cross-country ski-tastic

we visited our friends libby and alex in germany over president's day weekend. it was great to see them, experience their awesome house with heated floors and nearby mata castle, and take a bit of a road trip to tirol, austria and newschwanstein castle. i have no idea how that last name is actually spelled. i spelled it out phonetically so you should be able to pronounce it correctly if you sound it out as you read.

it was chilly with snow on the ground but that just made the hot chocolate that much more delicious. we hung out in landstuhl where they live for a couple days...

then made our way through the alps to tirol. we stayed in a cute bed and breakfast and went cross-country skiing, a first for all of us! all of us except J had significant difficulties with hills, both going up and coming down. enjoy this series of J's photos while you can. alex may make me take them down when he sees them. i'll send you two a cd of these soon!

cruising along, ignorant of any impending trouble...

enjoying the quaint scenery...

when we come to the top of the largest hill yet. we've struggled up a number of smaller hills by this point but this seemed like we were facing a super g slalom course or something. of course J is already at the bottom waiting, ready to snap away at our treachery... libby opted out and walked down.

here i go...

going faster than i was comfortable and the butt just went down like it had a mind of its own...

these blasted things are nothing like a snowboard...

success!

super g-force alex's turn now...

at least this fall was more spectacular than my sitting down mid-slope...

success!

on the way back to landstuhl, we took a bit of a longer route in order to go to newschwanstein castle. it's the castle that inspired cinderella's castle at disney. it was pretty impressive and had they allowed photography inside, you would be impressed too.

after five days, we had our fill of bratwurst and schnitzel and apple sparkling drink that i can't remember the name of offhand. in sum, it was a great trip with amazing hosts! thanks libby and alex for everything!!!

an update - two options

from my online searching, i've narrowed it down for now to these two choices. i'll be going to look at them in the next few days. thinking of driving around in one of these beauties is keeping me up at night. and yes- to all my future guests out there, these do have a back seat and we will get a second car later this summer- the practical car. this one will be the fun car!

the blue option (LOVE THE PLAID!)

the black option

it's a poll!

second on my to do list-- buy a car... any recommendations? i'm entertaining the idea of getting an old mini cooper. i have a thing for old cars, especially minis. the old ones that is, not the new ones. and they're super hard to come by in the US so this may be my big chance. i mean look at this beauty- what's not to love about it's compact, space-saving goodness???

thoughts?

hisashiburi

hisashiburi means "it's been a while" in my mother tongue. and it has been a while... sorry.

i'm not sure if i should actually finish the 4 posts or so that i've had on my to do list for months or if i should just pick up with where i am right now... i mean those 4 posts contain some pretty juicy updates-- the holidays, a weekend jaunt to germany, the inauguration, and my pack out complete with my own personal sherpas. since i'm waking up at 3am, i may just finish all 4 and post them at the same time. give you some serious catch up reading! turns out, this one post has taken longer than i thought so you get this one first with the other 4 to follow in the coming days- i'm sure i'll have plenty more 3am mornings.

i left DC for japan, aka my motherland, on thursday, 30 april, and arrived on friday, 1 may. the flight was pretty swell since i used miles to upgrade to business but hit a bump when our plane was quarantined for over an hour at the arrival gate. we docked and then were told we couldn't get off the plane or even get our bags out of the overhead compartments until japanese health officials had checked all passengers on our flight for swine flu. this check entailed filling out "the questionnaire of heath status," having our temperatures taken by an infrared radar thing, and wearing surgical masks "in order to protect the health workers who would board to plane to check us." the heath questionnaire and surgical masks each deserve their own paragraphs along with photos...

the questionnaire of heath status

as many of you may already know, engrish.com is one of my all time favorite websites. i mean, really, the letters "r" and "l" can be so dang pesky. maybe that's why they just left it out of the word health altogether. i think the japanese have an affinity for bureaucracy-- we got a form when we left dulles only to find out upon arrival that it was the wrong form. so they passed out all new forms that contained the exact same information in a slightly different layout. the whole plane filled out the new form noting "the question mentioned above is a thing to protect you and a family," and "hereby agreeing with the follows." classic- i was definitely back in my motherland and at this point, i hadn't even left the plane! LOVE IT!

surgical masks

anyone who has spent any time in asia or seen news coverage of asia knows asians have a thing for surgical masks. they wear them when they have colds so they don't get other people sick. americans just stay home and watch movies all day. i wish i had captured the image of a 777 plane full of people, every single one of them, yours truly included, wearing surgical masks. we were required to do so. and come to find out, the suckers were required not as a courtesy to us, the passengers. the "heath" workers who were boarding the plane to check us wanted protection in case any of us passengers were infected... what's really puzzling about this is the fact the workers were all decked out in their own surgical masks, paper surgical gowns, and gloves. that's a lot of layers for germs to penetrate. ironically, surgical masks may not even be very effective at stopping transmission of the swine flu- http://www.slate.com/id/2217045/.

the rest of the arrival process was a breeze and 75 miles in three hours later, i was checking in to my temporary lodging at camp zama. i immediately crashed, woke up in the middle of the night, and watched twilight a couple times to try to fall back asleep. all it did was give me crazy dreams about rob pattison... church on sunday was great- the serviceman's branch here is small but close-knit. bringing me to the current moment- just a couple hours away from walking to work and starting my check in process. top of the to do list now is a visit to the housing office to start looking for some sweet digs, off-base!

finally. i'm here.

holidays in florida

the holidays this year were great- full of family fun in not one but two great states. the first few days we spent in florida with my side of the family- we were able to go to bonbon's wedding at the orlando temple, celebrate noah's birthday, and have christmas on christmas eve complete with the redneck gift exchange...

noah's birthday- we bbq'd, played pin the tail on the donkey, ate cake, and drank izze sodas. so delicious. and hung out in shorts and t-shirts, a welcome break from the frigid cold of DC. and of course noah opened presents- the biggest surprise was probably the two hermit crabs he got, one named seven (picture below) and the other ninja because his shell was painted like a teenage mutant ninja turtle.

redneck gift exchange- this involved shopping at thrift stores to get funny gifts for everyone. two highlights were bj's wig to cover up all her gray hair and kristy's doll with a nursing baby that was attached to the doll's boobs with a snap- i think that one was the big winner of the night. i need to track down a photo. it was well-timed because charlee, my new niece, was still nursing and noah had found it in a bin of stuffed animals at some good will. hilarious.

christmas eve dinner - dad and i cooked a japanese feast. we had all the makings for hand roll sushi, yaki soba, gyoza, and shoga yaki (ginger pork). it was a TON of food and so good. dad tried mixing the wasabi powder- we all doubted his ability but it turned out fine with just a bit more powder.

much to mom's annoyance, bj and i kept doing goofy things with our eyes, each without knowing/realizing the other one was doing funny faces too. must be that sisterly connection. ha. we played spoons for a while too-- taught J how to play dirty and tried to help noah learn how to be sly. not sure how that worked out though.

all-in-all it was a grand time had by everyone! we went to bako on christmas day and languished for a bit there before returning home to the cold ice storms of dc again... i know i need some photos from the bako leg of the trip but i don't have any on my computer- i'll try to upload some from the other computer when J gets here.

the humidity before the storm...

tropical storm hannah has blown through our neighborhood today. mostly it's just left a lot of water in its wake but the real annoyance of the storm was the humidity on friday and saturday before the rain came. i'm all about sanitary use of public bathrooms and am a big fan of the paper seat covers. however, the paper seats were not my friend as i ventured out for a bit of touristy activity in the city. it was so humid that the paper seats stuck to my seat instead of the toilet seat... a minor annoyance to be sure but an annoyance at the storm just the same.

opening up

ok ok, the restricted blog was too hard to maintain and too confusing for too many people who didn't already have gmail accounts. so we're opening this up to the big wide world. i know i'm overdue for a post... i've got some thoughts cooking. hopefully i'll have something good in the next couple weeks for you. and happy labor day. e