Day 4 - hear we come

It's morning of Day 4 of English in Action class. Mike is up and seeing if he can make it today. If he does go, he will wear a surgical mask... the Japanese way of not spreading germs. The rest of us are trying to avoid his illness, but we are all showing some symptoms of colds. We are taking vitamins and drinking Japanese vitamin drinks.

Yesterday, we discovered that one of our students, Kalen, is the daughter of an OCSI graduate. Her mom was in 5th grade when I started teaching here in 1987 and Mike taught her Bible and possible other classes when we returned in 1993. Kalen's mom (Lisa Gowan) was a typical OCSI student... Japanese mom and American dad. She is now married to a Japanese man and her daughter attends the Japanese Christian school. When I discovered who Kalen's mom was, I could then see that she looks alot like her mom.

Jonathan and Lydia are fitting in very well and are loving the kids. Jonathan has made good friends with one of the other helpers... Zach, a missionary kids in middle school. Zach is introducing Jonathan to some foods he likes and they are having fun together, working together.

Lydia loves the kids and does well working with them. Manato, a 6 year old boy, who is a tease, has become a favorite. His English is limited, but he is able to get his point across in playfulness. One day, he told Lydia how she should color her picture at craft time. She did it just as he said, using the colors he suggested. When she was done, she asked him what he thought. He indicated it was bad, with a twinkle in his eye.

The place we are teaching is the conference room in the upper part of a small mall. There is a grocery store on the first floor. The kids have discovered onigiri... fair sized triangular balls of rice, with tuna in the middle, wrapped with seaweed. That has become their after school snack the last few days. They love them. We are also eating Bentos for lunch each day. A bento is like a prepack lunch from the Japanese "deli" which always includes a large serving of rice, some sort of meat and various small portions of mystery items such as pickled noodles, cooked bitter greens, etc. The portions of meat and rice are sufficiant to fill us up... so if the mystery items don't suit us, we are not going to go hungry. So far, we have enjoyed them quite a bit.

Well, I need to finish getting ready for the day. Thanks for your prayers concerning our health.