Hello and welcome to update #2 covering our second week here in Sapporo! I don’t have tons of time so here is a quick run down of what we’ve done this week.
Sunday (6/29) was very busy, starting off with a bike ride to Hokuei church service, lunch with a church member (and lots of Japanese practice!) followed by an English service at the Sapporo International Church. Some highlights: I understood about 30% of the Japanese message (preached by a gaijin though, so much slower and clearer than native Japanese). Good fellowship time after SIC with much laughter, guacamole, and World Cup talk. Monday we had our team devotions, then me, Abi and Tom cycled up to Asabu, a section of the city north of us and after an afternoon of exploring confirmed beyond a shadow of a doubt that there is absolutely nothing to do in Asabu, unless you want to enroll in dance classes or get a hair cut (I DID want to enroll in dance classes, but Abi and Tom were having none of it). On our way to Karin’s for a team meeting before ESS we stopped at a market and bought two cartons of strawberries for an unbeatable price of 400 yen after a bit of subtle haggling and sweetalking plus Abi’s alabaster skin. At ESS we learned some Hokkaido dialect, met new students and went out for dinner afterwards, as well as made plans to go to karaoke the following evening. Tuesday we spent most of the day at campus, in hopes of meeting some people while waiting to meet up for karaoke. We tried to kill time by being sporty outside, but that only lasted for about 15 minutes before one of us was in dire need of a first aid kit (Dean) and so we ended up meeting a student by asking her to take us to a medical facility. Moral of the story is: if you need a friend, a blood sacrifice might do the trick. Actually it doesn’t even have to be real blood if you keep a packet of ketchup handy. In any case, Dean was repaired, and we went to karaoke and sang ourselves silly for two hours.
Wednesday...was a mournful day for me. Woke up at 5 a.m for the US vs Belgium game… accidentally woke up the whole house when Green scored...and then spent the morning in sorrow, or as Abby would say, with a “brokoro kokoro”. I had to soldier on though, because the rest of the day was spent planning for the international party and bible studies, as well as a team meeting and ESS in the evening. We went out to eat with the students again afterwards and then headed home, and I watched Tim Howard interviews and contributed to the red white and blue tears being shed in the mother country.
Thursday we went grocery shopping and errands/planning/siesta-ing before attending the OMF prayer meeting.
Friday we were set to serve as volunteer english partners for a girls’ junior high school event, and after a slight mix up about locations arrived slightly late to have a great 45 minutes of chatting with 14 year olds about Powerpuff Girls, Spongebob, and Inuyasha. Have I mentioned how I love interning with OMF? We were given 1000 yen gift cards to a bookshop as thank you gifts so we walked to a huge bookstore by Sapporo station and I bought a JLPT N2 Grammar study book. Hopefully that will give me a leg up in studying for the test in December! We had english bible study in the evening and went to bed early to get plenty of rest for today…
Because today was our day off! We went to Shakotan, a lovely seaside city/town/area about 3.5 hours away from Sapporo and did lots of trekking and wading and rock skipping and sweating. Many pictures to come.
Last but certainly not least, I recently discovered that my hosts from Ichikawa last year, Fredy and Anuk, are living above us for the next month while they stay in Sapporo as their grandson Florin undergoes a very serious surgery- so I went and had nice long visit catching up this evening. I can’t believe it’s been a year since I last saw them!
I will post another update with prayer requests tomorrow, but for now I must sleep or suffer possible death by sleeping at the handle-bars on the way to church. Goodnight and thanks for reading!
P.S. look forward to the sequel to my last post about Japanese toilets, titled “Japan and the Porcelain Throne; The Dark Side”, coming soon to this very blog.
