A mobile blog post

This morning I spent time getting the next stage of an editing project for our mission out of the way (31 Days of Prayer for Japan). This involved going through several critiques of our draft booklet. 

Then I rode over to a friend's house to help her clean prior to their departure next week. Sadly I won't see her again

for at least 18 months. It was a fun time, however, the best way to clean a house: with a few girlfriends.

After that I rode home and got ready to go out for the evening on an unconventional date. I'm now sitting at a US airforce base, with my husband and several other parents, watching high school wrestling again. Our younger boys are being watched by a former student of David's. To be honest it is nice to be off the after-school duty for once. 

And to our joy our son once again got a bout and he pinned his opponent. Yay! Definitely worth coming, not just to see our son but to cheer on the whole team. 

It's a latish night, however. Hopefully the traffic will be light on the way home!

Hole in the floor

This morning there was a guy in my kitchen. Actually under my kitchen.

Can you see? We have a wonderful "man hole" in our floor that gives access to the space under the house.

Under the house.

Lid of the hole

This is the plastic storage container that is
suspended under our kitchen floor. It is actually a
pretty common storage item in many Japanese
houses, I believe.

It is actually very useful. Here we keep potatoes, onions,
rice, paper towels, emergency water etc.

The reason the man was "under" our kitchen is because there seems to be some sagging floor boards in the kitchen. You get used to Japanese houses moving as you move around in them (the floor in our lounge has dips in it too). In some places, if someone heavy walks past me, I can feel the floor dip under me. 

But this little spot in the kitchen is looking worse than the others and the lino has now begun to split too. So we asked him to have a look at it (or the real estate agent did). He also checked out a few other little repairs around the house.

I had to laugh, though. Japan's repair men are high tech. He was snapping photos on his digital camera and when he started to look under the floor I offered him a torch. He declined and promptly turned his iPhone into a torch. At least he did his measuring with a good old fashioned metal tape measure!

The biggest challenge for me is understanding what he said after his investigations (although this guy was younger than many repairmen I've met and his Japanese wasn't too difficult, he even used "kitchen" and "owner-san"). I think I've guessed most of it, but as for the discussion about the floor. I mostly agreed that it would be difficult if the whole floor needed to be replaced. But as to how they are going to fix that sagging board, I've no idea. He has to contact the real estate agent who will contact the owner and we'll see what they decide to do. Wait and see is our motto! 

Recent conversations with boys

I've lamented here before that I struggle to get decent conversations going with our boys at meal times. However, we've had some interesting ones recently (not all at meal times, though):

Boy asks: "What did Nanna do as a job?" led to interesting conversation about her jobs.

Our family. Five individuals who struggle daily to love one
another in our conversations.

Boy asks: "Why do pimples happen? What makes them red and raised up?" Led to discussions on puberty as well as a fumbling explanation about the science behind pimples.

We've had some great conversations about what they think might happen next in the historical fiction book I'm reading to them. Many of their ideas are fantasy, though!

As I tried to explore why our teenager rejected a dinner I made, I got a backhanded complement when he said something like, "Our meals are usually so good, that I just didn't expect something that bad." It turns out that he'd not done so well in training that afternoon and wasn't emotionally prepared for a "different" meal. It might have helped if I'd given him prior warning to the unusual meal (it had vegetables we don't usually eat cooked differently and much more garlic than we usually eat).

At the bathroom sink before breakfast I was doing my hair:
"What's that?" one boys asks.
"Mousse"
"Ewwww"
As he ran down the stairs away from me, "Aaaaah, Look out! Moose is coming!"

Over the weekend we've had a lot of wrestling conversations, especially rehashing what happened in various bouts on Saturday morning. I love those conversations. We all learn from our son/brother and usually they are pretty "sensible" conversations that stay away from silliness and toilet humour, although I have to admit we have a couple of nice "farting while training" stories that always get a giggle.

Here's a conversation that ran away from me and nearly ended in disaster. We'd just talked about someone who was getting married soon in her early 20s.
"Getting married, at 22?" one shocked boy said.
"Yeah, people get married as young as that. Nanna got married at 21, and Mr and Mrs Smith* got married before they turned 20."
"Oh" Slight pause as he did a huge leap of logic. "I guess that's why Mrs Smith doesn't have much of a bump here (gesturing at his chest)."
Stifling a giggle, I tried to explain that all of those types of physical attributes tend to be developed before you turn 20. No idea if he "got it", though.

* Obviously I changed their names for privacy!

Burger or sandwich?

I posted this on my Facebook status one day last month, I ended up with a lot of comments from various parts of the globe:

Another subtle difference between American and Australian English. Sandwich. This Aussie (and her husband at least) only calls something between slices of bread a sandwich. If the bread is shaped differently, like a roll/bun it is called something else like a burger or roll. 
But a discussion last night revealed that some/many Americans, only call something a burger if it has a meat patty in it. Hence a "steak sandwich" which an Aussie would call a "steak burger". What do you think? Am I right? Perhaps Australia has changed while we've been gone!

Essentially it turned out I was right (although there were exceptions, notably a good friend called Roger). Georgia summarised it neatly by saying that in America it is what is inside that determines what it is called. In Australia it seems more common to be the type of bread that determines it.

This is the one that particularly blew the minds of Americans: that a Steak Burger is an unground piece of steak in a bread roll. To them, it would be ground steak or what I'd call a meat patty.

Interestingly, the FB comments also included sidetracks onto "bacon and chippy butties" which is British and I have no idea about.

Ah, the English language is a funny beast. And because I have friends from a variety of countries and who speak a number of varieties of English, I can have a lot of fun with these kinds of posts on Facebook!

Today I had a bit of a discussion at church about "cobbler", which I think is an American version of what we call "crumble".

This afternoon we're making an Apple Crumble with some of the 100 yen/kilo apples that we bought on the way home from camping last week. Whatever it is call, it is definitely YUM!

It began

Finally wrestling began! It's been a long wait for some live action.

Going into today I didn't know what to expect. Our son's growth spurt has put him into the

same weight class as one of our best wrestlers. As I've said before, high school wrestling is organised in such a way that only one wrestler in each weight class gets to represent their school and probably that isn't going to be our son this season (barring injuries or some other unexpected event). So it was possible that our son could go the whole season without a chance to wrestle.

Sorry for the poor iPhone photos. Due to a miscommunication,
we only took the video camera, not the camera.

Therefore it was something of a surprise today to find that both of the schools who came to CAJ to wrestle also had "spare" wrestlers in that weight class. After the main competition they held what are called "exhibition bouts". The bouts not counting towards the schools' scores, but certainly giving the wrestlers needed experience and a lot of pleasure to the spectators. 

Our son pinned both his opponents. He made plenty of mistakes, but as usual it was great to watch him. The second bout, particularly, was enthralling. One of those bad-turned-good stories. It looked like our son was going to lose fairly easily, and then he turned it around and ended up winning.

I'm now recovering from a strained throat: I let loose and yelled! But I wasn't alone, there were plenty of yellers, including the high school principal. I think at least one of the colleagues of my mild-mannered-maths-teacher-husband was surprised to see the loud-sports-loving-Australian come out in him.

This is the first time our son has wrestled at CAJ, so it was great to have some home support. Also, the high school team is much larger than the middle school team, so it was fantastic to have lots of other CAJ "wrestling parents" there with us. 

Now we look forward to two more meets in the next 10 days before a break over Christmas. I guess we'll go into each one with the same "not knowing" whether we'll see our son wrestle that day or not. The suspense is going to be interesting!

Kids Musings Dec. edition

Four times a year I put together a newsletter for kids about Japan, I've been doing this for over 10 years now. It started as a desire to reach out to the children of our supporters. I was given a passion for mission as a child and I wanted to provide a tool for our supporters to do the same for their kids. 

Here is the "Kids Musings" I've done this week (I've modified it, so that it is not personalised at all). The theme I'm using this year is seasons. 

If you would like to take this and use it yourself or give it to others, please feel free. One of my sons asked me yesterday if we, "sold these". Yes, the entrepreneurial one! But no, it is totally free for your use. If you'd like a better quality version, just send me an email.

Missionaries are often lonely

Every now and then I am surprised when something I wrote a while back makes a reappearance and is used again. It encourages me to keep writing, especially when something I've written helps people back home to understand missionaries better. 

Today I've read over an article that stemmed from a blog post I wrote back in 2009. It is going to be used to help people who support OMF missionaries understand how lonely it can be as a missionary, even when we're "home". 

So, even though the article is much better (and longer) than the blog post, I'm reposting the original blog post below.

"Missionaries are people who are often lonely, they will appreciate genuine interest."

Someone was surprised by this statement in my last blog post. Let's take a quick tour through a typical missionary's life:

This was in the first couple of years in
Japan. We're smiling, but deep down
we were lonely.

First he/she has to say goodbye to all their friends and family and move to a country that is foreign and where probably they don't speak the language. Intense loneliness. This is pretty obvious.

It can take years to feel comfortable in the newly 'adopted' country. Possibly never. Even if good friends are made with the locals, there can be a sense of not ever being able to truly share your heart. Much like a pastor can not be good friends with most of his parishioners.

Through the years, though, things generally settle and the missionary feels more and more comfortable. Small and large changes in the way the missionary thinks and behaves make this possible.

Then, it is time to return home for a period, short or long. They face saying goodbyes again, this time to colleagues with whom they've shared much and local friends too, many of whom will not understand why the missionary must come and go.

When they get "home" the missionary then realises how much they themselves have changed. Additionally, the people back home haven't remained static. They've married, divorced, had kids, changed jobs, houses, moved, and certainly the spot that the missionary once held in their lives is no longer vacant. The missionary finds it difficult to find a place to belong in their lives. People find it difficult to relate to this person they once knew, but now don't know as well because of lack of shared experiences and the changes which have taken place within the missionary. Loneliness!

Additionally while missionaries are 'home', they tour around different churches and groups. Their lifestyle is quite unsettled and their time is often spread across many different situations and relationships. Loneliness!

Missionaries can look like they know lots of people, but again many relationships are not deep ones where their true worries and concerns can be shared. Usually they feel the pressure to tell success stories and to keep the personal stories and the failure stories to themselves. Not many stop long enough to hear beyond the surface details. Loneliness! 

Enough. I think you get the picture! 

Of course there are special friends who remain faithful throughout life. And for them we are truly grateful.