Okay, I didn’t post yesterday. The day was full and fast-paced. We worked hard, and there just wasn’t time for this easy “blogging” junk.
Now that I have some downtime before dinner and a youth meeting, I can play a little catch-up. I can play a little mustard too. This has been a bad pun. Forget about it.
Yesterday we woke up and Rebecca and I baked homemade M&M cookies and brownies, because I completely forgot to bring brownie and cake mixes from the States. The brownies were from this recipe by my good friend Melissa. I’ll relay it here in metric, and let you do the conversion, because I sure had to convert the measurements from imperial to metric yesterday morning, and you deserve the same pleasure. ALSO, I’d like you to know that if we run out of money, it’s because the butter in Japan costs $4.50 for a little less than two sticks.
Melissa’s Brownies
Ingredients:
60g chocolate
100g butter
2 eggs
pinch of salt
15ml vanilla extract
240ml sugar
120ml flourInstructions:
Preheat oven to 175 degrees C. Melt chocolate and butter over low heat. When things are ALMOST melted, remove from heat and stir until completely melted. Pour this mixture into a large mixing bowl. Completely stir in sugar. Stir in eggs one at a time. Add salt and vanilla extract. Stir in flour. (Do it a little at a time; believe me, it makes things easier.) Pour into greased 20cm-by-20cm pan. Bake for 25 minutes, or until a toothpick inserted in the middle comes out clean.
We hosted an English-speaking coffee-house. Andy (Andi? I should ask), a girl from the church here, works at Starbucks, and so she took care of all things coffee. I made up some hot tea and some iced tea. The purpose of these coffee-house events was to invite people to the church and converse with them so they could practice their English. We got to meet quite a few people, and we shared with them about our lives back in the United States. We hosted two of these yesterday. One from 10:00 AM to noon, and one from 2:00 PM to 4:00 PM. The brownies were such a hit that I had to run out to the Japanese version of Wal-mart in between coffee-houses and get the necessary ingredients for a second batch of brownies. Many of the women, upon learning that I had baked the brownies, looked really excited and spoke to me in rapid Japanese and I just did a lot of smiling and bowing and “hai, hai, hai arigatoo gozaimasu!” (Yes, yes, yes, thank you very much!) I wrote down the recipe (by hand!) for four or five women.
We met with Dan Junker, who told us more about what we would be doing at Northstar, which is the mountain lodge we’ll be teaching English classes at next week. He has high standards, but I think that our team is up to the challenge.
We had a traditional sushi dinner last night prepared by one of the older couples from Azumino Family Chapel. Japanese sushi is, as one might imagine, considerably tastier than American sushi. The ingredients are far more fresh! We got to roll our own sushi, so I made a few different kinds: one with egg and crab, one with egg, tuna and octopus, and one with egg, crab and ham.
After dinner, Jon taught an English class for adults. He interviewed Sara and Justin about St. Louis in front of the class, and I gave my testimony. I think things went pretty well.
This morning, we taught an English class at Azumino Family Chapel for very young children in the Azumino area (kindergarten up to 3rd grade). We taught them how to describe the weather—it is sunny! it is cloudy! it is raining!—and played a game with them, then we all had snow cones.
After this, we went to a hospital about 15 minutes away and sang a couple songs for the patients, and Justin gave his testimony. The patients gave us some gifts. Justin even got some flowers; it was precious. Between Takeshi-san teaching Justin how to greet a pretty young woman (a Japanese marriage proposal) and the flowers he now has to give away, the odds of him being engaged before leaving Japan are increasing.
We’re back at the church now, and we’re about to eat dinner. After dinner, we have a youth meeting. Rebecca will be giving her testimony, and we’ll be playing two songs for worship.
Ja mata! (See you later!)
