I'm Here - Re-Post

I arrived here last night after a 14 hour travel day. I praise our Almighty Father who guarded my trip by sending me three men - my father-in-law, who drove me to the bus terminal in Tokyo, my cousin, Chris, who met at the airport in Manila, and Jonathan, who met me at the airport in Cebu. They are part of the growing list of people who have amazed us with their kindness.

My accomodations here for the first week or so is simple but enough to meet my needs. Aside from the few cockroaches, it is clean. And the air-conditioner is divine. It is located in the not-so-nice part of town, but that is okay.

As I mentioned earlier, my goals this week are the following:

- find a decent place to eat my meals.
- find a place to do laundry
- start looking for a place for us to rent for the following year
- make new friends
- start speaking more the local language (which I can understand some since it is what my parents speak)
- finish C.S. Lewis' book Prince Caspian, which includes fascinating animal characters that talk..which leads me to the the story of the rat this morning.

I saw this creature right after I started my little stroll outside of the place I'm staying. It was exploring too and then seemed to stare at me from about 25 feet, before running towards my direction. I swear, I almost freaked because I thought it was heading straight to me. Perhaps reading C.S. Lewis's book affected me more than I thought or perhaps I was still a little jet-lagged. Regardless, I thought this thing was coming up to me to start a conversation..

Today I met my new work partners at IJM. I will never forget this day for many reasons. What another surreal time, which I can add to the growing list of other incredible events during the last several months.

I am excited.