Ok! For realz this time!

Yeah, like I said earlier, I owe you all a REAL blog post, so I will do my best to make this it. Here we go

When we arrived in California, I got to meet all the people I would meet the next 5 or so weeks with. We all bonded really well really fast, and I am not saying that due to the fact that some of them probably read this. I honestly mean it. I roomed with Joe during this time. He was a pretty awesome guy, but I would have no idea HOW awesome until I got here in Japan. I think he REALLY got out of his shell once we got here and he is a blast to be around. If you have access to my facebook account, he is the one that I am fighting in my new profile picture.

So yeah, but we quickly discovered once we got there that collectively, we still owed $19,000 for us all to go on the trip....yeah, and only a couple of days to raise it. Yeah, we were in deep trouble. So we were getting to know each other, knowing full well that the possibility that any one of us could not end up going was looming over all our heads. But, we were rapidly calling EVERYONE we know in order to raise that money. Luckily, God was on our side the entire time (PRAISE GOD!) and we were able to raise ALL of it (well, pretty much) within only a couple of days. People who already raised all their support will calling in for more, and people were calling friends that had already given and asked for more and people they had already asked before and figured they would give it another try. So, if you are one of the people I or anyone else called those few days, THANK YOU SO MUCH!

Anyway, we went through several "getting to know each other" exercises, both on a spiritual level and a fun/cultural level. We got into teams and played trivia against each other. If one person lost the other would have to try a random Japanese snack of the winners choice, like Almond Fish (it contains EXACTLY what you think it does, almonds and little dehydrated fish...eyes included) My team was called Dynamic Awesome McFusion, guess who came up with that name (it was me, how did you know?)

In addition, me losing my passport brought the whole team together in prayer for me as well as my passport. Once it was found, we got on the plane. Now, I had been on international flights before, but this was different than any I had been on (all two of them). For some reason, it did not feel as long, mostly since I had a lot of fun talking with the other people, and there were televisions in the headrests, so we could play games, for free, against one another. I watched several Clint Eastwood films, including Gran Torino, which I really enjoyed and am thinking about buying on DVD when I return. Yes Clint Eastwood was REALLY racist, but I believe that it accurately depicts the racism that unfortunately exists heavily in the elderly generation, and was necessary for the evolution of his character since he was able to get overcome decades of his own racism and find peace with himself, as well as make the first true friend he probably has had in a very long time.

But that is not the issue right now. (Sorry, I am a film major, I do this a lot. You can only imagine the kill joy I was after the team watched Star Trek)

Anyway, after we arrived in Tokyo, we still had several long trainrides in order to finally get to Koenji. It had been a long day (we left friday and arrived Saturday...it was a long day) and we were getting TIRED. Several of us were dozing off on the train, but the rest of us kept us awake with word games and stuff like that because if we fell asleep, jet lag would be really hard to overcome. It was REALLY fun to carry our large luggage on several trains, most of which we had to stand up the whole time.

Once we arrived at the apartment (Rain Palace) we met Scott, one of the people we would be working with while on this trip. He gave us our apartment keys and got us all beef bowls while we had a final briefing before finally going to bed. I found out that Tim, Kylan and Josh were to be my roommates (yes Josh, I typed your name, YaY!) (He is sitting next to me currently, so, yeah) and we figured out our sleeping situation (where specifically on the tatami mat we are sleeping) and which set of bedding are ours, I quickly secured which bedding was mine by bleeding all over the pillow (I will get to that later). And then we got a well deserved rest.

Ok, I had hoped to cover more ground in this blog, but I actually had a really long conversation during the making of this, and now it is late. So, since I have an early day tomorrow, I will wish you all good night, and will continue with the rest of the first week once I return.

Also, as a side note, I realized that the time I need to be up tomorrow Japanese time, is the time that the blog is being posted in America (only one day in the future [insert ghostly noise here!])

Here is an explaination of the "future thing" right now, Japanese time, it is 12:08 wednesday morning. In Arizona (according to my computer clock) it is 8:08 in the morning tuesday morning. Yeah, I said too much and I am tired, Laterz!