It's really difficult to capture into pictures what has been happening recently, but since it has been fairly busy, perhaps my descriptions will be just as colorful.

Ron will start his marriage duties this weekend. It's been a long awaited process and finally he can start. There was a bit of drama at one point. Ron's boss/agent Joe was able to find Ron a steady church and we were thrilled with the news. However, he called us a couple days later and told us that the company that the church uses to find priests are trying to take money from the church and the priests and putting it into their own pocket. I guess being Japanese, stealing from the church doesn't seem too life-condemning. If Ron took the job, it would be steady income until we left, however Joe would not get rightfully paid and the man whose church it is would also not get his rightful share. In addition to the crazy web one action creates to another, Ron settling for a lesser pay would also give other companies the idea to give their priests less money. After thinking about it, it was simple that the solution was to not commit to the offer unless Ron, Joe, and the church was getting the money that is deserved. The meeting is next monday and we aren't sure what the outcome will be.

Other than that, we've been enjoying the slower pace of staying in town for the weekends. With no more destinations to fulfill and Japanese study on the brain, we have been staying in, however many friends have been pulling us out to have nights out, keeping us for our desire to study but not enough of a desire to reject the invitation. We've also dedicated sleeping an hour earlier in order to get up earlier to exercise. That in turn creates and even more difficult time schedule to do study, eat, bath, relax, and such. 6 hours seems like a lot, but it really isn't.

The other night on a Wednesday, we were treated to sushi by this old man that Ron met at the bath. Ron was telling me the sad story of this lonely man with no children whose wife was in the hospital and who wanted to take us out to sushi. On the day of, this old man took us to his favorite sushi place and drank us under the table. Beer and sochu was all over the place and after a while so were we. Good thing Ron had nothing to do the next day. But for me, I slowly awoke from my drunken stupor and trudged my bicycle to work. As I was getting there, a student on his bike didn't see me and we crashed and I fell to the ground. It didn't help the headache.