Fond memories

We've been back in the US for three whole months, and I completely let the blog slide. It was difficult to look back at our lovely three years in Japan at the same time when I and our whole family had to face front and live in the present. It's also hard to know what to write about life in the US without the novelty and cultural differences that I found in Tokyo on a daily basis.

(I'll just add here, briefly, that if you ever have the chance to be an expat, do it. It's a fantastic way to live for months or years - whatever you can manage.)

But heck, why not try to write about life today? I'll do my best, but might throw in some photos (like the one of our family at the Great Wall) that I never managed to publish on the blog before this.

And to get things started, I'll quote Arno, who tonight became very teary about missing his friends in Tokyo -- especially his best friend Marcel -- and his school, Willowbrook, where he spent three delightful years.

Arno was completely comfortable and confident at Willowbrook; it was an ideal situation for him. All of the teachers knew him and Arno knew, with absolute certainty, that he would be greeted with smiles every day. That feeling of specialness is harder to find in a public-school kindergarten with 26 other students, no matter how skilled the teacher.

So tonight, thinking about his friends in Tokyo, he pulled out his Willowbrook yearbooks and scanned the photographs and cried a bit. And then he said, "I have fond memories of Willowbrook." (Seriously, the kid is about to turn 6 and used the word "fond.") As we all do of Tokyo and our many adventures and friends there.