writing backwards

i'll start with my schedule for today (sunday).

it's about 8:08 here, and i'm at the hotel. my schedule for today runs like this:

breakfast - hotel
9:30-10:00 - sunday school and church service
lunch at the church afterward
dinner out later on
7:00 pm evening service in Nagoya
return to hotel and stay overnight.

today i'm recovering from saturday. i had a little too much "fun in the sun" yesterday. i met up with mr. brigham at around 8:05 at the train station. i didn't know it at the time but it was the hottest day of the year so far on saturday. we rode bikes, walked around and up flights of stairs, rode trains, and drove. i didn't realize what a toll it had all taken on me until i reached the hotel and crashed out on the bed. when i woke up i was feeling fatigued and a litlte unsteady. i decided to try to go to the brighams' house for dinner. i brought a gatoraide with me from the vending machine. when i got there i wasnt feeling much better and couldnt bring myself to eat anything. i felt bad becuase of the preperations that mrs. brigham had made but there was nothing much i could do in that state. i had overdone it and it took it's toll. so i slept upstairs at their house for a few hours and kept downing fluids between cat naps. then i woke up and it was back to the hotel. mr. brigham still had some studying he was going to do. saturday was a good day other than that though. in the morning when i was running around, i got to meet mr. brighams english class as you can see from the pictures, i learned my way around better so i dont feel so lost anymore. i have my bearings now. i learned the art of bike-parking and locking, and how to remember where your bike can be found. i met a japanese guy my age (takaya san) for lunch with mr. brigham who had just come back to japan from america about a month ago. he stayed in louisiana with a host family as part of a homestay program. it turned out they were missionaries and had found out about the brighams in much the same way that i did. anyway, now that he was back in japan, mr. brigham wanted to meet him for lunch and ask him if he was interested in learning english at the small church that he has in Anjo. takaya san is also a coffee drinker, so i did a little preaching to him myself about the merits of Peets coffee as kind of an ice breaker. takaya sans parents are bhuddist however, and it will ultimately be up to them whether he will be allowed to go to a christian church to improve his english.

but i didnt tell you much about his english class! it started around 10:00AM and apparently class commences if the students show up. three of them did. the two girls are really close and inseperable friends. they are Ami-chan, and Lin-chan. the boy (yuji-kun), i'm told, is the smartest kid in Japan. At least thats what his mother says. it may not be an exaggeration. according to the regional test scores he is at least the sharpest 11 year old in this prefecture. i'm told he regularly achieves 94's on tests in every subject without studying. he was learning second-grade Kanji when he was in kindergarten. his parents send him to juku (cram school) much of the time, so he is always tired i guess. during the class, mr. brigham came across a character on one of these paper things that looked like bookmarks that the girls were trying to read, and i think had verses on them. he didn't recognize it so he wrote it on the board and asked yuji-kun. you could see the gears turning, and within a few seconds he had it named. tried introducing myself to him in my best japanese. i wasnt sure exactly how it was received. he walked up to me and gave me a look that to me looked like it said, "whats this stupid foreign guys deal"... he looked really serious, and kind of gazed at me with a very insightful stare and then in really clear english said "my name is yuji, nice to meet you" and took his seat. well i was able to help teach english to them, and we even played a form of bingo at the end designed to reinforce english words related to color and shape. i think i may have bonded with him a little more when i showed him the sony camera, though. aha, he can be bought! also, he had a bag with ninjas on it, and some information about them in english stiched on. I read it for him, and told him about my love of ninjas too. i dont know if i'll see him again, but, who knows, maybe one day he'll be famous and remember the crazy foreign guy that visited his english class; and just maybe he'll hire me as a network guy for his fortune 500 company...

so along the lines of the above schedule. it is now 6:00. i'm going to dinner and then an evening service at 7:00 most likely. i already attended the sunday school and church this morning. i'll upload pictures later on.