I had a very busy day today. I started off by dragging my sorry, old, stiff (and surprisingly firm, no really, it is, ask Taeko) butt up off the floor to a beautiful sunny day. This was supposed to be my sunny day yesterday when I could sit and enjoy the sun for hours. That's fine. Victoria is 8 degrees and raining. I'll take sunny even if I'm planning on being inside. My first stop is my Japanese lesson with Nomura-san. It was rather traumatic leaving the house today as I was late and things kept going wrong. I forgot the flowers for Nomura-san that I got him for being a no-show last week so I had to go back. Then I dropped the flowers on 3 separate occasions. I did actually make the train so that I wasn't late for the lesson but I had to kick it on my bike so hard (today I really did hate having only one gear on my bike, oh how I longed for my old 5 speed road bike) and I hadn't eaten that I got on the train and thought I was going to pass out. That's not an exaggeration. I know I have a tendency to over dramatize on occasions, but this was not one of them. I was having flash backs of the last time I felt this awful on public transportation and I was taken back to the time I ended up in the hospital because my blood sugar had reached death-defying levels. Again, not an exaggeration. The ambulance guy said that my blood sugar level wasn't registering on his chart and that I was at about .3. A normal level is between over 7.0 and under 11.0. Most people should sit in around 8-9. It is life threatening when it reaches 2.0. I was at 0.3. It was death-defying. So as I'm sitting down on the train and propping my head up on my hands I'm getting these really bad visions of standing up Nomura-san yet again. But I recovered eventually and took my sweet time to get off the train when we got to the final station and I had a very enjoyable lesson with Nomura-san. We learned about verbs. It was nothing new that I hadn't learned at one time in High School, but I don't remember much of anything from Japanese class in High School. There were like 3 moments during the lesson when he'd say something and I'd be like "Wait, I know this..." and then he'd say what it means and I'd freak out being all "I totally used to know that but I'd forgotten it until you said it". It was weird almost 'feeling' my synapses re-routing themselves to access lost information.
After my lesson I headed back on the train only a couple of stops to meet with my friend and a receptionist at the school, Taeko. Her and another teacher and I had made plans a bit ago to get together and do some stuff that I'm not going to say because it will ruin the surprise for some. Just know that we were crafty and we had a fabulous afternoon at her house talking and laughing and making fun of each other. We had lunch out on her deck in the beautiful sun. She said she had heard the weather report was that it would possibly reach 26 degrees today. I believe it. It was like summer in Victoria. It actually wasn't too hot, or at least that's what our acclimatized bodies told us anyway. It was beautiful out and we had fabulously good healthy food and it was great. We finished off the rest of our projects and it was time to head out.
I've been having a really hard time connecting with a doctor here and last Friday Taeko-sama was wonderful enough to find me a doctor at a Clinic right here in the area (about a 23 minute walk from my house) who can actually speak English. It was an odd experience but I'm glad to finally find someone that I can go to with any health issues that may arise. The funniest thing to me, okay so it's not actually the funniest thing but I'm not going to share the funniest thing with the masses, if you want to know then email me and I'll tell you but you need to really want to know, so the second funniest thing were the forms that I had to fill out. There weren't very many so that was kind of a good thing, but not a good thing in disguise. They were so vague and minimal that there wasn't any way to give any (in my mind) pertinent health information. It was just a "Choose from this list of symptoms and go sit down" like as if there is no other possible problems from the 12 listed you may have or that things may be intertwined. My favourite on the multi-lingual list is that there's little G-rated pictures of the problems. The best one was a woman who looked sad and had a dancing baby head above her with 2 x's on either side of the dancing head. It was the picture for 'infertility'. It made Taeko and I giggle.
I went home. Made some potato-y, zucchini-y (you have no idea how excited I was to find a zuc yesterday at the Hanamasa...soooo excited), garlic-y, mushroom-y goodness for dinner. I wanted to eat all of it but I decided to be good and save half for lunch tomorrow. It will make me happy tomorrow to have yummy food to eat instead of either going hungry and cranky or eating at the Matsuya (cheap and often good, but I've had enough now to last my life). I watched two episodes of "30 Days" that I downloaded overnight. If you haven't heard of the show or checked it out yet, you must. It's by Morgan Spurlock who also did Super-Size Me. This guy is a total stud and my hero. The idea is that people go on these 30 day "social experiments" that are completely beyond their lifestyle or beliefs to see how they cope and, hopefully, learn. I watched the one were a totally straight, football playing, 24 year old Uni graduate, sheltered Christian from Po-Dunk Missouri town of 8000 people goes to live in a flat with a gay man in Castro in San Fran. It was right up my alley and I really like the episode. There were still a few things that got me riled up, mostly footage of poo-faced ultra conservative "Christians" spewing the usual good news of the gracious gospel of Christ. Of Love and of Grace and of the knowledge that I am no good but Jesus is good and He says that if I love Him then He'll stand in front of me so that I look good like Him. Um, yeah. They certainly weren't holding signs that said "When gays die, God laughs". No, they wouldn't say something as horrible, unloving, ungracious, inhumane, self-righteous and (I'm running out of words but not out of fury) UNTRUTHFUL as that. They're Christians. They've been commissioned with "This is my command: Love each other." They're the ones who have been given the knowledge of God's forgiveness for everything in our fallen human nature (which happens to include my abnormal obsession of peanut butter and wandering eyes, and hands, for yummy boys and everything in between and beyond), why should they think they are any better than the next person. We have all fallen short and no matter what your definition of sin (is my desire to kiss a boy any more "sinful" than another girls desire to kiss a girl?? Mmmm, kissing is good) we're all in the same place before our maker.
I just got off Skype with Brandon in Nashville and, among other points of conversation (btw, he just signed a record deal, I'm so excited for him), we were talking about the above. The guy in the show went to a gay church right on Castro. He had a couple of conversations with the pastor there. It was interesting. Her best point I think was that the guy's biggest issue with homosexuality is that it says directly in the bible that it's not pleasing to God. It also says in the bible that killing is not a good thing to do. The guy is in the US Army, "So do you carry a gun in the Army?" Yes, of course he carries a gun. Would he ever kill anyone? Of course he would, to protect the people of America and his country. But the bible says, don't kill people. It's an interesting course of thought. We both agreed that it was a good point. My mind reels with thoughts of 'If he's willing to rationalize away a commandment then why would the thought that anybody else could rationalize something else be wrong?' Is it only him who's right to do so? Does that mean they love God any less? Essentially it looks like most people who get incredibly black and white on bible interpretation only want said interpretation to go their way as they feel they are just as Just as God to make judgment decisions. I don't think I have any answers to anything, that's not my job...I don't know if you've noticed, but I'm not God. It's not my job, it's His, and in that I need to step back and let God be God. We can't save the world. We're not the Messiah. Seems to be a recurring theme in my life lately, but in so many different venues and forms, it's interesting.
Now it's almost 3 so I'm going to bed. Je ne veux pas travailler. Je ne veux pas dejeuner. Je veux seulement oublie, et puis je fume. Okay, okay, so I'm not going to smoke. Right now.
