Hope for Japan

I really took a beating last week. With a surprising amount of meetings and Allie having irregular sleep which led to waking up several times throughout the night, my Japanese class really left me feeling exhausted and defeated. Thursday was the lowest, where I had no energy to think about anything. One encouraging moment was calling my mentor in Boston and being able to share all that I was feeling and experiencing.

Due to this, I ended up buying a 24-pack of Pepsi at Costco over the weekend. While I typically don’t drink soda/pop, energy for the morning has become the rare exception. Some know that I don’t drink coffee, due to the taste not because I am a Mormon (as somebody once asked me, as if every American should drink coffee) 🙂 During Hebrew class in seminary, I would start off with a quiz that I was ready for the night before but everything turned into a fog at 8am. Code Red Mountain Dew was the turning point, then. My “C” quizzes radically turned into “B” or “A” quizzes.

So, Tuesday was the first time to try this old trick out again. A can of Pepsi before class might do the trick. Surprisingly, I felt like a different person. My mind was no longer a puttering old junker, but actually was hitting on several cylinders. A classmate joked on the way out that it seemed like I jumped about three levels in one day, after my poor performance last week. We’ll see how the rest of the week goes. Please keep praying for my language study, as there are moments when it clicks and moments where I feel like I hit a wall.