So, I'm four days into school now, and almost done with my first week of Japanese classes. It's been a very, very busy week. Thankfully, today is a more relaxing day, though I have things to do that I haven't been able to squeeze into all the other days. (This is Yuiko and her daughter.)

So, let me walk you through my day. Somewhere between 5 and 5:10 (yes, a.m.), my alarm clock goes off, depending on how inspired I felt the night before. And somewhere around 5:20, I actually roll out of bed. Well, I can't really roll considering it's 10 inches off the ground. Nonetheless, I finally convince myself that it's time to get out of bed.

At 6:30, having done everything that I need to do to get ready for the day, I quietly walk out the door, locking my still-asleep roommate in. I take a 10 minute walk to the train station, dropping off the trash in the bin if I need to.

At the station, I climb up the stairs, over and then down the stairs onto my platform. There, I stand in line at the correct marked arrows till my train pulls up at 6:46, and approximately 30 seconds later, it leaves. If I'm lucky enough to get a seat, which God blessed me with yesterday and today, I put my bag(s) on my lap and let my head drop and nod off, waking every now and then to look out at the stations passing and see where we are so as not to miss my stop.

If I'm not so blessed as to get a seat, I'll find some place to stand, by the door, or at least hopefully by a ring hanging down that I can hold on to... and it's funny to note how people will sleep standing up, hanging onto the rings. I haven't got that desperate yet, though I've come close. (This was actually taken discreetly in the evening. I was way too amused to pass up this opportunity.)

Anyway, I usually get off for a few minutes at one of the last stops and then catch an express, and though it's probably out of my way to do that, it's nice to be out of the crowd for a bit and beside, I know exactly how to get to the exit I need to take when I take the express train as compared to the local train. But the local train is less crowded and so I take that even though it takes twice as long.

At 7:30, I'm in Shinjuku, and I walk over the overpass and find a place to sit down and chill and look over my notes from the day before. Usually, the night before, I make a vocab list and then I quiz myself in the mornings. At 8:20, I head over to school and begin class until 1pm...

Everyday we have a new teacher, which threw me off the second day. One teacher we have Monday and Friday, I believe. But we do a lot of repeating words, and flash cards, and writing out sentences, fill in the blanks, answering questions, working together on dialogues and then saying them in front of the class. And this is all in Japanese, it's not an English teacher or someone using English to teach us Japanese, it's all in Japanese. Sometimes if we all look confused and aren't getting it, she'll say the word in English to help us out. But it's not stressful at all. Well, at least I don't find it too stressful, and we laugh at mistakes. The teacher I had today was actually pretty funny and cracked jokes. We have quite an international group. There are 3 guys from Korea, one guy from the UK, 3 people from China, one Asian guy from Australia, one UK/Nigerian guy, 2 ladies from France (though tomorrow is their last day, I understand), and one American- me.

So, quite an international group.

After school, I catch a 1:30 express train back to wherever I have to go. Monday it was to Shinyurigaoka to teach a class. And Tuesday was crazy. Tuesday I left immediately after school and went with Mark who helped me open a bank account. Then, I headed to Sagamiono to teach an English class (and grab something to eat and quickly finish preparing for the class)... after class, I went to Starbucks to study for an hour and then went to join the rest of the team for street performance. Right after that, we went to Mark and Yuiko's house for the first ever Fuse planning meeting at their place.

We used to have it on Tuesday mornings right after the prayer breakfast. But now we've changed it- for two reasons. First, I'm in school now and won't be able to go in the mornings and since most of the missionaries have flexible schedules, we changed it. Second, we want more Japanese to be able to go, and since they are freer at night, we changed it. Also, we want to start moving things closer to the area that we're working in so we can be more a part of the area and reach it. For this reason, we're also looking at a move for me within the next year to the Machida area, which would be in a number of ways, beneficial.

Anyway, we caught a 9:48 train out of Sagamiono... we had to wait for a while, and there was only a local, but we all had a good time chitchatting and joking on the train. At 10:30, I got into my house and the only thing that I could think of after being gone for 16 hours was how quickly I could get back in my bed.

So, on some days, I go to other commitments, but most days I try to come directly home, grab some lunch and spend a couple of hours studying and preparing for evening activities or just preparing for the next day.

There's always stuff to do.

Monday evening, I hung out with Saki, who I'll be doing life group with soon. It was a really good time-- I wanted to have a "date night" with her since I'll be taking her leader's place. We met at McDonald's, and then afterward, she came back to my place and I painted her toe nails while she told me her life story. I really don't want to do details, but I was surprised. After hearing two other people say that they think that I'll be able to help her move through some areas of her life, I agreed with them when I knew her story. So, praise Jesus.

Well, I need to study some and then I have a few things to do... and guess what! Tomorrow's Friday, and I'm glad. I love and enjoy Japanese school, but I kinda feel like I'm in a swirl of Japanese words and at night when I close my eyes, all I can hear is Japanese voices and phrases zooming by. It's worse than having regular voices in your head. ;)

So, now you know where I am and what I'm doing. Will catch up with you this weekend! I'm looking forward to a great Fuse this weekend and I can tell you more about that later. :)