Teach me , Sensei

Ahhhh. Japan is amazing. I have been here for a week and I find myself starting to fall in love with this place. This is of course the honeymoon stage so my outlook may change. I am living in a traditional Japanese style house right by the church. The houses here are really close together small. The people here are so polite. Today we had a lesson on Japanese manners. There are a lot of things that are taboo mostly relating to table manners. It was quite interesting especially when we found out that there are things that aren't good manners that we have done since we have been here. Yipes! The church that the Hieberts pastor is amazing. Even though I hardly know the people they feel just like family. And it is a church with regular attendance for services equalling 35 so everybody is really close. A really cool experience was eating lunch on sunday with the church. Even though a lot of the people don't speak much english it was really cool to share a meal together. The Hieberts are a wonderful family as well. They have such a great understanding of Japanese culture and customs and are really hospitable. The work they are doing here in Japan is great and they are so passionate about what God is doing here in Japan. They have a daughter that is a couple of years younger than our team and we really enjoy hanging out with her. There is also an esl teacher close to our age named Sean, who lives on the church property as well. We will all hang out sometimes usually at our place because it is bigger.
Today we sat in on a couple of the esl classes and it was really interesting to see how it was done. I still have one more to sit in on yet this evening. It is a bit later so that shall be interesting. We also had our first Japanese lesson today. It felt like I was back in school. I really enjoyed it though and when our teacher (sensei in japanese) pulled out the two workbooks for the two different japanese alphabets I got a bit giddy ( so I am a bit of a dork and really enjoy learning languages). I just can't wait until I learn a bit more although I doubt 3.5 months is enough time to become fluent or even semi-fluent in Japanese. So today has really been a full day but I don't have anything until 2pm tomorrow which means sleep in time. Yes! God has been teaching me a lot these past couple of days as well. It has been a really good experience for me and I am feeling lifted up and encouraged. I am feeling strengthened and ready to go. So now I will say Sayanora and bid you good night and a pleasant tomorrow.