The winds of change...

Today was really windy. Yesterday was windy too. Change is in the air. ;-)

Well, maybe that's a bit melodramatic, but a little drama can be a good thing. :-)

But there is certainly lot's of change going on around here. After two years of working as an ALT, I'm going back to working for a church. In April I'll start working for one of the churches in Tokyo that doesn't want to close down it's English school. What? Close down you say? What do I mean? Oops, I guess there's part of the story missing.

This April will also be the end of the missionary program that I came to Japan with. It's a two and a half year commitment with the option of extending for a year at a time. I spent 4 and a half years in the program. But there aren't enough volunteers, and other issues, so after decades of missionary volunteer work, the program is closing. So many of the church English schools are also closing down. But one of the churches in Tokyo decided they wanted to continue. So I was called to see if I wanted the job.

The return to Church work.

Just that is enough to completely change my life around. But wait! There's more!

Last fall I met a friend of a friend who was living in Japan. She came to visit us, and through random conversations, we invited her to live with us. After much pondering and weighing of pros and cons, she agreed! So in April she's moving from her current place in Nagoya, to here in Saitama. Since the house we are in now is nice for two, but not so great for three, we went apartment hunting yesterday. (me and my current roommate that is.)

It's a bit intimidating to go looking for an apartment on your own in a foreign country.

OK, make that a lot.

But we braved it and today we made arrangements for a cute little three room place not terribly far from here. We looked at the apartment today, and I fell in love with it. It's really cute. Mostly convenient. Lot's of shopping area's near by!

This means lots of money up front (scary!) and lots of work to be done. And lots of things I won't be able to do for a while thanks to no extra money. :-( We'll have to pay double rent for about two months, but hopefully we'll be able to recover quickly. These next few months are doing to be crazy with no extra money, lots of packing/cleaning/organizing/decision making thrown in. But there's the excitement of a new place, new things to explore, new shopping centers, new students... And there's the sadness of leaving your old neighborhood behind, and having to start again in a new area.

I'll have to see if all of my stuff can fit into a tiny room! Ah the challenges of organizing three people's stuff in one small apartment!

So this coming year is going to be full of new things! Things are getting exciting again!