konnichiwa

Well, we're here! After what seemed like the slowest month in our entire lives and the fastest and busiest, we are finally in JAPAN!

The last week really flew by as we got the house packed up, finished working, and said goodbye to some pretty amazing friends. Don't forget the piles and piles of paperwork that needed to be filled out! And then out of nowhere, we are on a plane with bilingual directions for everything, headed for Tokyo!



After 19 hours of flight time, we arrived at Narita Airport in Tokyo and took the shuttle to the main terminal. Having never traveled with enough belongings to last a month or two, we had some trouble getting all of our luggage where we needed to go! Luckily, customs wasn't too far away and we made it through without too many hitches.




After getting through customs, we found the counter that takes care of Takuhaibin shipments (they will take your baggage and deliver it to you the next day, anywhere in Japan) and from that point it was much easier getting around. We only had three bags instead of six, and I honestly don't know how we would have gotten through the rest of our trip if we hadn't done it!

After the Takuhaibin counter, we took an escalator down to the train station and bought the first of several sets of train tickets to start our rail trip to Misawa. The first train we took was the Keisei express to Tokyo - it was about 45 minutes on the quietest train I've ever been on. It felt like a really fast version of the monorail at Disneyland! Passing through Tokyo was AMAZING. There were so many buildings, cars, and people everywhere!! It's definitely a city I want to spend some good time exploring.




From there, we navigated our way through Ueno, which is Tokyo's main train station. It was quite a feat, since we had to leave the station we were at and head to the Shinkansen (bullet train) station down the street. This station was also in the middle of a Japanese shopping mall, and it was PACKED. We passed by a Starbucks (which we had been craving, big time) but weren't sure we'd have time for it. We found a ticketing agent and purchased our Shinkansen tickets that would take us up to Hachinohe. The tickets cost about ¥ 16,000, (about $200) -- still have to spend time trying to calculate the conversion rates in our heads! Good thing we have an app for that ;)

Finding our way to the terminal was a pretty crazy experience - I'm pretty sure we went up and down about 10 escalators at the station - one of them has got to be the longest escalator I've ever seen. It just kept going and going and going. It seemed like we had to be a mile underground by the time we got to our platform.

The Shinkansen was a great experience. There was a nice old lady sitting behind us who had a great time trying to explain to us how to get the seats to recline. She demonstrated the whole thing for us and then watched us do it. There was a family traveling from Omiya to Morioka and they had some young daughters who were entertaining to watch. The youngest was fascinated by the motion-sensor directed door between the cars and would try to sneak up on it to get as close as she could without opening it (or opening it at the last minute and running into the car before her parents could catch her!)

We got to Hachinohe at 8 pm and had exactly 8 minutes to get off the train, ride the escalator up to the gate, put our tickets in the machine to leave the terminal, find the ticket office, purchase tickets to Misawa, go through the terminal gate, ride the escalator down, and get on the train. We almost didn't make it, but the captain of the train saw us and waited for us to board! (wheww!)

The last train ride was only about 20 minutes or so. We got there around 8:30 pm and Denise and Ben were waiting for us at the Misawa station. From there, we entered the base, checked in to the lodge, and collapsed into our bed!

We are loving it here already!

hello and goodbye

In some ways, I can't wait for the next month to fly by and be over!! In others, I wish I could hold onto them for just a while longer.

I never expected to feel remorse about leaving the great state of North Carolina. I kept telling myself not to get too involved, not to make great friends, and to be ready to leave at any point. Of course, that didn't happen.

I'm so excited to make this huge change that moving to Japan will bring. I can't wait to meet my new class and my new coworkers. I really can't wait to experience all the culture that is just waiting to be explored!

But I have to say that I will miss it here. Not that I will miss Fayetteville by any means. I will, however, miss the amazing people I work with (and often play with!!) I will miss several of the families I have had the privilege of getting to know while teaching their children. I will miss several aspects of living in the south. (Though, I won't miss the insects and the humidity!!) I will miss only having a three hour time difference between us and home. For all of you who made my time in NC not only bearable, but amazing, thank you. You, I will miss.

new, fun things

I've discovered some really cool, new products in the last few months, and thought I'd share a few of them with anyone who is into new, cool products!

The first thing I want to tout is my new website!!
I really did love the old one, but upon my lurking on Blu Domain's blog, I realized their birthday was coming up. They always have some amazing prizes, giveaways, and sales around their birthday month, and I was ready to take advantage of it! I searched every single new website they had put out to find the one I would eventually fall in love with, purchased it for HALF OFF, and then, voila. Magic was in the air. I love the unique features you can add to their websites to make them as individual as the people and businesses who run them, but they are simple enough so that even those with no html/graphic/coding skills can still manage them. If you're on the lookout for a great way to advertise your business, I'd definitely recommend them.

Another great product I recently (and it's recent, because it's NEW) discovered and played with is Totally Rad's new RadLab. It is designed to be used with Photoshop (I think they may have a Lightroom version in the works). I've used their actions before, and have always loved them, so all the hype they were putting out about this new RadLab intrigued me. The more I read about it, the more I wanted it, and I have to say that I was not disappointed. As someone who has learned quite a bit about Photoshop, I am loving the shortcuts into making my photos look amazing!! The nice thing, and something you don't see with too many actions packages, is that it's completely customizable. You can go in and change the opacity and intensity every step of the way, and you can pile several of the "stylets" on top of each other for a unique look. And if you find that you want to get rid of the first stylet you applied? You don't have to go all the way back in your history and redo everything else...you just delete it. This program is great for Photoshop beginners, and it's a godsend for those who know Photoshop but don't have the time to go in and do everything manually.

I recently decided to jump on the bandwagon and try out Groupon and now, I wonder how I got on without it. What a fun way to save money on things we do all the time, and a cheap way to try things we've never done! For example, we got a movie deal at this great theater near us. We got two tickets (any time), popcorn, candy, and two drinks for the same price two matinee tickets would have cost us. Then there's the new adventures. Next week, we're going to MollysMud to try our hand at painting. I'm sure that our paintings will be completely awful, but we've already set aside some wall space in our office to hang our very own paintings so that we can remember how much fun we had creating them. It's something I never would have thought to spend money on until I found the Groupon for it and realized we could afford to try it!

I'll keep you posted on any other fun findings...'till then...

news!

Just found out that we are moving!! I got a first grade teaching position at Misawa Air Base in JAPAN!!!

It seemed like this moment would never come - we have been trying to prepare our families (and ourselves) for this for nearly two years...and it just seems so surreal. Will write more later as we find out more details about the how's, when's, and all the important info!

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.

blue ridge

When we moved to the south, we decided to make a sort-of bucket list of the things we wanted to see and do before moving on to our next destination. We figured places like New York City and Disneyworld would be places we'd visit eventually, no matter our location, so we chose places of interest that we probably wouldn't get a chance to visit after we move. In our first year in North Carolina, we had crossed off most of those places. We drove the Outer Banks, we toured DC, we went to several beaches, explored Charleston and Savannah (twice, even!), so the only place left on the list was the Blue Ridge Parkway. I've always wanted to see it, and seeing as how the majority of the Parkway is within hours from where we live, we figured we definitely needed to take a long weekend and make the drive.

What we saw was even more amazing that what we expected. We drove up to Roanoke, Virginia, close to the beginning of the Parkway, and were immediately surrounded by...autumn at its best. Golden yellows and oranges, bright reds, and shades of bright brown and cinnamon we had never seen before greeted us on our journey. In the 270 miles we traveled through the Parkway over the weekend, we saw amazing mills, mountain views, waterfalls, trails, and the cutest little towns you could imagine. Here are a few photos from our trip:

no more misadventures!

Whew! I'm glad to say that the rest of our vacation went a lot more smoothly than our misadventures with the drop zones! We took a three day weekend drive down to Charleston and Savannah, both of which I had seen, but Ben and Naomi hadn't. We took a carriage ride through Historic Charleston, which still has cobblestone streets, and learned about some of its amazing history. We saw Fort Sumter, where the first shots of the Civil War were shot, some amazing houses build in the 17 and 1800's, and the first Otis Elevator in the south.

We then visited the Charleston Aquarium, home of the rare albino alligator. We also walked along the waterfront of Charleston Harbor.







We spent the night in Charleston and headed south toward Savannah early the next morning. On the way, we stopped by Morris Island to check out the beach and the Morris Island Lighthouse. It was definitely one of the coolest lighthouses we have visited so far in our east coast travels.





Once in Savannah, we were caught up in the history of this amazing city. We visited Old Fort Jackson, a fort that has stood the test of time and was used during the Revolutionary War and the Civil War; Fort Pulaski, one of the first forts targeted by the Union Army during the Civil War; Bonaventure Cemetery, resting place for many of Georgia's historically important founders and governors; and Wormsloe Plantation, which is famous for its beautiful moss-draped trees.

Old Fort Jackson

Fort Pulaski

Bonaventure Cemetery

Wormsloe Plantation

Of course, we spent some time swimming at Tybee Island and strolling down the waterfront of Historic Savannah. We saw some amazing sights and drank in the southern atmosphere.