I was lucky enough to have this whole week off! It was very nice to have some time to relax and just take it easy. I'm very happy so far. Tuesday I got to spend the day with one of my friends. She came out, and we walked around. We never made any of our destinations, but we did manage to go to a small zoo. Then we went to the band. It was a nice day.
Wed. I was able to just take it slow. I did decide on a whim to start practicing the piano again. No, I don't really play piano. I took about two semesters of classes back in Jr. College. I still have the books, so I decided to pull them out and play around. It was fun. I've managed to "play" piano now for the past 3 days! My hands are a little tired. Haha. The sad thing is Yang Sensei heard me playing (I have to play at the church) and is convinced I should play for church. Yeah right. I'm definitely not that good.
Thurs I went to a baseball game. I think I got discount tickets from our director (who got them from somewhere, not sure where...). It was fun. It was pro teams and at the Tokyo Dome. It was my first Major League experience. It was really interesting. There were cheering sections, that closer resembled high school football than baseball. There were cheerleaders too. It was a wonderful experience. I also got free stuff. I got a free towel and a magnet and some stickers. Along with a book of all the names of all the pro players for all the teams in Japan. Nice.
The food was pretty expensive, as to be expected. But what is fun is, you can bring your own food into the stadium! How cool is that? I didn't find that out until I had already entered the stadium though. A little too late. haha. We had pretty decent seats, close to the field. The only downside was we were way out in left field. It was kinda hard to see the infield action.
Unfortunately the home team (the Giants) were really bad. Seriously. The other team (the Carps) shut them out, 6-0. I thought that the Carps was a pretty lame name for a baseball team, but that doesn't seem to effect their playing at all. Haha. They got a double first at bat, and had 6 men on base the first inning! I couldn't tell if they were a good team, or if the Giants were just really bad. But it is a bit hard to get excited when you don't really care about either team so much. Haha. I went with a friend, and it was fun anyway. I made a video to share the experience with you.
Today I went out with some of my students. We went Karaoke. I love Karaoke. It was good, because when I practiced piano today, I also did some vocal exercises on a whim. It really improved my singing! I was happy. After Karaoke, two students and I went to get dessert. It was really good. One student is new (the same girl who went to the live with me) and we were teaching her different things about the school. The conversation quickly turned to church too. So she's going to come to church on Sunday to see what it's like! She seems really excited about it too. She's a fun addition to the class! And in other fun news, since tomorrow is a holiday, the same two students are going to come and see the band tomorrow! How fun is that! Let's pray it doesn't rain in the evening. Haha.
Next few days are going to be pretty full, and then classes will start again all too soon. Anyway, that's the update for now!
1 comment:
I’m writing this to inform you about a project I am working on something that will help missionaries like you raise awareness and support. I am in the planning and design stages of launching a missionary news website (GodWitness News) and I would like you to be part of it. The purpose of the website will be to increase awareness about what missionaries are doing around the world. It will be missionary related news, by missionaries. The design I’m working on will be similar to the Yahoo News or to the BBC News websites.
I’m a professional Internet marketer, SEO expert and web designer. I have been thinking for some time that there must be a way I can use my skills to further God’s kingdom. After doing some analysis, I discovered that although there are many missionary blogs and websites, there are not many that have been optimized correctly to get a lot of readership traffic. You are probably aware of this, but a couple of the most important ways to get a lot of traffic is by having a high Google (Google, because it gets the most search traffic) PageRank and by having new content – A LOT of new content.
That is were you come in, with the content. Before I launch the news website, I would like to get 100 (eventually, I hope to have even more than this number, but this would be a good start) missionaries around the world to agree to be “news journalists.” If you are interested, I would like you to be one of the 100. If successful, there would be thousands of hits a day on the website. You would benefit by having many thousands of people around the world read about how God is using you, the work you are doing, and the people you are working with. Hopefully, some of the people visiting the website would support you with prayers and/or finances. Maybe some of them would want to volunteer to help with some of the projects you are working on. You could also benefit from having increased traffic to your website (each article you write could have a link to your website).
If you choose to participate, I would like you to agree to provide at least 12 articles in a year’s time. If you don’t want to write that many, you don’t have to feel obligated to do so though. The topic choice would pretty much be up to you. You could write about events in the country, challenges you are facing, tips for new missionaries, how God provided for your needs, and more. The articles don’t even have to be all that long. If you want to write more detailed articles, that’s fine, but if you want to write short ones(minimum should probably about 300 words), that’s fine too. You can also submit videos and photos. I just ask that everything submitted is good quality (you know, dot the i’s and cross the t’s, spelled checked, etc.) and original. It’s fine if it’s been published in print before, but if the content is already on the internet, the news websites PageRank will be reduced if the content has a copy somewhere out there on the web (yeah, the search bots are picky like that). Search engines don’t care about copies of videos and photos, so no worries there. The reason I say a year is because that is the time period through which I will evaluate how well the idea is accepted and whether I should continue the project. Call it beta testing if you want But that is about the necessary time needed to make the website a success.
If you are interested, please contact me by sending an e-mail to joe@josephkolb.info. Please let me know your name, the country you are working in, your missions name, your website, your contact information, your website, and any questions you have. Please provide as much of that information as possible as it will be hard to keep track of everyone if I have so many participants. Sometime after I get your e-mail and once I get the site going, I will send you a user name and password for your publisher account. I may also send updates or more detailed article criteria (good titles, photo sizes, etc.). I will also send a statement of faith that will have to be agreed to. Pretty much Jesus is the only way, the truth and the light and no one comes to the Father but through him.
I think that’s about it for now. Oh, yeah one more thing, I would like participants to add a link from their website (if they have one) or blog to the news website. In-links is another way that Google uses to establish PageRank.
Thanks in advance!
God Bless You!!
Joe<><
joe@josephkolb.info
Post a Comment