Speech Day and Church "Fun"

So, I've been more or less away from home for something like six days now. But! I am now officially on Christmas break, which means that I only have church and other sorts of activities and no language class.

Friday was the ever so "looked forward to" Speech Day. Earlier in the semester, we were assuming that this meant we would give a speech in front of our class and the teachers would give us a grade and write down little things we'd done incorrectly. But no. In fact, Speech Day is an afternoon 'event' in which all the new missionaries are initiated by being made to give 3-5 minutes speeches in front of about twenty Japanese people. In addition, we had to make food and provide music. All in all, it went quite well, though. I made rommegrod (my favorite Norwegian food!) and people seemed to like it. That may only be because the Americans in the group are in Cream of Wheat withdrawal, though... ;)

Sunday was yet another day at church. I was elected to play one of the wise men in our kid's puppet play for Christmas, and I decided (very wisely, I might add) to play the one who only has five very short lines. After going over the puppet play, one of my church friends pulled me into another room and had me sit down in preparation of something he was going to ask me. He was so serious about it that my brain began coming up with possible scenarios, such as that he was going to propose to me completely out of the blue. Thankfully, nothing like that happened, but he finally got to the matter at hand. "Two years ago...the J3...John...at the kid's Christmas party...(long pause)...he wear the Santa suit." I managed to repress my sigh of relief. "You're asking me to wear a Santa suit for part of the Christmas party?" He bowed very low. "Onegaishimas." (Please.) I happily agreed. His next request was that I sing something for the Christmas party, which I slightly more reluctantly agreed to. By this point, he was down on the ground bowing to me in thanks. ...never quite know what to do in a situation like that.

I trekked out to the other side of Tokyo after church for a nice relaxing "We've survived the first half of orientation!" sento trip with the VYMers. It was lovely. Haidee and I were talking about how it would be a great activity for junior high kids, because you actually get to see that even the skinniest women carry fat in the same places.

Tomorrow we are going to go see the Messiah and get all dressed up for it. We are having Bible study in the morning and it is my turn to lead worship. I am seriously considering making the group do interpretive dance. *evil grin*