I know this has absolutely nothing to do with my travels and the baby, but this link was on my friend Susanne's blog and I thought it was freakin hilarious. It reminds me of Lexi's MBA writings, only for lawyers. Enjoy!
http://anonymouslawyer.blogspot.com/
Tuesday, August 30, 2005
Getting Back to Normal
Hope you all are enjoying my mucho pictores posts. What with my mom here and all, I haven't had much time to write. She just left this morning, wah! Back to life on our own. She was here for three weeks, so we kind of got used to having her around, but I think Dad would have been a little pissed if we'd kept her any longer. Although we spent a lot of time just sitting around the house (hey, I just had a baby, remember?!), we also did more site seeing than I've done the whole year and a half I've been here. We even took a trip to Kyoto (mom and I and the baby, anyway). Although I enjoyed seeing the sites of northern Japan, Kyoto was just awesome. We didn't even get to see half of everything there is to see there. We did get to hit most of the hot spots (although we missed seeing the Imperial Palace since it is evidently closed on the weekends), and we got to be part of a real tea ceremony where they taught us how to perform it as both guest and host (where I learned that powdered green tea tastes absolutely nothing like bagged green tea and is really quite vile). We also ate a lot of green tea ice cream (which is much tastier than the tea itself) and did a bunch of shopping.
We had a great time, but there were some downsides to our trip. It was unbearably hot, Minnesota hot, in Kyoto. I (stupidly) thought it would be too much of a hassle to bring Jocelyn's stroller (which is this big monsterous thing and we were taking 3 trains to get down there), so we brought this weird sling-like contraption someone bought me for my baby shower. This is not your normal baby sling. It sits over both shoulders (it's supposed to distribute the baby's weight more evenly) with a pouch in the front. However, I neglected to note that the overall color of the sling is black and the shape of the sling keeps the baby nestled into your warm body, thus making the opening like a small oven which bakes both mom and baby so that you nearly suffer from heatstroke before you decide it isn't safe to keep the baby in there when its so hot and spend the rest of the trip manually carrying around the baby until your arms fall off. Thank god Jocelyn wasn't as big as Caitlyn or there is no way we could have made it through the whole trip. In fact, we spent a good portion of the trip looking to buy a cheap stroller or another, safer sling. Unfortunately, there doesn't appear to be any such thing in the entire country of Japan. Even Sanwado's (the Japanese Wal-Mart) cheaped stroller was over $200. So, we suffered accordingly.
One interesting thing to note is that the Japanese appear to not bring small babies out into public. I noticed that here in Misawa, too. The youngest baby I've seen out and about had to be at least 6 months old. Everywhere we went, Jocelyn was popular than the actual attraction. People stopped us on the street to make a fuss over her. When we went to Ryonji Temple (a Zen Buddhist Temple famous for a particular type of zen rock garden), you are supposed to meditate on this rock garden and many Buddhist pilgrims go there to do just that. When we entered the garden with Jocelyn, nearly every single person gathered around us to coo over her and take her picture. It was like she was this mini-celebrity. It reminded me of when I took Caitlyn to China. She was a lot older, about 18 months, but most Chinese had never seen a white baby, not to mention the fact that Caitlyn is blond with blue eyes, so we got stopped all over the country so that people could just touch her or take her picture. So now there are multiple pictures of both my children floating around Asia!
We had a great time, but there were some downsides to our trip. It was unbearably hot, Minnesota hot, in Kyoto. I (stupidly) thought it would be too much of a hassle to bring Jocelyn's stroller (which is this big monsterous thing and we were taking 3 trains to get down there), so we brought this weird sling-like contraption someone bought me for my baby shower. This is not your normal baby sling. It sits over both shoulders (it's supposed to distribute the baby's weight more evenly) with a pouch in the front. However, I neglected to note that the overall color of the sling is black and the shape of the sling keeps the baby nestled into your warm body, thus making the opening like a small oven which bakes both mom and baby so that you nearly suffer from heatstroke before you decide it isn't safe to keep the baby in there when its so hot and spend the rest of the trip manually carrying around the baby until your arms fall off. Thank god Jocelyn wasn't as big as Caitlyn or there is no way we could have made it through the whole trip. In fact, we spent a good portion of the trip looking to buy a cheap stroller or another, safer sling. Unfortunately, there doesn't appear to be any such thing in the entire country of Japan. Even Sanwado's (the Japanese Wal-Mart) cheaped stroller was over $200. So, we suffered accordingly.
One interesting thing to note is that the Japanese appear to not bring small babies out into public. I noticed that here in Misawa, too. The youngest baby I've seen out and about had to be at least 6 months old. Everywhere we went, Jocelyn was popular than the actual attraction. People stopped us on the street to make a fuss over her. When we went to Ryonji Temple (a Zen Buddhist Temple famous for a particular type of zen rock garden), you are supposed to meditate on this rock garden and many Buddhist pilgrims go there to do just that. When we entered the garden with Jocelyn, nearly every single person gathered around us to coo over her and take her picture. It was like she was this mini-celebrity. It reminded me of when I took Caitlyn to China. She was a lot older, about 18 months, but most Chinese had never seen a white baby, not to mention the fact that Caitlyn is blond with blue eyes, so we got stopped all over the country so that people could just touch her or take her picture. So now there are multiple pictures of both my children floating around Asia!
Tuesday, August 23, 2005
Friday, August 19, 2005
Birthday #28
You know, I used to love birthdays. Even after I hit my 20's it was all about getting as drunk as possible and having a good time with my girlfriends. Now it's all about how close I'm getting to 30, wah! Actually, I have been really blessed this year. I got married to a great guy, had a gorgeous and healthy baby, plus I got more furniture for my birthday present, yay! I love me some furniture :) And, gettin it on with your husband..I mean, getting drunk with you husband, is way better than getting drunk at some bar. Oh, and my little sister got me a big ol' gift certificate from Amazon. God, I love how we all have money now, tee hee. So, I guess getting older isn't so bad after all. Anyway, there's a pic of my kick-ass b-day furniture below, so you can all be jealous of my fabulously furnished house ;)
Korekawa Archeological Site & Seiji Goddess Temple
We drove for 2 1/2 hours trying to find this place (it should have been only a 30min drive) thanks to the lack of road signs here in BF Japan. Hopefully, our other adventures will not be as difficult to locate!
I am a Spam Machine
WTF is up with all the blog spam? I noticed it on Susanne's blog, too. As if e-mail spam wasn't annoying enough, now they have to bring it here!?
Wednesday, August 17, 2005
Monday, August 15, 2005
Me and the Frog Out and About
Went for a walk with Mom today and she took some awesome pics of the surrounding area. I just realized that I've lived in Japan for a year and a half and I've never taken any pictures of it. All my pictures have come from my vacations! I took some scenic photos myself, but my mom's a much better photographer, so i just stole some of hers to post here :)
Grandma's Here
Sorry for not posting for so long. Grandma is here visiting, so we have been a little busy lately. I am mostly recovered from the birth now, just a little bi of soreness left. I tried working out for the first time and discovered that its going to be a long, hard road back to the shape I was in before got pregnant. Of course, it's all worth it, but it's a little discouraging none the less. Jocelyn is really thriving. She had her 2-week check-up today and weighed in at a whopping 5lb 12oz. She's gained almost a pound in two weeks! All her other vitals were excellent and, although she's still a little jaundiced, she was given a clean bill of health. Caitlyn is enjoying having her Grandma around, and she loves to help out with her little sister. Although I always wanted to have my kids close together, it seems like this long space between them will actually be good for their relationship. Caitlyn really enjoys her big sister role, and I hope that continues when Jocelyn's old enough to start being a pest!
We're busy planning some trips around the area for Mom. I think we might even head down to Tokyo for a couple of days since I'm nearly healed and Jocelyn is doing so well. So, we'll have a lot of interesting things to post in the near future. In the meantime, I'll post some new pictures of the fam to keep you busy.
Sunday, August 07, 2005
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