Grand finale day of Thrift Shop

I'm done in! Feeling frazzled. Quietly quivering on the inside! It was the grand finale of Thrift Shop today. The day when anyone can come and shop from 9 till 1. 

It was exciting to hear people excited to see what the campus looked like. I heard one mum explain to her daughter that it was a place where a lot of people speak English. I heard of another couple of ladies who were found wandering in the neighborhood who wanted to come but had trouble finding the school. They weren't interested in shopping, just seeing what the inside looked like. Thankfully my friend was able to show them where to go. Another local lady I served at the register said it was her first time, she seemed very impressed. 

One of the families I sold goods to had a little boy who was intrigued by my "register". We use old fashioned calculators that provide a printout of your calculations on a long strip of paper. I made his day by allowing him to type a few numbers and then giving him the printout!

It was also great to see a number of new parents at CAJ joining in as volunteers during the day. It's a great way to get to know other parents, especially if you have older kids. 

We spent the afternoon restoring the gym to its former state. I'm glad it's finished. But it was and almost always is an enjoyable and definitely worthwhile event. 

I'm also thankful for friends who helped me personally. One brought me coffee at 11, just when I was waning. Actually I was so tired at breakfast that I messed up making my toast, I was concerned about how I was going to manage handling other people's money (and speaking in Japanese) for four hours and not make some big mistakes, but it actually went fairly well. This morning I missed going to our sons' second-last cross country meet for the season. A couple of friends assured me yesterday they'd cheer extra hard for my guys. Gotta love having friends!

People everywhere you look. These are the registers.
 I spent most of four hours there today. And almost six
there yesterday. 

The view straight over the head of the register. We served people continuously
for at least three hours straight before we got to the end of the line
and had a break.

This was the foyer of the gym where the seniors were selling hot food.