Home Sweet Home

So, 16 hours after leaving Narita International Airport, I finally arrived at my beloved Barcelona. The family was all there waiting for me- except I had no luggage. I accidentally exited the wrong place and went to the wrong baggage claim. So, I had to go back around the building and work my way inside to the baggage claim. Finally I found the right place and my poor lonely bag was rotating on the machine nearly all by itself. It was a great reuniting, though. I was happy to have her back.

Anyway, so today was sleep-in-and-recover-from-jetlag-day. I slept 12 hours. Yup. I was spent. Today I've just been lounging around the house, doing nothing. Just relaxing and unpacking and wrapping Christmas presents and the like. Tonight for dinner (9:30 is dinner time here) I'm meeting a friend, Marta, and my cousin, Marta, for dinner. Yeah, that's right, two Martas. Anyway, so we are meeting at the Placa Vella, the central plaza in my city- the locale where children run and play, teenagers hang out for way too many hours, couples sit and have a cup of coffee, men sit and chain smoke, and women get together and chat. And, yes, where friends meet to have dinner. I love my hometown!

Looking Forward to...

There are a couple of things I am looking forward to about Spain. Let me introduce you to them...




This is Queralt.



















And this is Enric.





But... there are certainly more than just two things I love about Spain:

* My Iaia's truita: a traditional Spanish dish- a potato, egg, and onion omelette.
* Horchata: a Spanish cinnamon milk. It's heaven.
* Reis: or Epiphany, when the kings came to give gifts to baby Jesus, so we also give gifts that day.
* Speaking Catala: my father's dialect from Barcelona. Quina il.lusio!
* Cups of good coffee in cafes in my town's center.
* Pa amb tomaquet: Bread with tomato and olive oil. Yum.
* Neules and torrons: the typical Christmas sweets.
* Barca: My home town soccer team. Maybe I can take in a game.
* Tapas: If you don't know what these are... you need to get on that. The best thing about dining out and having drinks.
* Quinto: The Spanish version of Bingo. We play games at home on Christmas Day.
* Cousins dinner: A yearly tradition of crepes and drinks with all the cousins.
* Alp: Trip to the mountains for skiing and games of cribbage.

Last, but certainly not least... time with family and friends. The sights and sounds that are familiar to me, the voices of people I love, the hugs and kisses from people who love me. For really... what are memories without people to share them with. I can't wait to reminisce about old memories and make new ones, too.

A couple more pics...

Here's a couple more for y'all. This one is my first kimono experience. It was at one of my first orientations in Saitama. It took the girl a good 5-10 minutes to get all the layers on me. Kimono is no simple task. The thing was heavy, but man, it was awesome to wear the traditional Japanese attire.



This one is my English Club girls and my teaching supervisor. We all went out for sushi and attempted to chat in English. They struggled, I'll be honest. Kids in Japan are drilled certain phrases, but really their English level is pretty low. The one question they can answer, without a doubt, is, "How are you?" To this question, the ONLY, and yes, I do mean ONLY response is, "I'm fine thank you, and you?" If I had to bet my life on anything, it would be this truth in Japan: Japanese people are always fine, thank you. Nonetheless, the girls try hard, so I guess that's an A for effort.

Catalunya Countdown

Officially, as of this moment, I have less than 72 hours to go before I board a flight at Narita airport to head to Spain. I cannot wait to see my family and friends. Another thing I can't wait for... being able to actually understand what in the world is going on. As of late I understand about 10% of what is being said around me- and reading signs is even worse. So, finally I will be in a place where I can feel comfortable and have meaningful conversation with people and not be completely illiterate. Oh man, sayonara japan... hola spain!

Mickey you're Bilingual?!?

So I visited Tokyo Disneyland two weekends ago and I realized that Mickey Mouse is bilingual. He's a MOUSE! Seriously, thank you Mickey, for making me feel even worse about my inability to learn Japanese. Now, I have to go to sleep with the knowledge that even a rodent can master this language. Sweet. Anyway, besides that depressing realization... Tokyo Disneyland was off the charts. Well, the standing in line was not so much cool, but the rest was awesome. I even realized a few things about Japanese women. They are altogether out of their minds sometimes.

Three things I found out:

1. Japanese women wear huge ridiculous furry Russian style hats at Disneyland. But they are shaped like mouse ears. The hats were not just your standard black mouse ears, no, these were take-over-your-whole-head large furry things in a whole range of colors. No thank you. A standard beanie will keep my head warm just fine, thank you.

2. Japanese women sometimes wear knee high boots and mini skirts to Disneyland- and let me remind you it is, in fact, winter on this island and there are no personal busses to shuttle the princesses from one ride to the next. Who in the world thinks that high heels are appropriate attire for a full day of walking?!? I don't care if it is the happiest place on earth, with achy feet not even "It's a Small World" can be enjoyable.

3. Japanese women shop in huge, astronomical proportions. I saw many a crazy Japanese woman lugging 5 or 6 bags full of the Disney booty they made out with. As though you can't find Winnie-the-Pooh paraphernalia in every shop in Japan. These women were buying like it was the only chance they might ever have to buy every man, woman, and child they know a gift. A few of these women had to stop walking to take breaks from carrying all their loot. Maybe Disneyland should start renting out pack mules.

Now... here's the kicker... a couple women I saw were committing all three of the above crimes simultaneously. How's that for crazy.

But... nonetheless, I had a great time with my sane, non-shopaholic, tennis shoe wearing friends. Here are Michiyo and Rebecca on the carousel, which is Rebecca's favorite ride. Michiyo is a friend from church and Rebecca, my neighbor. They are awesome girls.

Old Happenings

Since the blog breakdown, I decided to go back and post some of the pics that were previously up and also add a couple new ones. These are all from Nikko and Ashio- I visited friends up there about a month ago and went to their town's festival.



This one's a five story pagoda at Toshogu shrine in Nikko. Well- the pagoda and a man with a rented red umbrella. It was a rainy day.



This shot was taken on a path in Nikko's National Park. It was drizzling the day we went and the leaves were still bright, bright green and it was breathtaking. This rock path lay around a small koi pond- I guess you can imagine the path will go any which way you like.



Seriously, such a cutie pie. She was at her town's festival eating cotton candy. She was SO adorable I could barely stand it. Japanese kids are the bomb, I tell you. I can't wait to have some.



Here's a pic of Miki- a little girl I met playing the taiko drums. She was such a sweet little girl and she was rockin' on the drums. Miki played in my friend Heather's taiko group. The whole weekend was really, really fun. I even got to carry the town's shrine along with about a hundred other people. Everyone helps carry this enormous portable shrine through the city streets. I laughed. It was awesome.

Fuku What?!?

Fuku. Fukushima, that is. That's where spent the day a couple of weeks ago. It's a neighboring prefecture up north and the owners of a local Saitama bar invited us up there to see a ceremony at the temple their bar is named after. So, we made the LONG trip up there and certainly had a good time. But... worst part of the day? Hands down waking up at 6 in the morning to begin the journey. The bar owners has rented a bus for us all and we were heading up there together with a bunch of other middle aged men and their kimono wearing wives. Nice touch. Anyway, the worst part of the busride? Definitely the lame middle aged men insisting on chain smoking at 6 o'clock in the morning. I mean, really, can you imagine it? Here we are in the mini bus with a haze of smoke hovering over us. And, there were small children in the bus with us... as though destroying our lungs wasn't enough they had to go and tarnish the pure lungs of the wee little ones. Boo for inconsiderate smokers.

Anyway, so we finally arrived after numerous pee breaks/more smoking breaks. We got to the temple and all the people crowded in as the obosans, or monks, starting chanting and entering. They chanted a bunch in Japanese, none of which I could understand. Then they had these wooden clacking thingys that made lots of noise which they clacked above the audience to ward off evil spirits. That was my guess, anyway... it really coulda been anything. After that, they then came out into the audience and tapped each of our backs with what I like to call the blessing stick. I can only imagine they were praying a blessing over us. Either that or checking for early signs of osteoporosis or checking our reflexes. Who knows.

Then.. we hit the jackpot. We each got money for the afterlife. The obosans tossed out these colored papers cut out in the shape of leaves which are money for the afterlife. The more leaves you caught the more sixpacks you can buy in heaven, I guess. Well, that's what we (Mark, James, Jillian and I) decided we would do- hit up the afterlife 7-11 and get some drinks to enjoy in eternal bliss.

The after party was also cool- lots of good food and drink with the family. Good times. And then, of course, there was the long ride back home. Oh what a day.



Here's us with one of the monks at the temple. Mama-san, our surrogate mother from Saitama insisted that we snap a shot.

Why Japanese Websites are WEAK

Yeah, so I was at school today, checking up on my blog, adding some new posts, etc., when... I pushed some button and realized my blog had been deleted. WEAK! Blogger's homepage was in Japanese so I couldn't understand what I was doing and before I knew it- poof, my cyber identity had disappeared. So, regrettably I will just have to start again... but, on the bright side, this gives me a clean slate to start over and be the blogger I always dreamed of being: witty, entertaining, and ineteresting. Well, I'll do my best, anyway, folks.