2014

Hello first posting of 2014. 2014 is going to bring some interesting things. This year I have a family member living in the same time zone as me. I can now abuse Japan Post’s lovely catalog system to ship fish heads and boxes of giant fruit to loved ones nationwide. I can also make Skype calls at a normal, non-planned time and actually converse with someone. This year we took Olive to Tokyo Disneyland with said relative. The characters were a little too excited to have an English speaking child to practice their character acting upon, but Olive loved every minute of it. This year I’m going to tackle the prerequisite course and multiple WEST-E tests for my application to SPU’s alternative certification program. Balancing coursework and real life is always a challenge, but my brain feels so much better when it’s learning. This year I’m sending my kid to public elementary school. I wish her Japanese was stronger. I wish I had more time to micro manage her education. I really wish I had waited just a little longer for Costco to carry randoseru so I could’ve gotten Olive the really nice backpack instead of the cheap-o version we settled on… but there’s no time to dwell on that. There are a million small bags that need to be sewn and we haven’t selected a theme or cartoon character yet. Gasp! This is the year that I said, sure, yeah… I’ll sign up for a fifth year. I’ll have to make new friends and guide an entire town of newbie ALTs through the hoops this summer, but it’s going to be awesome. Here’s to 2014. Huzzah!