let's get ready for some baseball!

A few months ago, I wrote a blog post about our harrowing (ok, it wasn't really harrowing, but it was pretty entertaining) journey to purchase baseball tickets in Tokyo for the opening series of the MLB 2012 season. (It's here if you want to read that part to catch up.)

After the baseball tickets were purchased, we navigated Japanese websites to book seats on the overnight bus, called hotels in Tokyo to make reservations, and made another trip to that special machine at the Lawson's to get the Studio Ghibli tickets. When that was done, there was really nothing to do but...wait.

School was a distraction, as we had Terra Nova testing and Read Across America week. The few days before our trip seemed to sneak up on us!

And then finally, we were on the bus, headed for Tokyo.

The bus was just another testimony to the amazingness that is Japan. It was incredibly efficient and just about as comfortable as a bus with upright seats could be. We all slept at least a few hours, and around 6 am, we were dropped off at Shinjuku Station.

                           

I could write a whole blog post (or several) about the station itself. If we saw nothing in Tokyo but this station, it still would have been worth it. The busiest train station in the world, it's estimated that more than 3 million people pass through at least one of its terminals daily. It's at least a square kilometer in length and has more than 200 entrances and exits. It's got 29 platforms and railway tracks spanning 5 different levels (there is a level several floors underground that has walkways leading to city blocks that are several kilometers away), an entire mall, and at least three different Starbuck's coffee shops. Knowing this now, I wouldn't have felt bad that we seemed to wander around the station for about 45 minutes before figuring out where we needed to go.

We finally found our way, put our luggage into lockers near the terminal we'd need to use to get to our hotel later in the day, and headed out the south exit to find what we hoped would be a Starbuck's. After the long night and the crazy morning, we all needed to take a breather, charge our phones/gps's, and relax for a while. Between our broken Japanese and the locals' broken English, we were able to find it. We sat for nearly an hour, enjoying our mochas and Japanese pastries, charging our phones, and people watching. It was a great hour of relaxation.

After our time at the Starbucks, we meandered through Shinjuku as we found our way to Shinjuku Gyoen, the Imperial Gardens. On our way, we passed a Krispy Kreme (which none of us had seen since leaving the states), the tracks entering the station, and several great Japanese neighborhoods.

The garden was about a mile away from the station. We arrived, paid the admission, and entered. As we wandered around, we noticed that a few of the sakura trees had blossomed! We had been hoping to see the blossoms while in Tokyo, and we were on the front end of the two week span. Several others had crowded around the few trees, but we were able to get in and get some pictures while we were there! I can't imagine how beautiful the park would have been in the height of the sakura season!

One of the things we had planned to do if there was time was to visit Yokota Air Base. Yokota has a Chili 's and we had been craving some good American food for a few months. After we finished at Shinjuku Gyoen, we walked to the nearest train station and rode to Fussa. We then took a taxi to the Yokota gate and walked to Chili's. It was about an hour one-way, and completely worth the detour! We feasted on ribs and enchilada soup and reminisced about our favorite restaurants in the states.

After traveling back to Shinjuku from Yokota, we stopped at the lockers to retrieve our luggage and then caught another train toward our hotel. The directions weren't perfect, but we found the hotel and checked in. We were exhausted and napped for a half hour before heading toward Tokyo Dome City for the baseball game.

The stadium holds 47,000 people and there were no empty seats. I kept hoping throughout the game that we wouldn't experience an earthquake while there! The Mariners played the A's and we had a great time showing the locals the American way to cheer for your team. They got a kick out of us and we soon had our neighbors clapping along with the cheers and songs. We lost the game, but everyone was a good sport about it. Then, it was time to leave. The 47,000 members of the crowd stood up and left simultaneously, and yet it was the most organized departure from a stadium I've ever encountered. No pushing or shoving, and we were out within a few minutes. After leaving the stadium, we found a British pub for after-game snacks. We finally made it back to the hotel for some much-needed sleep around 11 pm, not believing how much we accomplished in one day!

month of the military child

We are in the midst of celebrating the Month of the Military Child. One of the activities our school participated in was to interview any teachers who grew up as military kids. Having a third grader interview me about my life as an Army Brat really made me look back at my life. Growing up in so many towns, posts, and cities, I've lived a different life than most people in this country. Honestly, I hated it back then. Every time I'd finally get situated at school and make some good friends, off we'd go to the next place. Even the places we returned to after several years were like new, as those I had been friends with had moved on as well. Now, though, I see it as an important part of who I am. I feel I'm capable of dealing with change better than many of my counterparts. I might not like it or want to embrace it, but I deal with it and move on. With all the upheaval we've had due to the economy and being laid off, I think it was the constant change growing up that helped me to deal with it this time around. Yes, it was devastating to lose my job. Yes, I hated that we had finally gotten to choose where we wanted to live, and now we had to move across the country, where we didn't know a soul. But, move we did. And it was a lot easier than I had envisioned. Not that I see myself staying in North Carolina forever, as we have bigger and better plans...

A few months ago, I went up to Seattle to visit my best friend. While I was there, I was able to go back to Ft. Lewis, where we were stationed several years ago. I was probably 4 or so when we lived there, and it's the first real home I remember. Not having been back since then, all I had were these pictures in my head: some from pictures I've seen of us living there and others, just foggy memories. Going back was an amazing experience - getting to see the park I remember playing at, hiking the paths I remember walking down with my family when I was younger, visiting the lake where we used to feed the ducks. Even though all the houses basically look the same, I was drawn to the one that was ours for that brief time. It made me realize that, yes, we moved a lot and didn't settle down until I was nearly an adult. Though fleeting, that time was real and it made me who I am today.

Walking down memory lane was an eye-opening experience for me. What can it be for you?

ft. stewart

A few weeks ago, I was asked to lead a training down in Ft. Stewart on guided reading and our new reading curriculum. I would be going with two other teachers from our district, to a school nearly twice the size of ours, to teach other teachers (some of whom have been teaching since I was in elementary school). It also included a two-hour model lesson, where they (along with their principal and district superintendent) would be watching me teach THEIR kids, whom I had never met. What a daunting task!

It felt like every step was another sign that I wasn't cut out for this, though. Any source material or reference I wanted to use mysteriously disappeared from our school and even district office. Videos on the topic with a good lesson to show couldn't be found (and once we found some, they couldn't be downloaded.) After days of creating my own material, asking my tech-savvy husband to rearrange our entire hard drive and download programs that would allow me to download a video, and still running my own classroom, I was ready to go.

And what a trip it was. We felt so totally unprepared once we got there -- we worked tirelessly to revamp everything we had come in prepared to demonstrate. And in return, we got a lot of great ideas and hopefully, some new friendships.

This week, I got something else amazing out of it. Dr. Curtis, our Area Superintendent (meaning the superintendent of not only our district, but of the entire DoD continental U.S., Puerto Rico, and Cuba) sent me a letter, thanking me for my service. What an honor and what a great testament to the organization I work for. That someone so high up would take the time to personally sit down and write a letter to me was just amazing. (And it can't hurt my resume either!!)

You know me...I had the camera with me (of course) but didn't have a whole lot of time to go out and shoot. Here are some I snapped around post on my travel day, before heading back to North Carolina.