"Let the little children come to me; do not stop them; for it is to such as these that the kingdom of God belongs". Mark 10:14

I can't sleep tonight so I've decided to do something useful like blogging about my week rather than staring at my ceiling for hours. 

First, a word about the blog titles.  This year as part of my spiritual disciplines I am reading through the whole Bible.  I'm not doing it to claim that I read the Bible in a year, but I figure that it is a good marker as well as a way for me to get in the habit of reading more scripture.  The blog titles are pulled from something I've read in the past few days as part of that reading.  Sometimes they are thematically related to the post but at other times they are not.  I've started including the chapter and verse just in case you want to look it up in the Good Book yourself!

This week has been a blast.  I've started what will become my regular routine and I can tell already that it's going to be a great year! Two or three times a week I help out in Mitzuba classes.  Mitzuba is a Christian pre-school that meets at the center that is taught in Japanese.  The kids are all two and three years old and they are the cutest little people ever.  They are too young to be afraid of me and too young to realize that I don't speak Japanese.  It's a lot of fun.  We sing songs, play with an awesome train set, dance and of course eat snack.  The kids like to bring me Japanese books to read, which of course I can't yet, so I make up the stories in English and when they finally catch on they give me the funniest looks.

On Wednesdays and Fridays I am in English classes.  I help out on Wednesdays and on Fridays I am the teacher for two classes.  I have about 7 students each Friday and they are all over the map as far as English skills go.  It's going to be important to make lesson plans that challenge and teach all students, while not going over some of the students' heads.  On Friday I also help with PhysEd for the 4 year olds which basically means recess!  They speak a little English and last week on my first day at the school, the kids liked to tell me what to do and where to go.  I was grateful because I had no idea what was going on!

I also help out at a day program for homeless men and women once or twice a week.  This is an awesome place where people can come, take a shower, eat lunch, do laundry and basically hang out and have a place to be for the day.  It's a new but inspiring program and I'm really grateful to be able to help out at all...regardless of the language barrier.  And hopefully that barrier will keep shrinking over time.

Speaking of language, I started my first Japanese class at the YWCA today!  I am so glad that my supervisor recommended this class.  Right now I know a lot of random nouns in Japanese, but this class is going to give me the grammar that I need as well as the ability to make sentences.  Both which are vital for any conversation beyond pointing. 

Unfortunately I don't have any pictures from this week.  Hopefully next week I'll have some pictures of my day to day life.  It's funny because sometimes I forget that I am in Japan.  I still feel like the same person I was in Cambridge and some places in Nagoya even remind me of Cambridge.  Besides the fact that the language is different and I look different than almost everyone in the city, it's easy for me to forget that I am half way around the world from where I was this time last year.  But surprisingly, it's the little day to day things that serve as reminders.  Things like doing laundry and taking out the trash and grocery shopping.  You can't believe how difficult it is to buy things like vinegar when you can't read the kanji and there are no brands that you can recognize!  I spent about 10 min in that aisle looking at the pictures on the bottles and trying to figure out what was inside.  Luckily I guessed right!

Hope everyone has a great week!