Category: News (Page 27 of 29)

Boy! Time flies when you are having fun!  It has been a lot of fun having Alex here with us longer than we expected.  He does not seem to be dying of boredom yet.  Yesterday he finally decided he needed some more clothes.  I only brought a few of his things to Tokyo because I didn’t think he’d be here this long.  Now the weather has finally started to turn cool and so he bought a hoodie and a sweater.  We bought a jacket a few weeks ago and he will just have to make do with the jeans and cords he has because it will be impossible to find anything long enough for him here.  Not many Japanese men are 6 foot 5 inches.

He had fun the other day going through his four boxes of stuff.  We’ve been moving them around since we left London.

James sent me a link to an awesome website for creating your own cookbook.  You can enter your recipes and then have a really cool cookbook printed.  I plan to collect recipes from my kids and make one to give everyone at our family reunion next summer.  You can check it out at www.tastebook.com

Lately, it seems that I am treading water and just barely holding my head above the surface.  It has been a busy month and I have yet to get a study and preparation routine down for seminary.  I love the students in my class and have come to realize what a great effort it is on their part to be there everyday at 6 am.  They are so tired.  I am usually tired too, but I usually have the option for a nap and they do not.  The simple fact that they are there speaks to their faith and their desire to do right.

Kristina returned home last Tuesday and promptly made preparations to move to a new apartment with some girls in her ward.  Alex will stay in Japan until Thanksgiving when he will travel with us to London.  He’ll leave from there for Texas and I will return to teach two weeks of seminary before heading across the Pacific and to Texas for the Christmas holidays.  I will be back in London for the New Year and will stay until the middle of the month to play, help and get to know Isabelle.  I am always wishing for my normal life to return, but realize that life has never been normal (what is normal anyway?).  This is my normal life and I am actually getting used to it.  I am just grateful that I have the opportunity to see my children so often when I live so far away.  I love life and my family!!!

Hooray!  My baby boy is home.  Not that he’s a baby anymore, it’s just that he’s my youngest.  His 6’5” frame seems even taller because he lost weight in Africa, 22 pounds to be exact.  He looks good and healthy though and has quite a nice “farmer’s” tan.  We were so excited to see him emerge from customs.  We have been keeping him busy seeing the sights around Tokyo and today he, Rick and Kristina have spent most of the day at a sumo tournament.  I met them in Asakusa for lunch and then we walked around the shops and saw Sensoji Temple.  Yesterday we took the train to Nikko to see the temples there.  It is in the mountains and there are trees everywhere.  Tomorrow he and Kristina are heading to Disneyland he hasn’t been since he was in third grade.  They will be playing with Mickey and Minnie, Rick will be working and I will go to my calligraphy class.

It is great to have him here and I am so glad that Kristina could come to surprise him.  It is always good to have family here with us. 

For a better quality (and larger file size) click here.

Maybe it’s because he is my baby, but it seems like Alex’s mission has lasted longer than any of the other kid’s.  Today he is traveling by car, with the AP’s, from Zambia to Harare.  He’s an emotional guy so today will be full of tears as he leaves Zambia, he has spent so much of his mission there.  My heart aches for him.  However, a mission is only two years for good reason, it’s time for him to move on to the next phase of his life and he will be okay.  He adapts quickly to whatever situation he finds himself in.  I know the transition back after a mission is a challenge, he will be okay! 

Now, as much as I can feel his great sadness at leaving Africa,  it is hard for me to contain my joy at the prospect of seeing him again on Thursday.  I told him that I will be the tall one jumping up and down and he said he will be the taller one with his pants falling off!!!  I suppose he is trying to warn me that he has lost a lot of weight.  I am not surprised. 

How did this heart of mine become so entwined with the hearts of my children?  It feels their pain and sadness as well as their joy.  I love them.  I am proud of them.  I am grateful for the blessing of being their mom.

Japanese lessons are moving along, finally!!! The first test I passed last year required that I memorize 100 phrases in Japanese and be able to repeat them perfectly in 15 minutes or less.  Okay, so I did that and then passed smaller tests titled, Shopping Phrases, Taxi Phrases, and Restaurant Phrases.  During this time I was also progressing through the lessons in the text.  However, when I got to lesson 7 my teachers told me that I could not go any further in the lessons until I passed the adjective 95 test.  The test looks exactly like the Beginner’s 100 and so I thought that it was to be memorized word for word and I had to pass it in 11 minutes or less.  It seemed incredibly hard and I lost my enthusiasm.  I saw it as an obstacle in my progression since I could no longer move through the lessons.  Then last week I discovered that I did not have to memorize it word for word.  All I was required to do was to read the sentences and fill in the blanks with the proper adjectives where they were missing.  Why didn’t they tell me this before!!!!!  I could have done this months ago.  I am glad that I stopped the lessons for 3 months from May-mid August or I would have been really upset.  Hooray!  I can finally move on and now I plan to pass the Nifty Phrases test next week and I get to work on Lesson 8.  The only problem is that Shell will only pay for 12 more lessons. 

Yesterday, I went back to the Japanese Calligraphy class.  Now, I have my own equipment so I can practice at home.  I did better yesterday, but it will take awhile to get used to my new brush and master the strokes.  There is a Japanese woman in my class and she speaks only a little English so it will be a good way to practice my Japanese.  Michelle comes with me and works on Sumie (sue- me- a  Long- a)  It is very beautiful Japanese painting.  She is very good.

Seminary started on Monday and my class is very smart and very good.  We have finally worked out all the glitches with the building and next week will go more smoothly.  I even found a very high cupboard that no one is using that I can keep my stuff in.  Now if we can all just stay awake!

Dee is here visiting this week.  In case you didn’t know, she and Dan live on Sakhalin, a Russian island north of Japan.  Most Japanese actually think this island should belong to Japan.  Dan is in Houston this week and will be here on Friday.  Today for our adventure we went to Costco.  There is a new one in Kawasaki (it’s between Tokyo and Yokohama).   Everyone who has been there says it is great and and one even said it is easy to get to on the train then get a taxi to.  Well, I am not sure how she got there and what train station she got off at.  We ended up taking four different trains.  We got off at the station the Costco website said was the closest and we were on the off ramp of the expressway, the traffic was mostly huge trucks.  We waited awhile for a taxi.  The driver looked a little puzzled when I told him we wanted to go to Costco.  I showed him the computer print out and read the address in Japanese.  He took off with my door open.  In Japan, the drivers get really irritated if you touch the doors so I hadn’t closed it and he had forgotten.  I grabbed it and pulled it shut quickly.  We were on our way and I wasn’t confident that he knew where we were going.  In a few minutes we were there. 

It’s a great Costco!!  The best part though, was hearing my friend, Nori, call my name from across the store.  She was there with her friends and offered to take our stuff in her car and bring it to us tomorrow when she goes to the temple.  Then later she offered to give us a ride to Den-en-Chofu Station near her house.  This meant only taking two trains home and the transfer was just walking across the platform.  Yea!!!  We only had to carry the items that need to be refrigerated.   Tomorrow we are off in search of used kimonos and obis at a flea market!

The Azabu Juban Matsuri is our local festival.  It has the elements of a festival anywhere, local food, stages for performances and lots of people.  Rick and I went last night about 6pm hoping that it would be cooler.  The weather is still mushi atsui.  Dinner was part of the adventure.  Rick loves eating the street food here, it reminds him of his mission.  You could tell where the good food was because the lines were very long.  We opted for one of Rick’s favorites, yaki-soba.  Fried noodles with pieces of cabbage and very sour red cabbage pickles.  It was so good, I love Japanese food.There are no places designated for eating so we walked up a side street where there were less people and a there was good breeze.  Afterwards, we had snowcones.  There are many flavor options and the interesting thing is that the Japanese pour sweetened condensed milk on after the flavored syrup.  After eating we ventured back into the crowd and moved slowly in the direction of one of the stages.  It was easy to find by following the sounds of the Taiko drums.  There were several drummers taking turns with the recorded music.  The audience was in the center of the square doing traditional Japanese dances.  The next stage had rappers and the final stage was again the audience doing traditional Japanese dances.  It was a another great cultural experience

The streets were very crowded and an endless sea of black heads with a random gaijin (foreigner) every once in awhile.  There were parts where we were hardly moving at all.  Everyone was hot and everyone had one of the free fans that were being distributed through the crowd.  I wish I had photos but my camera is not working so well. 

Today was my first Japanese lesson since April.  It actually went well.  I don’t have very many of my company paid 72 hours left.  I did do some studying on my own but not nearly enough.  O-Genki desu ka means how are you?  So I am trying to figure out how to use this blog and put up pictures.  I guess I’ll need to contact my personal help desk or work on it when I am not so tired.

Wednesday we were off again, this time in Michelle’s car.  Our first stop was Ikea located in an area called Chiba.  Michelle’s car has a navigation system that can often be annoying as we discovered.  Since it was a hoilday week in Japan, it seemed that everyone who hadn’t ventured to the countryside to worship their ancestors was at Ikea.  It took us a long time to turn off from the main road and to get into the parking lot.  Our first stop was the restaurant, Michelle and her sister, Deidre had not had lunch and so we got meatball sandwiches, drinks and the famous Ikea tortes for dessert.  We didn’t have much time to look around because of the crowds and the fact that we needed to have Deidre at Narita Airport about 4:00 pm.   Back in the car again we set the navigational system to guide us to Narita, although Michelle and I both knew the way.  It was hilarious how the navigation system kept wanting to get off the expressway and take the back roads.  We arrived at Narita in plenty of time and sent Deidre on her way.

The next stop was Costco.  I haven’t been since last December and I had a long list.  I was having a great time until I got to check out and my American Express card was declined at the register.  YIKES!!! I only had half of the money.  Fortunately, for me, they were out of many of the things Michelle had wanted to buy and so she still had the other half.  Lesson learned- always take cash.  Fun purchase of the day!!!! Braun Blender that is super powerful.

The adventure doesn’t end there!  Michelle’s cousin is working at Disneyland as Prince Charming.  He and a friend had been to Michelle’s and had covered wooden tea boxes with wshi paper and Michelle was delivering them.   So we needed to find the Disney employee housing.  We entered his phone number into the navigation system and it can back as unregistered so we were just going to get in the vicinity and call, but them the system started working, or so we thought.  We followed the instructions and were told that we arrived at our destination only to be several blocks from where we really wanted to be.  Michelle started driving in the direction she thought she should go and called we were ony a short distance away.  we made the delivery and headed home.  We left at 1:30 and arrived back at home at about 9:00pm.  A long day but once again fun to be with Michelle.