Excitement at cross country today

Here I am with Jenn, a friend, fellow parent, and editing-team member.

Today was the second cross-country meet of the season. I felt weary when the alarm went off at 5.15 this morning! The reward was that we zoomed through Tokyo in our van and got to our destination in only about 45 minutes (it took longer than an hour to drive the 15km home, much of that was at less than 10km/hr).

But being at the meet was well worth the effort. We saw all three of our boys run. The two who'd run this course before got significant personal best times (66 and 33 seconds)! The third boy, our new middle schooler, obviously hadn't run the course before, but was only 30 seconds behind his 8th grade brother. They ran so well. One proud mum here!


The other great thing, that I've mentioned many times before, was chatting with other parents. This is something I missed when we were in Australia. Inter-school events didn't include much parental support (probably because many of them were during the working day). Plus I hadn't spent long enough in the school community to get to know many other parents.

Today I probably chatted with more than a dozen people who I know (some barely, others much better). For someone like me who works alone, but also needs people, that was soul refreshing. 

I also ran into a new family at CAJ. I met the mum about 10 years ago when she and her husband, who were cross-cultural workers in the middle east at the time, spoke at our church in Japan. We met in the babies room! We've since spent time together at various inter-mission women's events here in Japan, but not for over two years. So great to see her again. She introduced me to her husband who knew my face from my photo, which appears under my editorial in Japan Harvest magazine these days. He thanked me for my ministry.

My husband wasn't nearby at that time, but later I told him about this family and their daughter in high school. He said, "I teach her." Ah ha. Yes, we are in Japan serving the missionary community. Though it's always in the back of our minds, it's good to be reminded of that "in the flesh" sometimes.

I didn't quite get my "fancy" camera settings right for the middle
school race, but this has its own kind of charm. This is our middle son
who came 19th in a field of over 100 runners.

And our youngest who was 29th in the same race as above. This black-and-yellow
runner came up behind him with only about five metres left, but our son
didn't have enough in the tank, proving to me that this ultra competitive boy
had indeed run very hard today. He would have been 4th if the race just contained 6th graders.

Gorgeous greenery to be had in this location.

The start of the middle school race.