One of these things just doesn't belong here

Sometimes, I forget I'm in Japan. Luckily, I have times like Monday morning to remind myself. I have been bugging a friend to try to find a gym with me. I figured it'd be no big deal without really thinking that no one speaks English here. Wellll, apparently the place opens at 10 and we were about 10 minutes early. Luckily, there was a waiting area with a few older Japanese people there. Apparently, Japanese people like to be to places as soon as it opens because within a minute we were packed like sardines in this room full of 5ft tall 60ish year old Japanese people and two average American looking guys ("one of these things just doesn't belong here"). I would have loved to see a picture of us two in this waiting room, it had to be priceless. Luckily as we stood there, this woman comes over to us and says good morning and asked us if we are joining and I tried to explain that we just wanted to see the place.

 Little did we know this lady would be our angel for the morning. People started checking in and we pushed ourselves to the back contemplating how to play the right charades to say we wanted to check the place out.  All of a sudden, the lady comes over to us in the sardine room and pulls at me saying "come here please." She pulls us through the line and has us sit down explaining to the attendant that we wanted an observation and left us. A few minutes later the attendant is talking to us and trying to get us to sign paperwork to join. Our angel comes back out of nowhere and asks if everything is alright. She reminds the lady we are just observing and helps us on our tour. Its the little moments like these that just lets you know God is there watching. We had no clue what we were doing but out of nowhere some lady came to our help.

My week

This week we got to check out the Takamori campus and observe classes all week. Our days usually start around 1PM and end at 7. Its a pretty nice schedule. I'm really enjoying the interactions with the kids. I sometimes wish I would write down the funny things they say because it happens so often. We also get to enjoy recess with different grades everyday. Anybody that watches "MXC" would have a better understanding why its so popular in Japan. These kids are like shifty little cats running around jumping on literally everything outside.

Outside of observing, we have been memorizing materials to teach and preparing projects for next year. Friday is my first chance to teach a lesson. Wish me luck!

Random Photos of the Takamori Campus