Andrea's Rambling Notes - once from Japan, now from Canada

::Andrea's Rambling Notes - once from Japan, now from Canada::

My notes and my memories: sometimes about a mom - sometimes about a wife - sometimes about a woman - sometimes about our life

::Author::

Name::Andrea
From::Small city/town, B.C., Canada
I am a short girl from the west cost of BC, Canada and I am a proud Canadian. I went to Japan in 2000 because my Dad told me I would regret it for the rest of my life if I didn't. He was right. I lived a good life found my husband from the other side of the world and have a beautiful daughter. Basically we lead a pretty normal life filled with normal ups and downs. We both come from different cultures: me Canadian, him Chinese. Living in Japan was a real eye opener about who I am and about the people I associate myself with. I lived and loved in Japan but the time to move on came upon us and in May of 2006 we left and moved to Canada: a huge move for us all. We are now trying to start up again, remodel our lives and create our future for our family. I now feel like a tourist in the country of my birth, my eyes see different and my life will be forever changed. This blog is my notes and observations of our life, our changes, our adventures and new beginnings. Welcome.
View my complete

::Recent Entries::

::Personal Links::

My Japanese Culture Teaching Notes

::My Family's Sites::

Alisha - a site set up by friends and family of my little sis

Phrax - my step-brother

Blue Mountain Stable

::Index::

An Index of past posts - the Japan Years

::Archives::

::Image Event Album::

My Image Event Photo Album

::My FlickR Photos::

www.flickr.com

::Tech Sites::

Tech2all

Blog Flak

::Extra Internet Info::

Canadian Atlas

National Geographic

Wikipedia

World TimesZones - please check this BEFORE calling me!

Currency Converter

eigoNavi - a pretty good language converter

The Samurai Appliance Repair Man - a funny repair site for N

::World News::

Generation Woman

Japan Times

Counter Punch

Japanese General Union - a must! read before working in Japan

::RSS Feed::

Blogarama

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Thursday, November 17, 2005

I love my husband

I am soooooooooooooo bored.
More than half of my students today are at a world conference in Tokyo. They have to give presentations in front of the BIG BIG boss.
They speak in Japanese but the presentation and their wall posters have to be in English. Because of this I have actually been quite busy this past week proofreading and slicing to bits many different projects.
Now they are all gone and I am bored.
The other half of my students are on business trips. If I am luck I will have two classes today.
The problem is that I am overly organized and my in-box is COMPLETELY empty.
(sigh)
So I have read all the news that I felt like reading and am now drinking hot chocolate, eating digestive cookies and rambling on about nothing.

Hmm

To start with I must say I am very impressed with my husband right now. When he has to do something he really does do it well.

On December 4th Li has his Japanese Proficiency test. If you ever check out Medea you would know that she is also doing her test in December and has almost disappeared out of the blogging world because she is STUDYING.

Last month I was constantly bitching to Li about how he needed to start studying, and if he failed the test I would never let him live it down.

He is doing level 2, which is pretty damn hard. If you have level 2 you can enter a Japanese university. Medea is doing level one which, it is sad to say, a lot of native Japanese people would not be able to pass.

At the beginning of this month the little post card came in the mail from the test people confirming Li’s test time, name and all that crap. Some sort of light went on in Li’s brain telling him that the test was real and actually going to happen.
He has been the study king ever since.

His study books go with him everywhere, even to work. He has not played a SINGLE video game since the card came. This is a huge shock to my system. He reads his books in bed, refuses to speak English (annoying) and listens only to the Japanese study CDs, also annoying. I went through the 1 million or so books in our closet and found some other study material. For some odd reason we ended up with some level-one study books and Li has been using them as well. He admits that they are hard but he actually finds most of the level-2 stuff easy (not fair).

Then he reminded me why I love him so much.

Next month is December and the start of a zillion Bonenkais (end of the year parties). Between work and friends every Friday and Saturday during December are full. Well on our Calendar of must-go-to-parities is the Earth Family Christmas Party.

I am actually a little excited about it. One of the parents is going to be in a Santa costume and the kids are all going to get a Christmas present from Santa (supplied by mom and dad of course). I am soooooo happy that JiXiang is going to experience her first Christmas my way. She is going to see Santa for the first time and I am all giddy about it. Trust me, both cameras will be going and A MILLION photos will be taken.

The party was dampened slightly when Li said his works bonenkai was on the same day.
I was a little upset, I admit. I didn’t get mad, just said shit and damn a number of times, maybe wined a bit, but I expected him to go to the work party for a number of reasons:

it is his work party and you sort of need to go.

it is his last time with the group, he has no job as of January.

I have been spending the last few days trying to figure out how I was going to take the million or so pictures if Li was not coming. I was going to make sure the video camera was working and get one of the other parents to make sure the view finder never left JiXiang’s profile. I wanted a shot of her and I as well. I had all these scenarios going in my head.

Then on Tuesday I went:

-Li my bonenkai…
=I canceled.
-NO my bonenkai is on…
=I canceled.
-You what?
=I told my boss I was not going to the bonenkai.
-You what?
=I told my boss I wasn’t going.
-Why?
=Because Earth Family is having their party on the same day.
-Oh. Umm WOW umm ….
=I knew that you were upset and really wanted to do the party so I canceled.

HUGE HUG AND KISS TO THE HUBBY!!!

AND
He is going to make sure that he gets home early from work on the night of my bonenkai so that I can go to mine, as this will have been the ONLY party I will have attended (work and friends) since JiXiang was born.

Feeling the love.
Ahhhhhh

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Posted by (Top)Andrea::11/17/2005 :: 8 Comments:

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