Thursday, August 01, 2013

ChChChChchchanges.

I am totally ok with change.  I just hate that limbo stage before the change occurs...which is where my life is right now.

Kurt's replacement started in May and is AMAZING!....which means our time in Japan will be coming to a close sometime soon.  A bit of background - Kurt's main purpose in coming to Japan was to bridge the communication gap between the US/Europe/Japan offices.  They were just starting to pick up clients in Japan and needed Kurt's help to get things rolling.  Once things were semi-established Kurt was supposed to help establish a local team for 2 main reasons - 1. The Japanese respect "Japanese" companies more.  They generally don't like foreigners coming in and taking over.  And 2. We aren't going to live in Japan forever!

SDL's goal was to make all of this happen in a 2-3 year time frame, but we are a bit ahead of schedule!  It's looking like we'll be moving back to the US sometime between October and January.  We're leaning towards October, but nothing has been approved by SDL yet...so we are sitting here in limbo.

If we leave in October, we'll probably crash at Kurt's parents house in Heber until the end of the year and then move back to California in January.  If it's December-January, then we'll just move back to Boulder Creek.

In the meantime, we've made the decision to pull Logan out of Japanese school and have me home school him until we are settled back in Boulder Creek.  After being in Japanese school for 16+ months and having a personal Japanese tutor since April, he still hasn't picked up much of the language.  I guess languages just aren't his thing! Also, just to share...Logan had a great time at shogakko, pretty much the sole reason we are pulling him out of school is that he just hasn't picked up on the Japanese language like we had hoped. The sweet little girl who sits next to him was often doing his school work for him. lol We think this will be a much better learning environment for him until we move back to California.

I also hope to catch him up in Spelling and Writing so that he'll be ready for 2nd grade in January.  He hasn't really had to use those skills for Japanese school. ;) His reading, math, and science skills are way above grade level, so hopefully we can even him out a little bit.

As a Kelsie update - she is almost totally fluent in Japanese!  So I guess languages definitely are her thing!  She'll continue attending yochien until we leave Japan.  Her pronunciation is perfectly native - Kurt said it's even better than his!  Sometimes she is shy to share her talent, but once you get her to open up, she is amazing.

Random cute picture to break up this long blog post - apparently my girls take Daniel Tiger's Neighborhood very seriously.

To help pass the limbo time - we leave tomorrow for a three week vacation to the U.S.!  Kurt will actually be on vacation the entire time (baring any emergencies)!  We're spending the first week in Heber, Utah, with Kurt's family.  A few of the days will be a family reunion with his entire family present, minus Nick's family (he wasn't able to take the time off of work)!  We haven't seen some of them in over 18 months!  The kids are excited to see Grandpa's airplanes, go fishing, etc.  It should be a great time.

The last 2 weeks of our trip will be spent in California.  We'll be staying at our home in Boulder Creek for most of the time.  We can't wait to sit back, relax, and get things ready for our new granite countertops!  We have our contractor set to complete the work just after we leave.  So excited!  We'll be heading to the Monterey Aquarium, Santa Cruz, and visiting the rest of our family throughout the Bay.  

Before we fly back to Japan, we're hanging out a couple days in San Francisco.  We bought SF City Passes and my mom will be joining us as we visit the Exploratorium, CA Academy of Sciences, and take a SF Bay Cruise.  Ahhh I can't wait!!!  We leave for the airport in 12 hours!!!

1 comment:

Ariana said...

Tokyo is losing some good ones with you guys leaving!

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