From Pennies To Yennies

Hello!

Pardon the absence. As many of you readers know, the morning the fire broke out at the nuclear plant in Sendai, we made the decision to return home for an extended stay. It was free to move our April tickets up a couple weeks, and Dan could work from the northwest, so why not? After deciding to leave town, we only had about an hour and a half to pack our bags for 3 weeks and get on the trains en route to Narita Airport.

The trains were packed with people heading to the airport, but luckily for us many people were headed to Korea to evade radiation and other devastation. We made it to Narita, boarded a plane, and before we knew it, our Wednesday began again, this time in Seattle Washington.

I spent the day with my friend Kelsey while Dan went to Microsoft and got his work setup situated. Then we ran some errands, checked into a hotel, and went to sleep for the night at about 6:30pm. Jetlag can be rough!

We awoke the next day and headed to the Japanese Consulate so I could get my visa for Japan rolling. Took care of that and we headed down to Portland. It was Dan’s grandpa’s 90th birthday, and we went to a really wonderful celebration for that. After that I saw some friends briefly before we, yet again, crashed ridiculously early for the night.

The following week has been a whirlwind of visiting friends and family, Dan working, and stocking up on beloved American hair care products (ok, that last one might only be for me :)). It’s been a challenge squeezing all our social commitments in, but I think we did a great job. We even fit in a trip down south to Corvallis!

Tomorrow (Sunday the 27th) we head up north to Seattle for the remainder of the trip. Dan will continue working, we will visit with friends, attend a wedding for a dear friend, and are having some pictures taken down by the Kirkland Waterfront.

We are set to return to Japan April 4th, hopefully with no disasters stopping us! And hopefully this will be the longest I ever put my blog on hiatus!