Happy spring!! It's finally officially here! Kind of funny... yesterday, the last day of winter, was in the 70s and very sunny, and today, the first day of spring, was 50 and rainy (like all of winter, the rain that is!). I'm excited for the new season. And again, like I say every year, I wish it was like this all year. Spring is my favorite season only because winter follows fall. ;-)
It's also my birthday here. The day was centered around my favorite foods! Jeremy went to the store to bring back my favorite pastry for breakfast, then made a yummy salad for lunch, then a meatloaf with mashed potatoes for dinner, and THEN a cheesecake! Success!! It was wonderfully tasty - good job, hun! The food was a wonderful choice for a birthday present, as I hadn't had any of it since before we moved here.
Friday, March 20, 2009
Wednesday, March 4, 2009
Hagi websites
If anyone is curious... I recently found a couple of good websites about our little area. I might keep this updated as I discover more.
A brief overview, including popular tourist attractions:
http://www.jnto.go.jp/eng/location/regional/yamaguchi/hagi.html
Excellent! Has an interactive English map, lots of Hagi history, and pictures:
http://www.west-japan-travel.com/map/city_hagi.html
Very nice pictures from around Hagi:
http://www.japan-photo.de/e-hagi.htm
English map of our prefecture (Yamaguchi):
http://www.oidemase.or.jp/english/pdf/english_map.pdf
All about Yamaguchi prefecture:
http://www.pref.yamaguchi.jp/foreign/english/outline.html
Nagato website (neighboring town, also where we teach), with nice seasonal photos accurately depicting the kind of things we are seeing any given day:
http://www.city.nagato.yamaguchi.jp/season_photo/season_photo.html
And there's Wikitravel:
http://wikitravel.org/en/Hagi
Also, our city's website (Japanese):
http://www.city.hagi.yamaguchi.jp/
A brief overview, including popular tourist attractions:
http://www.jnto.go.jp/eng/location/regional/yamaguchi/hagi.html
Excellent! Has an interactive English map, lots of Hagi history, and pictures:
http://www.west-japan-travel.com/map/city_hagi.html
Very nice pictures from around Hagi:
http://www.japan-photo.de/e-hagi.htm
English map of our prefecture (Yamaguchi):
http://www.oidemase.or.jp/english/pdf/english_map.pdf
All about Yamaguchi prefecture:
http://www.pref.yamaguchi.jp/foreign/english/outline.html
Nagato website (neighboring town, also where we teach), with nice seasonal photos accurately depicting the kind of things we are seeing any given day:
http://www.city.nagato.yamaguchi.jp/season_photo/season_photo.html
And there's Wikitravel:
http://wikitravel.org/en/Hagi
Also, our city's website (Japanese):
http://www.city.hagi.yamaguchi.jp/
Wednesday, February 25, 2009
Happy Birthday, Jeremy!
May the force always be with you.
My wonderful husband is 27 today! (How could I forget - he's been reminding me every day for the past week, hehe!) We'll be celebrating this weekend. Shhh, it's a surprise!
My wonderful husband is 27 today! (How could I forget - he's been reminding me every day for the past week, hehe!) We'll be celebrating this weekend. Shhh, it's a surprise!
Sunday, February 15, 2009
Valentine's, etc
Woot! What a sweet holiday! We got quite a few gifts of chocolatey goodness. Today, we received Grandpa Leibbrand's birthday package - so we're having beefy jerky and mac-n-cheese for dinner! Yessss! Seriously, it's been a LONG time since we've had either and we were quite excited. Thank you!!
We got paid on Thursday!! We had been eating a LOT of oatmeal prior. Please pray we can do better with our finances this month - somehow, we either lost or over spent $200 within the first two weeks last month. Ugh. We really need to send money home this month too. We're at an all-time low. Lucky for us, the yen is quite high so we'll actually be making money when we send it home. :-)
For Valentine's, after school, we went out for dinner at our favorite mom and pop restaurant, Densuke. I tried the cream chicken and Jeremy had a fried pork and curry plater. After dinner, we walked home past all the bars, under the flickering street lights, and giggled at the steady stream of a drunk urinator around the corner. It was indeed romantic. Back home, I popped in a 'girly' movie that I knew I'd have no other chance of getting Jeremy to watch with me if not for the fact that it was Valentine's day, and enjoyed some of the chocolate from Mom's package (that arrived on V-day). That was our day, though Jeremy still owes me a massage and I owe him cookies.
Today, was another Open Day at school. Jeremy went to Nagato - no kids came, so he was able to leave and meet us at the Hagi school before the classes there started. I had five pre-k students and Carla had three 3rd graders. The 3rd graders are all signing up for classes!! We don't know about the PK kids yet, but they'll most likely sign up as they all have older siblings at our school, so it went very well even though we didn't have many students. The kids were very interested in our lessons and enjoyed playing with us while their parents were in the meeting. The little kids adore Jeremy. It's so cute to watch!
Jeremy also got a computer today. We upgraded the old school laptop with a brand new one (it's tiny!), so they gave the other one to him. He's excited we don't have to share my computer any more, and the other one has Windows (granted, the system is in Japanese (maybe it will give him a reason to learn some new kanji) - mine doesn't - so I'm sure he'll be able to do more with it. We may be able to play online versions of some board games together now. He's already changed the home page to Board Game Geek. :-)
Happy V-day! (chocolate, bath salts/bubbles, and some candy from the kids)
Ooo!! More goodies!
Wow! These cakes were a V-day gift from our boss.
We got paid on Thursday!! We had been eating a LOT of oatmeal prior. Please pray we can do better with our finances this month - somehow, we either lost or over spent $200 within the first two weeks last month. Ugh. We really need to send money home this month too. We're at an all-time low. Lucky for us, the yen is quite high so we'll actually be making money when we send it home. :-)
For Valentine's, after school, we went out for dinner at our favorite mom and pop restaurant, Densuke. I tried the cream chicken and Jeremy had a fried pork and curry plater. After dinner, we walked home past all the bars, under the flickering street lights, and giggled at the steady stream of a drunk urinator around the corner. It was indeed romantic. Back home, I popped in a 'girly' movie that I knew I'd have no other chance of getting Jeremy to watch with me if not for the fact that it was Valentine's day, and enjoyed some of the chocolate from Mom's package (that arrived on V-day). That was our day, though Jeremy still owes me a massage and I owe him cookies.
Today, was another Open Day at school. Jeremy went to Nagato - no kids came, so he was able to leave and meet us at the Hagi school before the classes there started. I had five pre-k students and Carla had three 3rd graders. The 3rd graders are all signing up for classes!! We don't know about the PK kids yet, but they'll most likely sign up as they all have older siblings at our school, so it went very well even though we didn't have many students. The kids were very interested in our lessons and enjoyed playing with us while their parents were in the meeting. The little kids adore Jeremy. It's so cute to watch!
Jeremy also got a computer today. We upgraded the old school laptop with a brand new one (it's tiny!), so they gave the other one to him. He's excited we don't have to share my computer any more, and the other one has Windows (granted, the system is in Japanese (maybe it will give him a reason to learn some new kanji) - mine doesn't - so I'm sure he'll be able to do more with it. We may be able to play online versions of some board games together now. He's already changed the home page to Board Game Geek. :-)
Happy V-day! (chocolate, bath salts/bubbles, and some candy from the kids)
Ooo!! More goodies!
Wow! These cakes were a V-day gift from our boss.
Wednesday, February 11, 2009
Spring is coming/here!
I love, love, love it! Granted, it's still chilly, but nice enough that we don't need our hats and gloves anymore. :-) Some trees are starting to bloom with flowers and I saw a few tulips shooting up the other day. I thought I'd post a few (a LOT) of pictures from last weekend and today - Japan's birthday, a national holiday, so we had the day off school. :-)
On our way to the beach, we noticed some black smoke off in the distance. Since it was a nice day, we decided to go investigate. It turned out to be an old family shrine up in the hills. We saw the firemen dragging hoses uphill from the river to put the fire out. By the time we reached the beach the black smoke had turned completely white.
I had to crop this picture per Jeremy's request as his hands in his pockets made him look a little larger...
On the way home, we stopped by a mikan (i.e. tangerine or mandrin orange) grove to take some pictures.
Today, we went to Mt. Kasa again - this time to tour the camellia groves since we heard they were blooming, but before going in, we took a short walk down to the shore.
This is a camellia.
They have many different varieties. I liked the "candy cane" ones - they were mostly white with random red stripes running up their petals. I couldn't find a good picture of one, so I grabbed a pinkish one from the ground and held it in my hand (but maybe it's another variety all together!).
I got all 'artsy' and took dozens of pictures from all different angles of the flowers (I love flowers!), but I won't post them all here - Jeremy got a little bored with me. :-)
I felt a little out of place... there were dozens of other photographers with their big fancy cameras and tripods... and there I was on my knees in the mud with my little point and shoot.
This one is funny because I was looking around for some nicer flowers to toss into the water to take a picture of, and as I was doing so, I noticed a couple behind me waiting their turn to take the same picture I had just set up for! Hehe!
Here we are in one of the groves:
A cat appeared to be guarding a row of flowers someone had left on a bench. It only moved away when I arranged one of the flowers on the bench to take a photo (can you tell which one?).
I didn't place the flower there, but I thought it looked interesting torn over the branches.
We also walked up to a teeny tiny light house at the end of the point. Aww!!
On our way to the beach, we noticed some black smoke off in the distance. Since it was a nice day, we decided to go investigate. It turned out to be an old family shrine up in the hills. We saw the firemen dragging hoses uphill from the river to put the fire out. By the time we reached the beach the black smoke had turned completely white.
I had to crop this picture per Jeremy's request as his hands in his pockets made him look a little larger...
On the way home, we stopped by a mikan (i.e. tangerine or mandrin orange) grove to take some pictures.
Today, we went to Mt. Kasa again - this time to tour the camellia groves since we heard they were blooming, but before going in, we took a short walk down to the shore.
This is a camellia.
They have many different varieties. I liked the "candy cane" ones - they were mostly white with random red stripes running up their petals. I couldn't find a good picture of one, so I grabbed a pinkish one from the ground and held it in my hand (but maybe it's another variety all together!).
I got all 'artsy' and took dozens of pictures from all different angles of the flowers (I love flowers!), but I won't post them all here - Jeremy got a little bored with me. :-)
I felt a little out of place... there were dozens of other photographers with their big fancy cameras and tripods... and there I was on my knees in the mud with my little point and shoot.
This one is funny because I was looking around for some nicer flowers to toss into the water to take a picture of, and as I was doing so, I noticed a couple behind me waiting their turn to take the same picture I had just set up for! Hehe!
Here we are in one of the groves:
A cat appeared to be guarding a row of flowers someone had left on a bench. It only moved away when I arranged one of the flowers on the bench to take a photo (can you tell which one?).
I didn't place the flower there, but I thought it looked interesting torn over the branches.
We also walked up to a teeny tiny light house at the end of the point. Aww!!
Wednesday, February 4, 2009
License Update
All thanks to mom Knapp, I don't have to worry about this issue anymore. I didn't even realize my state had a 'safe driver' program that would allow me to simply get a sticker instead of a whole new license. Simple and sweet! Thank you!!!
Sunday, February 1, 2009
Legal stuff
Does anyone have a clue how we're supposed to file our taxes this year? I usually do my own taxes, but this time it's way beyond me... income from overseas? marriage? How does that all work? Oyi. I have my work cut out for me this year unless someone back home can help us out a bit. Sigh. Also, does anyone know how I can get a new US driver's license from overseas? Mine expires on my birthday this year (March 20th, so it's coming up soon!). I don't think I'd be able to just renew my Illinois license because I don't have any address there any more (and I haven't lived at the address on my current one for four years)... or maybe I'm eligible for an Ohio one since we do have a 'mailing' address there (thanks again Mom Knapp!). Eh... or maybe I should get cracking on my Japanese license, which I technically won't need until August. Yeesh.
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