Fantabulous Fun Friday (and Saturday and Sunday)

I'm working on being a better blogger, so as promised here are the deets on the supah dupah sweet weekend! Friday was early wake up day (7:00, you know me) to get to the train station in time that I could make it to Katsutadai for a Beginner's English Class by 9:30. There I met up Alison North who is the missionary who heads up a lot of the ministries I'll be taking part in. She's a really wonderful and awesome lady, I rather admire her a lot :) All of the members of this class are middle-ish aged women, and boy are they a fun group! A large portion of the group all particapate in a gospel choir together, even though not all of them are Christians. Turns out that Gospel music is a super big thing in Japan right now, which is awesome because people are accidentally getting to hear about Jesus all over the place! At the beginning of class Alison asked everyone to go around and introduce themselves and ask me one question about myself (all in English). I was surprised at how well many of them could express themselves, so I guess Japanese standards of a beginner's English class is a bit different than what we have back home :) We read the story of Lazurus and talked about it afterwards, which was so interesting to hear impressions that I never had, having known the story since I was little. After class we all went out to eat at Sezerias (i'm 100% sure I spelled that wrong) which is both wonderfully cheap and wonderfully delicious- double thumbs up! I had a great bonding moment when one of the women brought up Korean dramas- and we promptly spent the next 20 minutes talking about our favorite actors and dramas. I won much standing when I shared that I had the same birthday as Lee Minho, let me tell you. All in all it was just about the funnest thing ever. I got back to Ichikawa at about 3:00 in the afternoon, just in time for tea in the office with a great crowd of wonderful OMFers. BIC peeps, are you ready for something exciting? because it's really exciting...... okay here it goes. One of the people at tea happened to ask what church denomination I came from, so I replied "brethren in christ...it's kind of small..." And suddenly I heard a voice from across the rooms say "Hey, I'm BIC too!". Turns out Nobue, one of the missionaries from Japan homeside (missionaries going out from Japan to other places) grew up in one of the 7 church plants the BIC has in Japan. It was such a blessing to see the fruit of the BIC 's work in Japan, and to have a connection with someone with a similar background! I was excited, to say the least, and I get to talk to her again today and on Tuesday too! It's almost like randomly meeting a relative you didn't know you had :) Friday was also Fumie's birthday, so that evening Philipa, Fumie and I all went to the cinema to see After Earth. It was pretty good (I mean it's Will Smith, y'know)and I got an 800 yen discount for being a student. They also were selling jelly belly beans by the gram so i ate my 500 yen dose of the magical fruit :D After the movie we went to the arcade and got our pictures taken in those little photo booths that make your eyes all big and you can decorate the pictures and stuff. Let me just say that we were lookin tres kawaii in those pics mmmhm.c Saturday I woke up early again to catch the train to Katsutadai, this time for Mainly Music, which is a mom/dad/grandparent-and-kid together musicy/dancey time. I had so much fun playing with all the kids and talking with the moms (some of the women from the beginner's English class were there with their kids) Also Alison's youngest son Isaac was there being such helpful and goofy little guy. He's such a ham! But a real good egg. When I got home from that I passed out for about an hour and a half, because that night I was invited to attend Only English, which is a discussion group led by the Jeggos, an English missionary couple in Ichikawa. Between dinner, discussion, and fellowship I ended up staying there for 3 and 1/2 hours! time flies when you're having fun. They have three children, Timothy who is 1, Daniel who is 3, and Hannah who is 6. Darlingest dears in the whole world. Really really lovely children. Sunday morning I skyped with Cassie, and then headed to Roppongi in the afternoon for Tokyo Gospel Church. After church a couple people decided to go out to eat so I went along. We went to Sezarias (noticing a pattern?) where I actually purposefully ordered something with squid in it. However it was in doria, which is basically cheese sauce + rice so you couldn't really tell that it was squid. I've become a really huge fan of doria so I quite enjoyed my meal. I only took a few photos, and the last one is really a photo of a photo, but I hope you enjoy them anyways :)