I started learning to play guitar today! It was super fun. Well...except that my first fifteen minutes or so were me trying to play the guitar upside-down. If you ever take up guitar, the highest note is not the top string, it is the bottom string. Bizarre instruments, guitars. ;) Perhaps the funniest moment of me playing guitar upside-down was when my Japanese teacher finds me, tells me that she thinks it's upside-down, and I manage to convert her to my unbeatable logic by pointing out that the highest note has to go at the top. We, a little confused, finally concluded that the guitar had to be a left handed guitar or something.
...you know, logic really isn't the greatest force of reasoning.
Once I had the guitar right side up, I found online guitar lessons and sat contentedly strumming for four straight hours. Actually, I'm pretty proud. I learned quite a few chords.
Now, something like eight hours later, I still can't quite feel the tips of three of my fingers, though. Oops. Guess next time one of my guitar playing friends warns me that I will need to get callouses I will believe her. :)
Wednesday, July 25, 2007
Monday, July 16, 2007
Good, Hard Busyness
These past two weeks have been really, really crazy. Before Aaron (the long term missionary who is my supervisor and teaches the other half of the English classes at Hongo) left, I was joking with him that I was going to take over the center in his absence. No more joking about that! Two weeks ago I had all the classes combined, which meant I had to have beginner students together with advanced students. It also meant that I had to do things Aaron usually does, like come up with a coffee hour topic of conversation and write the Bible Study we would use in class for the week. But, that week passed fairly painlessly, and my classes officially ended a week ago on Friday.
But of course...I also was asked to teach a bonus class for this past week. It ended up being English activities. Despite being very fun (we played board games, cooked pizza, baked cookies, and watched "The Gods Must be Crazy"), it was a lot of work. Pizza was an especially big hit. We managed to feed twenty people with only four, medium size pizzas. Which I think would qualify as a miracle in America, but is pretty normal here.
The only problem with this was that, because Monday is my only day off, and normally my self proclaimed and fiercely defended sabbath, I had to use last Monday to buy groceries in abundance. So, no sabbath last week. Then, right after church yesterday, we left for a church retreat in Nagano. Now, this was a *church* retreat, which is not to be confused with an English Center retreat. That means that, from about 10:30 in the morning on Sunday until 9:30 at night on Monday I was completely surrounded by Japanese. It also meant that I did not have a sabbath for the second week in a row.
And then there was the fact that they had asked me to lead worship at 7:00 this morning. It was not a pretty site. I spent the *entire* car ride to Nagano brainstorming and praying about how to lead worship...I had not had time to practice any music, so I was trying to figure out a non-music worship, but everything I could think of was going to be *way* out of Japanese comfort zones. Unfortunately, the most helpful thing I got from praying about it was the distinct feeling that this task was part of my job and not part of my calling (a very important distinction for me as a missionary), so I probably shouldn't have been worrying about it so much. However, I still ended up sitting in a common room, flipping through my Bible, scribbling down prayers and thoughts, until about 11:00, when my prayer for some Japanese person to at least come and give me advice about Japanese comfort zones was answered. So, slightly comforted, I called it a night. Or tried to. I ended up awake still feeling anxious. It was my first time leading anything with the actual congregation, and I knew nothing I was considering was really going to work. Call me a pessimist--though I'm usually fairly optimistic--but I have learned that any activity I devise to stretch people ends up breaking Japanese people. And if I try to be normal and boring I end up stretching them. Unfortunately, I had no normal and boring ideas. I woke up at 5:15 when other people were moving around.
I approached worship as positively and optimistically as I could, but really, it didn't go well. And I was completely ignored for the rest of the morning service. They actually didn't even ask me if my activity was done but took control and had us sing a hymn and then went to the message, which I thought was good, because at least they got some real worshiping in. But there was no eye contact after that. My pastor finally came up to me at breakfast and said "it was good. But difficult." Ironically, this is one of the first times he's praised me for anything, so I think he was trying to be encouraging. :) Etsuko (the secretary at Hongo who is turning into a good friend) at least came up and said, quite cautiously, "How do you think worship went?" So I told her "horribly" and tried to smile. But everyone else was seriously completely ignoring me. I ate breakfast as quickly as I could and then escaped to an arm chair to pray and refocus...combination of stress and lack of sleep was resulting in me nearly bursting into tears about every other minute.
But it was really amazing after that. I remembered while praying and feeling like muck how good times like this really are for me...I usually understand people so well and plan things so carefully that things do not go wrong, or at least not very wrong. So, it's really good for me for my work to (every once in a while, anyway) be really obviously not glorifying to God. That way, He can remind me that His love for me has nothing to do with my work.
I did let Him know that I would appreciate some encouragement today, though, and when I finally dragged myself back to people, one of the first people I saw told me how the activity had been difficult, but she thought they would do better if we did it again some other time now that they understood a little better. Another woman came up and apologized that they had not given me enough time to lead my activity. Still another came and also said that we should do it again, and that she was sorry they had not been able to help me, but that they just hadn't understood it completely. It was the most bizarre change...one of those teeny miracles that, while not the kind you pull out to prove God's existence, was exactly the comfort I needed today.
But of course...I also was asked to teach a bonus class for this past week. It ended up being English activities. Despite being very fun (we played board games, cooked pizza, baked cookies, and watched "The Gods Must be Crazy"), it was a lot of work. Pizza was an especially big hit. We managed to feed twenty people with only four, medium size pizzas. Which I think would qualify as a miracle in America, but is pretty normal here.
The only problem with this was that, because Monday is my only day off, and normally my self proclaimed and fiercely defended sabbath, I had to use last Monday to buy groceries in abundance. So, no sabbath last week. Then, right after church yesterday, we left for a church retreat in Nagano. Now, this was a *church* retreat, which is not to be confused with an English Center retreat. That means that, from about 10:30 in the morning on Sunday until 9:30 at night on Monday I was completely surrounded by Japanese. It also meant that I did not have a sabbath for the second week in a row.
And then there was the fact that they had asked me to lead worship at 7:00 this morning. It was not a pretty site. I spent the *entire* car ride to Nagano brainstorming and praying about how to lead worship...I had not had time to practice any music, so I was trying to figure out a non-music worship, but everything I could think of was going to be *way* out of Japanese comfort zones. Unfortunately, the most helpful thing I got from praying about it was the distinct feeling that this task was part of my job and not part of my calling (a very important distinction for me as a missionary), so I probably shouldn't have been worrying about it so much. However, I still ended up sitting in a common room, flipping through my Bible, scribbling down prayers and thoughts, until about 11:00, when my prayer for some Japanese person to at least come and give me advice about Japanese comfort zones was answered. So, slightly comforted, I called it a night. Or tried to. I ended up awake still feeling anxious. It was my first time leading anything with the actual congregation, and I knew nothing I was considering was really going to work. Call me a pessimist--though I'm usually fairly optimistic--but I have learned that any activity I devise to stretch people ends up breaking Japanese people. And if I try to be normal and boring I end up stretching them. Unfortunately, I had no normal and boring ideas. I woke up at 5:15 when other people were moving around.
I approached worship as positively and optimistically as I could, but really, it didn't go well. And I was completely ignored for the rest of the morning service. They actually didn't even ask me if my activity was done but took control and had us sing a hymn and then went to the message, which I thought was good, because at least they got some real worshiping in. But there was no eye contact after that. My pastor finally came up to me at breakfast and said "it was good. But difficult." Ironically, this is one of the first times he's praised me for anything, so I think he was trying to be encouraging. :) Etsuko (the secretary at Hongo who is turning into a good friend) at least came up and said, quite cautiously, "How do you think worship went?" So I told her "horribly" and tried to smile. But everyone else was seriously completely ignoring me. I ate breakfast as quickly as I could and then escaped to an arm chair to pray and refocus...combination of stress and lack of sleep was resulting in me nearly bursting into tears about every other minute.
But it was really amazing after that. I remembered while praying and feeling like muck how good times like this really are for me...I usually understand people so well and plan things so carefully that things do not go wrong, or at least not very wrong. So, it's really good for me for my work to (every once in a while, anyway) be really obviously not glorifying to God. That way, He can remind me that His love for me has nothing to do with my work.
I did let Him know that I would appreciate some encouragement today, though, and when I finally dragged myself back to people, one of the first people I saw told me how the activity had been difficult, but she thought they would do better if we did it again some other time now that they understood a little better. Another woman came up and apologized that they had not given me enough time to lead my activity. Still another came and also said that we should do it again, and that she was sorry they had not been able to help me, but that they just hadn't understood it completely. It was the most bizarre change...one of those teeny miracles that, while not the kind you pull out to prove God's existence, was exactly the comfort I needed today.
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