Pomelo

I have a thing for fruit. Like persimmons and kinkan and watermelons and cantaloupes. When James brought home this fruit the size of my overdue belly, we thought it was just another giant, well-bred, Japanese grapefruit. Turns out it looks, smells, and tastes similar to a grapefruit (just a bit sweeter with a lot more white stuff protecting the juicy parts), but its actually a pomelo. A famous pregnancy book compares each week of the fetus's growth to a fruit. Last week, before the 10th, I was a watermelon. This week, overdue, the baby cheekily turned into a pumpkin. I think pomelo is also pretty fitting.

Showered Again

I love that my families at school threw me a baby shower even though it is totally out of custom to do so. In fact, most people don't even know what a baby shower is here! Nonetheless, the parents put together a really sweet party filled with games, food, and gifts. I think I was bright red the whole time.

Skype Love From Afar

My friends are amazing.

I may be thousands of miles away from my dear friends, but last weekend, it was like I was in the room.

I sat on my couch in Tokyo, while they gathered around the dining table in Portland.
I ate french toast, they noshed on Asian cuisine.
It was 10:00 a.m. Saturday morning for me, 6:00 p.m. Friday night for them.
I had decaf, wine for the girls.
They opened my gifts, but I still got to ooooh and awwww.
We even played shower games.
It was a like a giant, virtual hug for me and baby.

Pictures of how it went down on Heather's blog.

Thanks for saving me a spot at the dinner table, ladies!
I love you!

New Year's 2011

2011 is the year of the rabbit!

Jetlag got the better of us on New Year's Eve and we were both asleep by 10:00 back in Japan. New Years Day we went for a stroll and ended up on the train to Meiji-Jingu Mae shrine in Harajuku. Thinking we'd saunter up to the shrine, we started in on the long walk through the park. When we turned the corner, we were greeted with this scene:

And that's not even the shrine up ahead! That's just a TV screen telling you how much further you have to go to get to the shrine...From where we stood, it would have still been well over an hour of waiting in line. Needless to say, we looked for the escape route and turned around and beelined for a much, much shorter line....

mmmm....who needs new year's resolutions when your pregnant?

Hawaii at Christmas

Our trip to Hawaii was 10 days in a tropical paradise and we didn't want to come home.

We landed to torrential downpours in Honolulu, and if it wasn't for our friends, Emi and Andre, who happened to be staying in Waikiki at the same time, we would have been miserable in the tourist infested town. But, we made the best of the deserted beaches at night and enjoyed the warm sand and sweet smells in the air.

Maui was more our style. Our condo was bigger than our apartment (that's not really saying much) and more good friends, the Kelly Family, joined us in Lahaina. We spent 8 days on the beach in the sun. We saw some amazing fish underwater, James surfed, and we rented a tandem cruiser for a couple of days to get us around town. One day we visited a cute little hippie town called Pa'ia and spotted whales off the coast. I imagine everyone who visits Hawaii dreams, as we did, of selling it all and moving to paradise. One day...

Diamond Head and Waikiki Beach

Emi and Andre in Honolulu

wooden outrigger in Lahaina

incredible hundred year old Banyan tree that spawned at least 6 more trees

Christmas Eve in Lahaina

what we did most days

stand-up paddle boarding

midnight mass on Christmas Eve in Lahaina

the stockings were hung by the pool...or something like that...

James is in the middle about to dive - Jim is contemplating - Vivian wants nothing to do with it - Ryan is already in

biking to the beach...the life

good friends to play with

no tummy laying on the beach for me

nothing keeps some people out of the water

stenciling in Pa'ia

we loved our cruiser

frolicking like my whale friends

かきKaki Persimmon

Persimmons are not a fruit I grew up with in Oregon. In fact, I'm not sure I'd even laid eyes on one until we arrived in Japan. I avoided them through my first year in Japan because they looked strange and I didn't know what to do with them. Then, someone gave me a slice. They are sort of an acquired taste because they aren't super sweet or juicy, at least this variety anyway, but they've grown on me. James took a bite a while back and couldn't stomach it because he expected it to be a tomato (being color blind has it's drawbacks).

I love the starfish-like design on the inside. And the way they hang heavy on all the trees around Tokyo right now. My Japanese teacher plucked a couple off her tree for me this week. Who knew a rose (or kaki) could grow from concrete?

Nikko

Starving for nature, James and I made an overnight trek to Nikko during our Fall Break. Nikko has been the Japanese center for Buddhist and Shinto mountain worship since before 1600. The national park holds hiking trails, onsen, and wild monkeys. But I didn't have the stamina for any of those adventures this time around, so we just ambled among the narrow alleyways and mountain paths enjoying the scenery.

I don't know what this purple berry is, but it's so beautiful against the red shed.

Mossy old trees that beckon you to hug them...

The trees were just beginning to change into their autumn coats.

Beautiful Japanese Maple (もみじ）

"Honey, what should I wear for our weekend in the countryside?"
"I hear all the country folk wear hot pants, stripper boots and a hair weave."

I stealthily took the picture of James above just to get the girl in the hotpants. A nice couple noticed me taking James's picture and offered to take our picture for us. The train station doesn't usually get the tourist love!

International Schools

Not my photo of Kobe

Something we rarely talk about on here is our work life and the international-ness of it. I guess it's become the only way we know after nearly 5 years of living overseas and teaching in international schools. After a while, you forget to notice that people are from different cultures, or that you just might stick out a bit.

A few weeks back, my school sent me and 4 co-workers to Kobe for a 3-day language arts conference. Our school uses the International Baccalaureate Organization's Primary Years Programme, a world renown curriculum that focuses on inquiry based instruction and global responsibility. The program is used in hundreds of schools in developing and advanced countries. The conference was a meeting of educators who work in countries across Asia but hail from around the world--New Zealand, China, South Africa, Australia, Canada, America, Holland, Germany, and many more. I didn't think much of it at first, but as the conference progressed, I was struck by the notion that so many people, with vastly different experiences and depths of knowledge, can come together in one room to talk about the best way to educate the world's children.

As the economy has changed around the world, so too, has the makeup of our school. International schools are usually know for diverse populations, but as companies seem to be reducing their number of overseas workers, the enrollment of our schools change. In prosperous times, our school is widely diverse. In times of economic uncertainty, our school accepts greater numbers of Japanese and Korean students to keep the numbers steady. But even with the changing enrollment, my class of 24 students still represents 13 countries including Botswana, Pakistan, India, Finland, Italy, Norway, Germany and South Korea. The girls are amazing in their willingness to accept each other, similarities and differences included, with open arms. One of my little girls wrote recently in her journal about our newest student who arrived from Thailand: "Emmi seemed a bit shy at first. My goal is to make her feel welcome at Seisen. I will talk to her to make her feel comfortable. And I can collect more information about her culture." Was anyone else thinking like this as a seven year old? Wow.

Anyway, that's all I really have to say about that. We feel pretty blown away sometimes.

Happy Halloween!

Talking about Button

The baby bump definitely gets a lot of love at school. The girls are infatuated with my growing belly and make sure to say good morning and goodbye to the baby each day. Last weekend I went to Kobe for a conference and missed school on Friday. When I returned on Monday, this note was on our "discovery table".

Button is the unofficial name for the little babe, coined by the girls in my class.
Vampire anyone?
When you add up the tally marks, it seems I have 60 kids in my class....curious....seems we need to do a little work on data handling.