Squat toilets and Australian plans

Asia is infamous for them…..the dreaded squat toilets.  I’m not going to lie…..when I first came here, I was scared/intimidated by them (and it wasn’t until several months AFTER I’d been here that I learned I was using them the wrong way).  So what does a squat toilet look like?  It’s basically a porcelain hole in the ground that you squat over to do your business (picture below).  For a while there, I didn’t particularly want to use a squat toilet, but if I had no other option, squat toilet it was.  I know several people who absolutely, positively will NOT use a squat toilet, and for the life of me I don’t understand this.  A toilet is a toilet is a toilet.  I don’t care if it’s made of gold, western style, squat, has frills, or a hole dug in the ground….it all works the same.  I feel like if you have to go bad enough, anything will do!  Generally in multi-stalled Japanese bathrooms there is (at least) one squat toilet and one western style toilet.  (Sometimes bathrooms will ONLY have squat, sometimes ONLY western.)  I have literally waited in line with other foreigners in the bathroom, and they let me jump ahead in the line because no one except for me was willing to use the squat toilets.  They were waiting for the ONE western style toilet.  It’s weird……..I’ve actually started preferring the squat toilets at school.  I’m not sure why (and it certainly didn’t used to be that way) but I’ll use the squat toilets instead of the western style toilets.  It’s really just not that big of a deal for me…… 

Our Australian vacation is rapidly approaching!      This time next week we’ll be enjoying the summertime temperatures and beach time in Cairns.    We’ve talked about doing several different expeditions and explorations of the area, but here’s the final schedule: We leave Yunomae on the night of the 24th.  Since we’re going to Mass in Hitoyoshi, we’re going to spend the night with Melissa.  On Christmas morning we’re waking up and driving to Ozu to pick up Mary.  Then we’re off to the airport in Fukuoka to catch our 2PM plane.  A short hour and twenty minutes later we arrive in Shanghai and wait for our night flight to Cairns.  (Yes, our entire Christmas Day will be spent bouncing from airport to airport, but it’s worth it.  Plus, Ian and I plan on wearing Santa hats all day.  How can you NOT be in the Christmas spirit when wearing Santa hats? )  We’ll arrive in Cairns at 8AM on the 26th.  I booked a shuttle bus to take us to our hostel, where we’ll check in for our eleven night stay.  The next order of business will be to acquire our bikes that we rented.  (We won’t have a car….just bikes while in Cairns.) 

There are two major activities that we have planned for Cairns.  The first is one that I’m SUPER excited about.  We debated a LOT about whether to go snorkeling, SCUBA diving, or touring the Great Barrier Reef while in Cairns, but Ian found a tour that does all three in one.  YEEESSSSSSSSSSSS!!!!  It’s an all day tour that begins at 7:30 and doesn’t end until 4:30.  Breakfast and lunch are served on the boat, there’s snorkeling in the morning, a glass bottom boat tour after lunch, and then SCUBA diving in the afternoon.  What’s great about the snorkeling and SCUBA diving adventure is that it’s guided by a marine biologist, so he/she can say things like “Hey, look at that such-and-such anemone over there!” or “This is a blah-blah-blah fish, and it’s special because blah-blah-blah.”  This entire tour only costs $170.  That is a STEAL!  $170 does initially sound expensive, but you have to think big picture here.  The one time we went snorkeling in Florida, it was about $100/person….that was JUST for a few hours of snorkeling without a guide, meals, or anything.  When you look at it from that perspective, we are getting a STEAL! 

The second thing we’re going to do is take a 4-wheeler tour of the rain forest outside of Cairns.  Originally this idea was going to be a motorcycle tour, but Ian found out that it was going to be MUCH cheaper to ride 4-wheelers.  I’m not super excited by this idea because riding 4-wheelers through the woods is something I can do at home.  If the tour includes crystal clear streams, jungle-y looking trees, and cool stuff like that, I’m okay.  If it includes the same scenery that I can find at home…..

The rest of our time is going to be exploring Cairns on our bikes, going to the beach and lagoon, touristy shopping, and whatever else we feel like doing.  I’ve heard that Cairns has a good botanical garden (I sound like my dad saying that) and is pretty well set up for tourists.  SO.  FREAKING.  EXCITED!!!!  We fly out on January 6th….which is going to be a long, loooooong day.  We’ll go from Cairns to Shanghai, Shanghai to Fukuoka, drive back to Hitoyoshi, and finally arrive back in Yunomae late that night.

Two things happened to me yesterday where I kind of stopped, paused, and thought about our life here vs. at home.  The first was finding out that my 6th grade teacher is the same age as me.  I mean….I knew that he was a younger teacher, but I was thinking like early 30s younger.  I had no idea that we were the same age!  I ate lunch with my 6th graders yesterday, and we played the everyone-at-Melissa-sensei’s-lunch-table-go-around-and-say-how-old-you-are game.  They then asked me how old I was.  (One sarcastic boy answered for me and said, “Eighty-five!”)  I said twenty-six, and all of the kids were surprised.  They told me that their teacher was also twenty-six.  NO WAY!!!  It got me thinking about how differently our lives were even though we’re the same age and have the same job.  I honestly could NOT imagine working like a Japanese teacher.  They get to school between 7 and 8AM, teach six classes a day, and then don’t go home until 6, 7, or 8PM (sometimes even later!) at night.  It’s crazy!  Not only that, but his social norms, values, beliefs, and ways of thinking are different from mine.  I understand these concepts and have been working with Japanese co-workers since day one, but it just struck me odd since I found out that we are the same age.

The second thing happened when we were driving home last night.  We got stuck behind a slow driver in Taragi (seriously going LESS than 40 kph).  I noticed on the license plate that the car was from Miyazaki, the Prefecture just south of Kumamoto and just so happens to be a ten minute drive from Yunomae.  Since we picked up the car in Taragi on the 219, we knew that it was probably going through Yunomae and would continue on the 219 into Miyazaki…..at an agonizing 40 kph.    I swore and complained to Ian.  Our conversation went something like this:

Ian: “Hmmmm…..do you find that weird?”

Me: “What?”

Ian: “That we’re complaining about Miyazaki drivers.  You know that if we were at home and got stuck behind some car with an Illinois plate, we’d be saying the same thing: Freaking Illinois driver!  Learn how to drive!”

HAHAHAHAHA!!!  It’s sooooooo true!  I guess it just goes to prove that it doesn’t matter where you go, there’s always going to be a pesky out-of-state driver!!

Anyway, that’s all for now.  I’ll probably write one more blog tomorrow, and that may very well be the last blog of the year.  I’m not sure if we’ll have decent Internet in Cairns, so if we don’t, you’ll just have to wait until the new year to hear about our adventures!

Let’s play adventure time!

Our Saturday was pretty full.  There is a private after school English school in Asagiri, and several ALTs are friends with the women who run it.  Therefore, we were invited to the Christmas party.  It wasn’t so much of a party as an interactive talent show.  We went last year, and while it was cute to watch the kids sing songs and recite English speeches, (They were amazing!!  Half of my JHS kids can’t speak as well as those ES kids!!) the entire thing was 3.5 hours long……..which was a little too long in my opinion.  One of my students goes to this English school, and I had no idea!  I knew that she was a really good student and is always excited to see me and have English class, but I had no idea that she also goes to an after school English school.  Last year we were able to passively watch, but this year we had to participate.  We had to go to the stage and introduce ourselves in both English and Japanese.  The kids were surprised that there were two Melissas.  It was as if the concept of two foreigners having the same name was impossible!    I know for a fact that I have a couple of kids with the same names in my classes, so I’m not sure why it came as such a surprise that two foreigners have the same name.  I know that if I were in the kids’ situation, I would be thinking SWEET!  That’s one less foreign name for me to remember! 

Then the kids did a song and dance number, we watched a slide show, and then we were back on the stage to explain what Christmas meant to us as Americans.  There was a brief break, and then the kids preformed a play.  Last year the play was about Christmas things—the Nativity, a Christmas tree got thrown in there, and it ended with Christmas songs being sung.  However, this year the play was about traveling the world.  A few students “traveled” to different countries: Spain, Brazil, France, Tanzania, India, and England.  Each time the kids traveled to these countries, the representative of the countries (another student) spoke in the native language.  I tried to pick up on the Spanish, but it was thickly accented.    After the play, the winner of the speech contest was announced.  It was no surprise to me.  The kids who won were fantastic!  The boy I found especially funny.  The kid had SWAG.  As he got off the stage and walked back to his seat, he had such confidence and showed it.  It was funny!  One of the final things we did was break into groups and make a human knot.  For those who aren’t familiar with this, everyone gathers in a circle, puts their right hands in, and grabs someone’s hand from across the way.  The same thing is done with the left hand.  Then everyone has to work together to unknot themselves.  I remember playing this game in girl scouts, but I highly doubt that it would work in today’s school system.  All members have to get close and personal, and with today’s sexual harassment policies, stuff like that just wouldn’t fly!  When we played this game on Saturday, I’m pretty sure that I (unconsciously) sexually harassed a few kids and was sexually harassed in turn.

The program had a snow machine and was turned on during a couple of the song and dance routines.  At the end of the program, the snow machine was turned on full blast, and all of the ALTs rushed forward to play in it.  I’ve never played in snow machine snow before.  I’m not exactly sure what the snow was made from—some said foam, some said soap.  All I know is that sticking my tongue out to catch a few flakes was a bad idea.    All of the ALTs may all be twenty-something, but we’re still kiddies at heart!  I’m actually not sure who enjoyed playing in it more….us, the kids that joined us, or the respected Japanese adults taking pictures and videos of the crazy foreigners dancing and playing in the fake snow.    When it was turned off, everyone gave a collective sound of disappointment, so they turned it on again for us to play in.  HA! HA!  Yes, we are a big bunch of fools!      

That night Ian and I had a date night.  We decided to take time for ourselves.  Usually if we go out to dinner or do anything, we invite others to join us.  Unless we are at home together, rarely to we do something with just the two of us.  Originally the plan was to drive into Hitoyoshi and get dinner.  However, Ian said that he didn’t really feel like it.  I suggested that we go home and cook the steaks that were in the freezer.  (I ordered Ian a bunch of hard-to-find-in-Japan meats for Christmas, including two filets.  We were saving them for a special occasion.)  Ian cooked those, and I made mashed potatoes with a box of shells and cheese that we got in one of our packages last week.  Even though it was a stay-at-home dinner, we made it special.  I placed a few Christmas decorations on our table, and Ian lit a couple of candles.    Awwwwww…..

Sunday was a bright and beautiful day.  Even though it was mid-December, the high that day was in the 60s.  After we finished out Skype calls, we settled in for another lazy day.  However, the day was too nice to waste!  I told Ian that we HAD to get outside and do something.  I asked if he wanted to go for a walk, but he suggested going to the park in Mizukami.  We pass by it all the time and have always said that we want to go there but never have.  Then I suggested the waterfalls that we always see the sign for but have never seen.  Before we knew it, we had a day of adventure planned!

Our first stop was at the park.  Mizukami is seriously in the middle of nowhere, yet that park was pretty cool.  There were rolling man made hills that Ian and I agreed if it ever snowed a decent amount we would go sledding on.  I don’t know why, but we laughed hysterically and had the best time running from hill to hill with each other.  Then we discovered a trail leading into the bamboo forest.  Since it was a warmer day, I was terrified that a snake might find its way to us, but luckily it didn’t.  That didn’t stop Ian from making “sssssssssss” sounds and scaring me half to death a couple of times.    The trail was a dead end, so we continued to wander through the park until we found a giant slide built into the mountainside.  AMAZING!!!  I knew IMMEDIATELY that I had to go on that slide.  There were three landings: a short slide (maybe 100 feet), a longer slide (maybe 250 feet), and the longest slide (probably darn near 500 feet).  I started off with the longer slide.  Like the child that I am, I pushed myself away from the landing and whizzed down the hillside.        So.  Much.  Fun!!!  However, I should have thought things through.  Slides in Japan are built with rollers……like what you see in an assembly line.  The force of that friction against my bum wasn’t pleasant….to say the least.  The next time around I took off my hoodie and rode down on that.  MUCH BETTER!  When I climbed the hill to slide down the longest slide, I noticed several torii, which indicate the entrance to a shrine.  Once I slid down to the bottom where Ian was waiting, I suggested that we explore the shrine. 

The shrine was actually rather old and broke-down, but the same pathway lead to an awesome lookout spot.  We could see across our mountain valley and could pinpoint landmarks in Yunomae—Yurari onsen, the JHS, the yellow BOE, the 219, etc.  It gave us a different and very interesting perspective of our mountain valley.  Our final thing to do was play on the jungle gym.  Of course it was made for kids….but did that stop us?  NOPE! 

We then drove to the waterfalls.  For the past year every time we passed by the sign pointing at the road leading to the waterfalls, I thought we should go there sometime.  The road took us to a very, VERY remote area of our gun.  I could probably count the number of houses that we passed on one hand.    We finally found the waterfalls and after a short walk to them were a bit disappointed.  They were man made waterfalls—dismal to say the least.  After all of that lead-up and thoughts that it was going to be wonderful, it was just water falling down a concrete wall…..dismal indeed. 

Ian said that he wanted to continue adventure time and push onward toward Hitoyoshi.  He wanted to stop at the Itsuki shrine and take pictures.  He went there back in June to help David and a few others film a movie but didn’t have his camera with him at the time and never went back to take pictures.  I had never been there, and it was a pretty cool shrine.  It’s on the top of this hill in the middle of a rice field.  There are concrete stairs up, but they are STRAIGHT up…..an excellent leg workout.    We stayed there until it got dark, and from there we drove the short distance to Hitoyoshi for dinner.  For the second night in a row, we had a date night.    Usually if we go to dinner ANYWHERE, we try to call up and invite friends, but that night it was just Ian, me, and delicious Indian food.   

Alright.  That’s all for now.  Since today is Wednesday, that means that my work week is officially halfway over!  Hurray!  I’m on the downhill slope heading right for Friday, that beautiful three day weekend, and then a Christmas/New Year’s vacation to Australia.  CANNOT CONTAIN EXCITEMENT!!!       

Happy thoughts

I’m currently playing the waiting game……both today and for the rest of the week.  I have no classes today, so I’m playing the waiting game for 4:15 to get here so that I can go home.  I’m playing the waiting game for the rest of the week because I’m ready for the three day weekend.  I only have four more mornings to wake up, and four more days of school!  I’m playing the waiting game for our trip to Australia.  Exactly one week from tomorrow, we will board a plane and be bound for Cairns!  I keep thinking these happy thoughts to get me through the day! 

Last Friday afternoon my JHS had a road race.  What does that mean?  Basically all of the kids are assigned a race: the short, medium, or long race.  Each student (unless they’re on crutches or something) has to run in one of the races.  The shortest one was about 1.5 km, and the longest was 4km.  All week long whenever I asked kids if they were excited for the road race on Friday, I kept getting the same answer: NO.  When I asked if they liked running, I also got the same answer: NO.  So why do this?  ……because they HAVE to.  I’m not sure who’s in charge of when this road race is held or why it’s ALWAYS in December, but this seems like the WORST time of year to have it.  Why can’t we wait until March or April when the trees are budding, the grass is a little greener, and the temperature is much warmer?    I felt bad for the kids on Friday.  Although it wasn’t nearly as cold as it has been, it was still a little chilly.  They had to wear their uniform gym clothes—a short sleeve shirt and navy blue shorts.  They kept shuffling around saying “Samui!  Samui!”  (I’m cold!  I’m cold!)  I let a couple of girls try out my new gloves with the fluffy fleece lining on the inside.  They LOVED them and kept going on and on about how soft and warm they were.    They asked me where they were from, and I told them that they were a Christmas present from my sister.

Watching the race was okay.  I kind of felt like the outsider again.  Each teacher knew exactly what they were doing and where they should be going.  Each was assigned a roll—water hand-outer, stop watch person, start gun shooter, organizer of parents, etc.  I was the the awkward foreigner wandering around looking for a friend to talk to.  The beginnings and endings of the races were fun—cheering on the runners.  The ends of races took a longer amount of time because there could be a 15-20 minute difference between the first and last person through.  As if running in the cold wasn’t bad enough, the weather decided to take a turn for the worst.  It started to rain.   Everything and everyone was wet.  Luckily, I had enough layers on up top that I never felt it.  The bottoms of my pants, however, did indeed get soaking wet.    Once again….whoever has the bright idea to do this race in December every year is not my friend.

Friday night was our annual Kuma-gun Christmas party.  Since Ian took the car up to the city earlier in the day to work, I had to take the train to Asagiri.  As soon as I left work, I stopped by the house very quickly to change clothes and then quickly pedaled my little butt to the train station to catch the 4:32 train.  Margo picked us up and took us to her house where Mary and Ian were already busy at work making pizzas.  There was a TON of prep work to do before people came over.  Ian made the marinara sauce, and then we had to make two batches of dough, cut up alllllll of the toppings, set out the drinks, etc.  While Ian made the sauce, Margo put the finishing touches on decorations, I kneaded the dough, and Devin and Mary cut the veggies and meats for toppings.  We were finished and ready to go before the first guest arrived.  The only downside was that we had to wait for Melissa, who was bringing the cheese.  She had to stay late at work and then pick up David in Hitoyoshi, so she was one of the last to arrive.  Pizza making is NOT a quick thing to do…..especially when you have several hungry pairs of eyes watching the clock on the oven tick down.  I worked as quickly as possible, but all-in-all, it took about two hours from the time of the first pizza going in until the last one came out.  I lost track of how many pizzas I made.  Meat pizza, veggie pizza, Hawaiian pizza, sausage and beef pizza, ham and mushroom pizza, green pepper, tomato, and bacon pizza, and oh so many more options went in and out of that oven! 

 

There were a few times when I felt like an idiot while making pizzas.  I knew that we were getting a late start and that people were hungry, so I got a bit frazzled.  Pizzas are easy to make, right?  Dough, sauce, cheese, toppings.  The very first pizza I made, I patted out the dough and tossed the cheese on.  Ian said, “Ummm…are you going to put sauce on that?”  *face palm*  A little while later, I was back at it again!  I put the ingredients on in this order: sauce, toppings, cheese.  Doh!!  After working at a pizza restaurant for 7ish years, you’d think I’d know how to make a pizza! 

 

Not only did we have pizzas, but everyone else made delicious desserts.  Krista made peppermint brownies, Shara made sugar cookies, Sara made gingerbread cake, David made homemade eggnog, and Joe made everyone’s favorite…chocolate chip cookies!  After everyone had their fill of pizza, we watched a movie that David had worked on the set of before coming to Japan.    To end the night, we had birthday cake.  Ah, yes.  The debacle of the night.  Both Katakin and Brian have birthdays in December, and we said that we would celebrate their birthdays that night since we’d all be together.  However, guess who didn’t show up?  BOTH Katakin AND Brian.  I’m not sure if Katakin forgot or what, and Brian was visiting his friend near Ashikita.  That didn’t stop us from celebrating!  We all signed their cards and gave them to whoever would see those two next and ate our fill of THEIR birthday cake.

I guess I had so much fun at the party that my body just didn’t want to accept sleep when we got home.  I tossed and turned for a good long while (VERY uncommon for me!) before FINALLY falling asleep sometime after 2AM.

Shocking discoveries and Christmas!

Something weird happened to me at nursery school on Tuesday.  As part of my Christmas lesson, I gave the kids a color-by-number worksheet to do.  Everything was good and great.  I had the crayons on the back table, and at any given point in time I was surrounded by at least five kids asking if they could use purple (no), what color number two was (orange), where a blue was (on the table).  Out of the jumble of Japanese questions, I thought that I heard some English.  My brain automatically focused in on that, and one of the little boys said, “can’t.”  I thought wow, that’s kind of advanced for a nursery school kid to say.  The boy went to his desk and then came back to me.  He said (in crystal clear perfect English) “My crayon doesn’t work.”      I was BLOWN AWAY.  I’ve had this kid in class since March, and never once have I heard him utter English except for the current vocab they were learning.  I asked him what was wrong with it, and he said that his red crayon was writing pink.  I tried it out myself and said, “Look, it’s red.  It’s okay.  You can still use it.”  He didn’t want that crayon, though.  So I asked him if he wanted a blue crayon.  He said, “No, I want the red one.”  THIS.  KID.  FLUENTLY.  SPEAKS.  ENGLISH.  Where in the HECK did he come from????  Clearly one of his parents is a native English speaker.  That’s the only way he could be that good that young.  ……Are there other foreigners in my town?  Who are these people, and why haven’t I met them??

I received excellent news on Tuesday.  After completing my TEFL course and taking that ridiculously long test, I PASSED!!  Yaaaaaaaay!!!    Regardless of if I’ll use that after my time in Japan or not, it’s one more thing that I can put on my resume, and due to the grant I received, it was basically free.  That’s the BEST kind of certification, isn’t it?

Tuesday night I made gingerbread.  It was a little difficult to find a recipe that I had all of the ingredients for.  Finding certain things like molasses or shortening is quite difficult in Japan.  However, I found a recipe that required only one hard-to-find ingredient, molasses.  With the help of Google, I found out that I could substitute brown sugar for molasses.  They turned out PERFECTLY!!  The dough was the PERFECT consistency for rolling out and using my Christmas tree and star cookie cutters on!!  Plus, the dough was delicious.  The cookies were spicy and reminded us both of Christmas time at home.  Yum!! 

On Wednesday at the ES, I had a free period in the morning.  Both my principal and vice principal took the opportunity to chat with me.  It was the most pleasant conversation, and I really enjoyed it!  We talked about many topics.  They asked how long Ian and I have been married and if we plan on having kids soon.  (EEK!)  I told them that we were waiting until we got home to have babies.  I learned that my principal has twin daughters who are just a year older than me, one lives in Fukuoka and the other in Tokyo.  Then they asked if I was staying another year.  I sighed and said no, but  I love Japan and Yunomae very much and the reason that I’m leaving is that I miss my family very much.  They said that they understand and that they (and the kids!) will be very sad when I leave.  They said that I had a great personality, was always smiling, and could speak English well.  …….Thanks…?  The first two things were definitely compliments, but I sure as heck hope that I could speak English well since it’s my first language!    My principal asked me where I would work when I went home, and I told him that I’ll go back to my teaching job at the university.  We then talked about a few cultural differences.  All in all, I greatly enjoyed that conversation!!  However……..that afternoon it was just me and my vice principal in the teacher’s room.  I like my vice principal.  He’s a nice guy, but he chats on and on and on and on……  He wants to talk about anything and everything.  It becomes rather annoying sometimes whenever I have work I need to do…..like on Wednesday.  Whenever he starts the chatting and there’s a small lull, I’ll get up and go hang out in the bathroom for a few minutes, hoping that the break in conversation will stop his chatting.  Sometimes it works, and sometimes it doesn’t.  Sometimes he moves onto something that he has to work on, and sometimes he continues to talk as if there was no pause in conversation. 

On Thursday night, I had my kiddie eikaiwa class.  I had it all planned out: we were going to make Christmas cards and then watch the Charlie Brown Christmas movie while eating gingerbread cookies and sipping homemade hot chocolate.  My normal classroom has a projector, so I can hook up my computer easily.  However….last night didn’t go as planned.  It was good intentions with a bad result.    For whatever reason, a group was having a meeting in my normal classroom, so I got booted to the smaller room…which DOESN’T have a projector.  We had to watch the movie on my tiny little computer screen, and even with the volume turned all the way up, it was still not loud enough.  The kids totally didn’t give a CRAP about it.  To make matters worse, I spilled some of the hot chocolate on the tatami mats, and the card making didn’t go as well as planned and was a HUGE mess to clean up.  Blarg!  I HATE whenever stuff goes wrong!!

Speaking of things not going as planned……yesterday I had to make a batch of cookies for an event that we’re going to tomorrow.  I decided to make gingerbread since I had such great success earlier in the week.  However, I’m not sure what went wrong.  The first batch I made (to take to my eikaiwa kiddies) was waaaaaaaaay too dry.  I had to add a little milk just to make the dough stick together.  When the cookies were finished, I tried one.  I’m not sure how I did it, but they tasted more like OATMEAL cookies than gingerbread.    The second batch I made were too sticky!  There was NO WAY I could roll out the dough and try to use cookie cutters on them.    Finally, I made a cake to celebrate Katakin and Brian’s birthday tonight at our Christmas party.  Even though I cooked it for the MINIMUM time, it slightly burned on the top.  When I iced the cake later on, I also wrote “Happy Birthday” on it and set it in our hallway to chill.  When I looked at it a few minutes later, the letters had all run together, and this morning before I left I looked at it again.  The letters were unrecognizable.  WHY IS IT THAT WHEN YOU MAKE SOMETHING FOR YOURSELF (for example the good gingerbread cookies) IT WORKS OUT PERFECTLY, BUT WHEN YOU MAKE IT TO TAKE SOMEWHERE IT’S A FAILURE?!?!  WHY IS THAT?!?!  ARRRRRGGGG!!!

 

After much complaining, it’s time for a happy thought.    Yesterday, we received two Christmas packages in the mail.  Hurray!  Ian called me during the day to tell me, and I told him that we should open them together.  By the time I got off of work, he left to go to work, so we didn’t get to do it until late last night.  I had placed them under our tree…..rather our tree was sitting on the boxes (above left).  I had the idea to wait until Christmas Eve to open them, but alas!  I was too curious about the contents to be able to do that!  Opening those packages certainly was just like Christmas morning!  One was from my sisters, and the other was from my cousins.  My sisters had packed that box full of candy, toothbrushes (Amanda is  dentist!), and warm things—a scarf, fuzzy socks, two pairs of gloves, etc.  I couldn’t have been happier!  The second box was full of candy—Reece’s, Starburst, Milky Way, Tootsie Rolls, just about any American candy you can think of was in there!  We most certainly felt like it was Christmas and were tickled pink to get such great gifts from our family!