Well, it's Monday here in Japan, and Hannah and I have the day off thanks to "Respect for the Aged" day. We're not complaining. It's been a busy week. Actually, at Funechu (Adam's school), there was testing all week so the "work" was trying to stay awake at my desk for the hours of almost nothing to do, with the only break being stamping thousands of pages of homework with "Good Job!" Hannah, on the other hand, had another busy week with juku classes and elementary school lessons.
What else happened this week? On Thursday night, we took our Bible study time to hear the testimonies of Tricia and Randy Lewis. We have decided that a good way of building community at this early stage in our team-life is to have a time for sharing testimonies every other week, and the Lewis' started us off. It was really fascinating hearing a little more. What was really amazing, and I think so valuable in this exercise, was realizing that there is so much more that we still don't know about each other. We're practically the only family each other have here, and we still hardly know each other. So...we'll keep working on that. We'll be alternating these sharing time weeks with Bible study and worship for a few months, so please pray that these times bear fruit in our lives.
Friday, we met up with some "international friends" here in Funehiki, for conversation and tea. It was really fun. Several of the Japanese had been to America (Mansfield) or had hosted Americans in the past. Actually, I recognized one of the guys from my trip 10 years ago. We talked and remembered that he had hosted my friends Tyler and Seth. It was a good time getting to know some new people.
Saturday Hannah and I slept, shopped, and cleaned. That was pretty much the day. Given that most things close early, and we have to walk it's hard to do that stuff during the week...so it's the weekends. Sunday was church, then we hiked Katasone (the mountain in our backyard). See the picture in the web-album linked below. After that, we had a game night with Randy, Tricia, Carrie, Jeni, Mike and Jen at the Lewis'. Late Sunday we made some phone calls home, and now today we're taking our time getting some random work done around the house.
This week is a short week, but I will also be accompanying two students and some of the English teachers at my school to the prefectural speech competition on Wednesday. They won the local competition, and I've been working with them on pronunciation and inflection for the last three weeks. Their names are Asami and Yukina.
http://picasaweb.google.com/adamhange
