And the winner is........

.......Washington D.C.! 

Yes, after 7 years of being away, we are moving back to D.C.  Congratulations go to my husband for getting the family practice residency he wanted at Fort Belvoir and for returning us back to the land of Carter Barron Shakespeare, Screen on the Green, the Smithsonian, great restaurants not to mention family and friends. We'll be leaving the west coast reluctantly having had a great year of visits from Rick's family members (some twice!), great skiing, food, wine and more. Would like to say a special thanks to my friend TC and her family David, Ben and Emma who rescued me/us a few times and hosted HJ and I both Thanksgivings at their fabulous Tahoe house, while Rick was deployed. I'm so glad I got to spend time with you guys! And how lucky we were to have some visits with friends Carter in LA and Elizabeth Higgins and her son who happened to be spring breaking in southern California from Oregon the same time we were (LEGOLAND was a little different than Florida in College, huh Liz?!?)  Northern California has been good to us...................

"NEXT!" 

(sadly, this is not our last stop on the military train so stay tuned for news for future moves to possibly more exotic European-type basis you may want to visit.........)
Thanks for tuning in..........hope to see you back east!

A Year in Review

Well this is embarrassing.....

It's been almost a year since I wrote anything, so I'll try to give the highlights of what we've been doing the last year before moving onto, well,  the next move.....

So one year later and we're comfortably settled back into American culture. I'm still making rice for Hannah Jane's school lunch (turns out 3 years of having rice with your lunch at school is a hard habit to break--still her favorite), but I'm able to send a plain ol' pb&j sometimes as well (though I admit at least half of it comes back still). Hannah Jane still asks if we can go back to Japan sometime, but this has changed somewhat significantly from "when are we going back?"  She doesn't really know  where to say home is because she now realizes Japan is not her "home", but also is aware that we will be leaving our current home shortly. Compounding this was being kicked out of our  house in June when the owners decided to sell it! She survived it pretty well though -- we landed in a bigger house, large enough to do gymnastics in, with a neighborhood park right across the street.

 And helping to ease the pain of having to move just a year after settling in was taking a big trip (planned months earlier) just days after changing houses.....Disney!

First, we headed for a 7 day Disney Eastern Caribbean Cruise before heading to the Magic Kingdom. Nothing makes having to leave behind a room you painted yourself (purple!) like a meeting your favorite Disney princesses and having dinner in your tiara and a different princess dress every night.

She had some practice though, when for her 6th birthday in March she had a dress-up tea party complete with princess party crowns and tea pot birthday cake!

In September, we took a trip to Yosemite.................

Then, in early October we said goodbye to Rick who deployed to Cyprus again, and where he is still. We've done OK though. Halloween was thoroughly enjoyable as we toured our new neighborhood on our broom and "glamorous witch" costume!

 

 

 

In October too, we started rehearsal for the Nutcracker Ballet -- we're a "Bon Bon"! No pictures yet in costume, but stay tuned, and I may manage to get some up before next Christmas.

For Thanksgiving, our friends the Callicotts invited us (rescued us!) to their fabulous Lake Tahoe house to spend the holiday. There we had a lovely day cooking casually (with wine and cheese of course) and hiking in the north Tahoe woods near their house. That Saturday we all took a trip on "The Polar Express" from Carson City  to ....the North Pole, of course! (until we pulled in and saw all the "elves" and Christmas tree,  I had no idea you could reach the North Pole from the state of Nevada).

And now we're back home, gearing up for Christmas and waiting for Rick to return from deployment. By the time he lands back in Sacramento on December 19th, he should have heard something on where we'll be heading in May. Will try to update here.....BEFORE May!

In the meantime, you can find us at 615 Danby Lane, Lincoln, CA 95648....you have 6 months to visit!  Thanks for tuning in, and Merry Christmas!

All I want for Christmas.......

.....is my two front teeth......

 

Merry Christmas!!!!!

 

Pictures!

Here are some photos of what we've been doing since we arrived in northern California:

 May: Slumming in "Old Sacramento", a very fun historic district in our state's capital, thirty or forty minutes from our house.

 

June: Hannah Jane loses her first tooth! We were in temporary lodging on base still but the tooth fairy found us!

 

Fishing and camping at Lassen Volcanic National Park for Mary's birthday in June



Our first 4th of July parade! Hannah Jane picked these out for herself to wear on the big day.

Visiting with TC and family at their house in Lake Tahoe...beautiful! (I love this photo because I have so many like it of just TC and I when we were younger)

Gymnastics!!!!

We took Hannah Jane to the circus in Sacramento, and afterward asked her if she had fun - she did, but thought kindergarten was more fun......

Our first opportunity to play soccer....she loves it because she gets to kick something and not get in trouble for it.

Chasing Rick's U2 plane after he lands from "space" (see photo below). Hannah Jane and I got to ride in the "chase car", a camero that chases after the thing as it lands and talks the pilot down. Weird experience being right behind a huge aircraft as it's trying to get its wheels on the ground.... (Just as a reminder in case you forgot: Rick is a doctor.....who occasionally has to fly to space or jump out of helicopters in Iraq or temporarily pilot an F-16... because the air force pays him to... for reasons that still are a bit fuzzy to me.....)

Rick climbing out of the U2 after returning from the edge of space (see Rick's facebook photos for his "earth" pictures...)

Wine break! Along a hike in the Sierras......(Hannah Jane was directing us to "drink your wine!")

Hannah Jane practicers reeling in a salmon at our town's "Calling Back of the Salmon" festival put on by a local Indian tribe. Apparently the salmon run back up stream through our neighborhood even  in the fall...

"Train Town" in Sonoma (hey, we had to give her something after sitting through 2 days of wine tastings. Actually, we all had fun, both vineyard touring AND at Train Town.)



June: Our first American county fair! Bumper cars.....soooooo not Japanese.........

May: Hot tubing it at friend TC's house in San Francisco...just two hours away!

 

Reverse Culture Shock, or..."Whaaaaht?"

So arriving back in the states after being gone for four years has its challenges too. There was re-learning how to drive from the left side of our car on the right side of the road, finding and buying a phone, a car and a house all within a matter of days (the base only guarantees you 10 days of housing, 30 at most, and thus we decided on renting), and then there was relearning how to be in America. For Hannah Jane this was all new. It took us the longest time to get her to recognize she was American and not English as she kept insisting (because she spoke more "English" than Japanese. This was a step up from her earlier declaration that she was indeed, Japanese). I have not yet stopped saying the phrase, "In America, we do it this way...." (fill in the blank with "read from left to right", still a challenge with her Kindergarten teacher, "leave our shoes on in restaurants," you've heard this before....).  But for us, some things came as a little bit of a shock....at our own culture.

The first and biggest shock I have to say was the widespread, and what still looks like overuse to me of cellphones. Or pocket computers as they look like. Yes, we have since upgraded --and all the way I might add-- and we now own an android and an iphone, both with 4G. And yes, I see the benefits of my new phone and use it for many purposes other than a phone, and for which I am grateful. It's taken me a while to get use to it though, with both Rick and I in the dark on how to operate the things at first. I actually signed up for a class at the Verizon store and found I was the only person under 60 there --- but I really needed the class! Rick actually missed a few calls from the clinic because his ringer was off and he couldn't figure out how to turn it on. I mean, when did they get so complicated?!  I would have been content to stick with my little "flipshot" camera phone I had before we left for Japan, but it didn't have real texting capabilities, and after a good friend let me gently know that I wouldn't be in the mom's clubs if I couldn't send and receive texts, I made the leap. Actually, the final straw was when a text message, which I got charged for, came through on my old phone from the people delivering our desperately needed refrigerator, asking me to "press confirm" on the date and time of delivery, otherwise they'd have to reschedule for a week later. After punching every number on my phone trying to reply "YES!!!", my phone rang and an annoyed sounding clerk asked if I'd gotten the text they'd sent. While annoyed myself that he were annoyed that he'd actually had to CALL, God forbid, to confirm our delivery time, I realized that sometimes there might be a need to text...and do some other things phones can do now.  So we bought. And learned. It's been a sharp learning curve (Rick's learned to turn the ringer on and off, and I've learned that it won't bring you wine when you ask it to, even nicely....but it will take you to one of many nearby wineries!). But I can't say I'm using it all the time --- I don't walk around with it, and like my email, I check for text messages only every so often.  Maybe that will change. But I hope not too much. I do use it to peek at CNN news while I'm eating my sandwich alone at Panera's, but if you're across the table from me, I'd better have it in my purse...and if it's not, tell me! This revelation came one night when out to dinner at a restaurant.... I looked around in shock at all the people, having dinner together, not talking to one another but looking down at the tables. I couldn't figure out why every one's head was bowed and no one was talking -- I felt like I was in another foreign country and I didn't know the customs again. I mean everyone -- from grandpas to little 5-year olds-- were looking down at something, and not talking to each other. When I realized they all had phones and were texting, watching, playing, reading, whatevering, everything except enjoying each other, I seriously started to cry.  When did this happen? I mean I know it was going on in Japan to some extent, but maybe I wasn't paying attention or didn't care because, well, I was in Japan. But this is my own country...and I felt like the biggest outsider all of a sudden. The other thing about phones that shocked me was the extent that people use them in their car. With the added capabilities, it's just given people more reason to use them, and everyone it seems is using them in their car...while they are driving at top speeds. The other day Hannah Jane and I barely missed being crashed into by a grandpa-- he was at least 70 I'd say-- that was punching away at his phone and not paying attention to what lane he was in (he moved half way into mine before noticing). Phones are a great tool, yes, and even in the car. It's been invaluable to navigate our way around and find places here in our new home. But for God's sake do not operate the car and the phone at the same time --pull over, use the voice commands if need, or program your destination before you start the car (Remember, "Friends don't let friends drive and phone!")

So that's all I'm gonna say on that! Another shocker has been our immersion into life as a kindergartner. School itself has been a wonderful shock-- we love it! Except for the three less hours a day we're missing (on the first day Hannah Jane said it was too short...still says so).  Hannah Jane is THRILLED to find that there are other kids with "yellow hair" like hers, and that everyone speaks english.  Another great shocker has been relinquishing my roll as teacher to her REAL teacher...thank God! I am greatly relieved to hand over this duty to someone who actually knows how to teach a 5-year old and won't make her cry when she tries. I love her teacher! I am less thrilled and even a little shocked at times by the after-school activities we're involved in....or I should say, the parental attitudes and behaviors. First up is soccer -- parents screaming on the sidelines, cheering or just hollering in general, soooooooo not Japanese. But it's OK, cause, it's soccer....and we're outside, and it's all part of the fun. I've just gotta get used to it. Then there's gymnastics, which our similar activity I have to compare it to in Japan was ballet. At the Japanese ballet school we attended in Misawa I would sit silently on the floor with the other mothers, twisted into "Mother's pose" (knees bent underneath you, sitting on your feet), while the children danced to the commands of the teacher with the only other sound being the music. The children knew not to speak during class, as did the parents. If you had to speak, you whispered the few necessary words at the right moment that wouldn't disrupt class. Not so in American gymnastics class. Sitting in the designated parents area I look around at all the ambient conversations going on in normal and even loud tones as the gymnastic instructor struggles to be heard among the even louder children that are talking back to her (and not nicely),  and all I can think is......"whhhaaaaaaat?!?"  Maybe I would have recognized this all as rude and disrespectful behavior had I not lived in Japan, but having had the experience of seeing how polite and respectful the Japanese people are to both foreigners and each other, I've found it hard to acclimate back into my own culture at times.

And I never once heard a Japanese person use their car horn. 'Nough said on that......(Except that the first time someone beeped at me at a light in California I actually jumped--scared me silly).

But I'm getting use to things. I'm sure by the next time you see me I'll be punching away at my cellphone, yelling obscenities at the ref at the soccer game from the front seat of my car as I blare my horn at the other parents in the parking lot who won't move their asses. It's good to be back in America!!

From rice paddies to grape vines

Hello, and welcome back! Thanks for following us from our adventures in northern Japan to our time in northern California. We're so glad to be back stateside!  First thing we did once we landed in Cali was head to Napa....'cause, well, we could. And Hannah Jane had fun.

Actually, our move back to the states was a bit circuitous, starting with a trip in the opposite direction to China:

We spent 9 days  in Beijing and Shanghai with a personal tour guide in each city. Here we are in Tienanmen square enjoying the fabulous air quality that China is known for (Mary and Hannah Jane wore masks to guard against lung infection. Oddly enough, while masks are commonplace in Japan--most Japanese wear them in the winter in particular--they are a bit of an oddity in China, making it even easier for us to "blend in.")
After China we headed back to Japan to check out of the air base "Hotel Misawa", and then, after 4 years in Asia, we were stateside bound. We stopped off in Hawaii first for a little R&R for a few days where we just kicked back for a bit:  

From there we headed to Seattle where we'd chosen to pick up our car which had been in storage for four years. (Important Safety Tip: it's best not to pick up your left-side drive, stick-shifting car that's been in storage for four years after getting off a red-eye flight where you've slept exactly 7 minutes, and then have to relearn to drive...and to drive on the right side of the road.) We made it safely downtown to hotel where we slept a few hours and then got up to readjust and enjoy Seattle for a night. Here's Hannah Jane feeding the seagulls from the waterfront not far from Pike's Place Market:

The next morning we began a meandering drive south through Oregon where we enjoyed the coastal area and a cute little mountain town for 2 nights. On the third night we made it to base where in typical military fashion we were told there was "no room at the Inn."  It's like we'd just arrived in Japan! Here though, we had the benefit of finding our own housing using American Internet and a GPS that spoke english to us....bonus!

Within a few days of arriving we were able to find a great house to rent, complete with a palm tree out front:

Here's Hannah Jane in front, on her way to "Pretty Pretty Princess Camp"

We have a guestroom and plenty of space for visitors -- please come see us! We're about 2 hours from San Francisco, 2 hours from Yosemite, an hour from Napa, and an hour from Lake Tahoe. We'll be here for two years, so......hope to see you!