Sunday, January 29, 2006

Redux

We spent the day showing Tezz around Misawa. Tezz had been stationed in Japan about 12 years ago, but not in Misawa.

We had brunch and then spent the day touring Misawa, looking for a car, figuring out locations of housing areas and the like. In doing the "nickel tour", a lot of memories came back. Our company had just started to send folks overseas, so they had growing pains, we were shell-shocked and nervous. Sometimes it felt like we should just give it up. It was all so unfamiliar and we didn't feel we would ever manage. But somehow, we did.

Tonight, after dinner, we took Tezz to the supermarket. In seeing Tezz take in everything, I hadn't realized how far we had come, until it dawned on me that I was actually reading the label on a box of ramen soup mix. Granted, I couldn't read all of it, but I was functional. The really funny thing though, was the overhead aisle signs. When I got here a year and half ago, I couldn't make heads or tails of anything, so I never used them. Tonight at the grocery store, Tezz asked where the rice was. Not thinking, I looked up at the aisle signs, read them and found the aisle. I didn't even realize what I had done until Chris pointed it out. Part of it was pure dumb luck, as most of the writing is in Hiragana, which I can read. The rice aisle had the Kanjii for rice, but that's one I know. So wow, some of it has sunk in.

Maybe I should start Kumon back up again. Hmmmmmmmmmm. Sly, you be quiet. Stop laughing at me (I missed you and I'm glad you're back).

1 comment:

Syl said...

Yeah, I need to start Kumon again. If I could find some other class, I would take it...actually, I've been such a slacker, so I may not. Do you want to take a UMUC class?