from the city where I teach English. She has been sick to her stomach literally for over a month and a half which is forcing her to make a trip back to the U.S. to see if her doctor can help her. She went through something similar about 2 years ago which kept her in the hospital for a whole summer. It wasn’t pleasant then and it certainly isn’t pleasant for her now considering she can’t keep any of her food down, she is incredibly malnourished because of this, she is always feeling sick, and the doctors here really aren’t helping any. Please pray for her – for her safety in returning to the States, for her doctor so that he can help her get better, and for her physical and spiritual well-being.
Another friend of mine, Blake Blackwell, just found out last Friday night that his mother has cancer. They had to do surgery to remove some of the cancer, but there is still more in intestines they can’t remove, so they will start chemotherapy as soon as she is recovered enough from the surgeries. Of course this is a very trying time for Blake and his family, especially since Blake is so many thousands of miles away teaching English here in Japan. Please pray for the Blackwells.
Many of you who read this blog know my two friends who need prayers and many of you don’t, but please join with me and so many others in praying for them.

Onto brighter things, I was reminded yesterday (yet again) why I am here teaching English and why I am so blessed by God. Above are some of my 6th grade students trying to make kanji with their bodies. They ask me “What day?”, I say a day of the week in English, and they proceed to make the Japanese kanji character for that day with their bodies. I seriously prayed in the morning before work that this game would be fun and educational for them (you never know what the “cool” 6th graders are going to decide to like or not). It was incredibly enjoyable for me, for the teachers I taught with, and for the majority of my 5th and 6th grade students. It was especially funny to watch them get creative while trying to make the kanji for Friday (金).

My brother's wedding

2005-06-13T21:28:00.000+09:00

From left to right:
Crystal (stepsister), Brandon (stepbrother), Cindy (my mother), Mike (brother),
Brandy (my new sister-in-law), Jon (the smiling groom), Dwight (father), me,
Woody (stepfather)

Last Friday night, I had the honor of attending my brother John's wedding. Jon is the oldest of my twin brothers (by five minutes), is a year and 20 days younger than me, and is the first child in our family to get married. I can't express how happy I was to see him get married and to see him so happy. It was also a joy to see ALL of my family, tired and stressed from the travel time and the wedding preparations as they were.
I myself spent about three whole days traveling (by buses, planes, and cars) and two blessed, crammed packed days with my family. I left Japan on Wednesday afternoon and got to Richmond, Virgina by Wednesday evening (crossing the International Date Line keeps you in a very long day) where I was reunited with my whole family - mother's and father's side - and I met the bride-to-be for the first time in a whirlwind of two hours. Thursday was full of hanging out with my mother and stepfather's side of the family while spending $133 at Wal-mart within an hour and gourging myself on Mexican food. Thursday night, I went to a bar (don't tell anybody) for the after-rehearsal dinner-party with all of my family and the bride's family, watched lots of people get drunk while I enjoyed alcohol-free water (I still have no idea the reasonings behind getting drunk), did some line dancing in my flip-flops, sang some karaoke for the first time in the U.S. (I do it all the time in Japan and it is quite different than the American way), and just had a good time getting to know my brother's fiance. Friday, I hung out with my dad and his family, going shopping in the mall, swimming, and eating Subway (I love Subway!).
Friday evening was the wedding. It was a beautiful wedding. The bride was gorgeous, my brother the groom was handsome in his white coat tux and a smile that went from one ear to the other, and my other brother was handsome also as he was the best man. So I watched my baby brother, who is the size of a professional football lineman and sometimes as tough as one, confess his love and life to the woman of his dreams in the softess, sweetest manner. That was the highlight of the trip. After the wedding, we partied hard at the reception, dancing until we could dance no more.
The next day, I hopped on a plane and landed back in Japan Sunday evening. Whoa! Those were the busiest five days I think I have ever experienced. But every moment was precious, and I can't help but praise God even more for my wonderful family, faults and all. He has given me so much through them, and He gave me so much love and strength through them this past week. Thank you God. I needed that!
One major thought I was left with while being in Richmond, Virginia with my family and far away from my "home" in Oklahoma: home is where your family is. When I was with them, I knew I was home. But that is not my only family. God has also given me a "family" in Japan full of wonderful brothers and sisters and some parents in Christ. I am home with them also.
Praise God for giving me a home wherever I go in this world. It gives me a wonderful, tiny glimpse of what my real home is going to be like after I leave this earth.
Prasie God for His blessings, for hope, for family, and for home.

Bonding through Tacos

2005-06-06T22:08:00.000+09:00

Mexican taco picnic
After going to the tea ceremony (read the blog below before you read this one), we had our nice little Mexican taco picnic in such a beautiful and serene place. Why tacos at a Japanese festival and for a picnic? Well, because we all like tacos no matter how messy and un-Japanese they are. In fact, 'messy' was the new English word for the day.
We all ended up having the time of our lives together. The Community Center women really enjoyed getting to know some new foreigners and I know that Blake and Ali had the time of their lives. How could we not have a good time considering that Yoko made a great first impression with Blake and Ali by giving them chocolate souveniers from a trip that she recently made to South Korea. It wouldn't have been so bad except that they were trick chocolates with spicey pepper flavoring in the middle!
All-in-all, we ended with Blake vowing revenge on Yoko, Blake being given the nickname of Harry Potter, Mariko making sure Ali didn't fall into the water that ran under the really small rock bridge we had to cross to get to our picnic spot, everybody bonding over a tea ceremony and a taco picnic, and promises being made that we would all do this again in the near future.
Praise God for continuing to open doors, especially in such an enjoyable manner.

Hanging with the Iitomi Community Center women

2005-06-06T21:53:00.000+09:00

Well, last weekend was absolutely great! There are a group of women that I uh, er....sort of teach English. They call me their English teacher but they already speak great English. So anytime we meet, we just have long conversations that range from Japanese customs to American customs to hot guys to why I am a Christian back to hot guys and then to why I'm not married yet and then back again.
So anyways, these women are great! I love them so much. And last week they invited me and a couple of my friends to a traditional Japanese flower festival (this one was for azaleas). My good friends Ali and Blake and I met them after church and headed to this beautiful Japanese park that surrounds a shrine that is in turn surrounded by Mito City. This park is full of azaleas (which aren't in bloom yet) and the festival is held there every year. One of the members of the group was holding a traditional tea ceremony at the festival (she teaches many people this beautiful art), so we stopped there first and did that. The very women we were with had taught me the basics of tea ceremony before, but it was Ali (who has been here for 5 years) and Blake's first time, so many of the Japanese had a grand time teaching the finer points of a very old and traditional custom to a couple of Westerners who had no idea what they were doing. It was great!
Then we went from the traditional to the non-traditional by having a picnic lunch of tacos in the middle of beautiful Japanese park.

The Snake Game

2005-05-30T23:06:00.000+09:00

Many of you back home might not know this yet, but starting this new contract year with Mito City (April), I have been teaching at another school close to the other two schools I taught at last year. So that makes three schools – Iitomi Jr. High, Iitomi Elementary, and Watari Elementary, that I am now teaching at and it keeps me relatively busy. The Iitomi schools are two of the smallest in Mito City (I have only 87 students at the Jr. High and 167 at the elementary) and I feel like I have a special bond with my co-workers and especially the students because we have a year together under our belt, they speak a little more English and I speak a little more Japanese, and, well, the small school atmosphere allows you to know each other more personally. My new school is a little bigger (somewhere between 550 and 600 students) and this is their first year to officially have AETs (I and another AET alternate days within a week), so the students are pretty darn happy to see me when I come during the week. I am really enjoying getting to the know the students and I am having a lot of fun with the teachers as they learn to teach English with a foreigner who doesn’t speak much Japanese and who does things a little differently than they are used too.

Well, yesterday was just a very enjoyable day because my 5th and 6th graders really enjoyed an English game that I planned. Actually, I stole the idea for this game from other AETs, but I was still very happy to see it work so well. This game is known as the “Hebi Gamu” to the Japanese, but we call it the Snake Game in English. The version I used yesterday actually derives from a very simple game that children learn and play in kindergarten. In this game, there are two teams that stand at opposing ends of a curvy line (which resembles a snake). A person from each team runs at each other along this line and when they meet in the middle, they Janken (the Japanese version of Rock, Scissors, Paper). The winner continues forward and Jankens the next person who runs up to them from the opposing team while the loser goes back. The team to get the most people to the other side wins.

My six classes of the day all played this game except the line consisted of English vocabulary cards that they had to say as they passed. They also had to play English Janken (Rock, Scissors, Paper) when they met in the middle. Almost every class did not want to stop the game when class was over. Every student was into it (which is simply amazing that 30+ students in any class would be so much into a game that makes them speak English) and it broke my heart to stop the fun they were having with English.

And my goodness, they love Janken, even when it is in English. After I taught them how to Janken in English a couple of weeks ago, I can’t walk down the hall without some student challenging me to English Janken. Gosh, I love it when my students are so excited about English. It refreshes me and encourages me to be a better English teacher for them.

Ministry

2005-05-24T22:26:00.000+09:00

This past weekend, an acapella choir from York Christian University came to Mito City and the surrounding area to perform. I never realized it until this weekend, but Japanese people really, really love acapella music. Both of the shows that I attended were almost sold out, and they were performed in big auditoriums! The York choir came on invitation from the Sendai mission team and church and they have been touring several cities throughout the Eastern part of the main island for about two weeks now. If I remember correctly, they are supposed to do about 9 performances altogether.
Well, anyways, I saw two of their performances this last weekend, and I must say that they are very, very good. It was amazing to hear their beautiful voices, to admire their God-given talents, and to listen to many great songs to God mostly in English (some were in Latin and other romance languages). But the most amazing thing was to see the effect the performances had on the Japanese people. I was going to invite the Iitomi community center woman that I have English conversation classes with, but they showed me the flier and asked if I were going. Of course I was going and we all had the time of our lives together! One of the women took a long while to translate into English that she "was deeply moved". They especially loved the gospel songs.
So here is my big callout to anyone who reads this blog or speaks to people who have even a small stirring on their heart to do some form of mission work. Come to Japan! These people need you. If you can do an accapella music tour, come do it in Japan. If you are in a gospel music singing group, come to Japan and do a tour. (Of course I mean come do a musical tour only if you are doing it for the Lord and only if you don't suck :-P ). If you want to do Let's Start Talking, come do it in Japan. Everybody wants to learn English here. Come teach English for the Lord. And if you can't do anything but still have it on your heart to go out and do something for God, pray to God (first, because even God can do miracles and use you in some way) and then come to Japan. Even if you don't come to Japan, get off your butt and just do what you know God has called you to do.
I just realized how much some simple accapella songs can really touch people's hearts and even cause them to ask questions about our wonderful Creator. God uses so many simple things to speak to us in our complex lives. If Japanese people can hear Him, anybody can. How can God use you/us/me right here, right now, today?

cleaning time

2005-05-19T22:35:00.000+09:00

**For those of you who don't know, students and teachers clean there own schools in Japan.
Today, I had yet another profound thought during cleaning time (I always have profound thoughts during cleaning time). But this one has been brewing a while. I have noticed, especially at the elementary schools I teach at, that the cleaning supplies for cleaning time aren’t so good. The brooms are small (which are perfect for the students) but they don’t sweep up a thing. Sure, they move the dirt around, but never into a pile – only into little streaks behind the path of the broom. Of course, it isn’t like the students do any constructive cleaning during cleaning time. Most students just clean in random places, sweeping here and then over there, never into the same pile. But my prevailing thought is, well, things would more likely get cleaned (or cleaner than otherwise) if students had better cleaning tools. For goodness sake, I can’t even clean well using what the students use and cleaning is what I am really good at.
Today, while sweeping the floor (one of my favorite things to do - seriously, I love putting dirt in its place), the thought of how much better I could clean this floor if I had a better broom came into my head again. But then I started applying it to other things as well. I have been here over a year, and I consider myself a tool for the Japanese schools to use. I am here to be used by Japanese English teachers to teach English and I am here to give my students contact with a foreigner who speaks native English. I wasn’t a very good tool when I first came because I had never taught before (nor was I given the education to learn how to teach) and because I had come into this totally opposite culture not understanding it and not speaking the language. But over the past year, I have slowly been shaped into a better tool. I have gone through a year of cultural immersion and have thus learned an incredible amount about this culture simply by working in the place where culture is most taught – the schools. I am slowly but surely learning Japanese. And as I understand a little more everyday, I understand how to teach my students better everyday. I have gone through a year of teaching without fully knowing what English my students have been taught. But now I know. There are so many other things that have shaped me into a better tool, and though I have so much more to learn, I have learned many things that help me to teach my students better. I know why they hesitate when asked to speak English, I know the English they should know so I can encourage and push them to speak that English and to learn more, I know cultural things that help me understand their minds and hearts better, and I know basic, huge grammatical differences between Japanese and English, which helps me to understand their learning difficulties better (English is hard people!). I may sound all high on myself about how much I know, but just know that I am fully aware of how much I don’t know, especially about Japan. I would be lucky if I have even learned 40% of what is “Japan” (i.e. culture, world-view, etc.), even without considering the language (I have probably learned 15% of that). But the little I have learned has sharpened me into a better English teaching fool.
And looking at the bigger picture, I am being sharpened everyday to be better used by God. I will spend the rest of my life being sharpened by God, but coming to Japan has certainly done a lot of sharpening in the cultural adaptation and teaching English departments. I can see how God is molding me and preparing me for any future services for Him (*Mexico*) while still using me here.
To read my good friend Peter's hilarious description of cleaning time, check his Souji Time Part 2 blog.
May God be giving you also great thoughts as you do the usual, daily thing.

Guess who has a blog?!

2005-05-16T13:40:00.000+09:00

Yep, I have finally joined the blogging world. I always enjoy reading the blogs of my friends simply because it has helped me to keep up with them better than otherwise. I am by no means a writer and I am very hesitant to start this blog, but I wish to keep anyone who cares updated on how God is changing my life. God has been and continues to be working in my life in incredible ways. Whether it is the typical day of teaching English in Mito City, Japan, or a more surreal day as I get to know this culture better through travel or simply through conversation with a Japanese person, God is changing me and making me into something that can better be used by Him (which is a pure miracle simply because I take so many backward steps).
Hence, I have taken the title of this blog from a song that I feel is incredibly powerful. The song is titled "If you want me to" by Ginni Owens. The lyrics say it best, so please check it out to understand my meaning.
My prayer is that the people who read this blog can be impacted by God just as I am as I go through the fires in my daily life with Him by my side (and many times carrying me).