We left Japan on August 8th, and arrived in Seattle the same day. We have made trips to Galesburg, Illinois and Oxford, England. In Galesburg, we visited friends and spent most of our time moving our stored items around. We prepared for a garage sale at our friends’ house, loaded a small trailer with items to bring back to Seattle, and moved tons of things into our friends’ attic. We still have one storage unit, but previously we had three.
Our primary reason for visiting Oxford was to see our granddaughter, Sophia, and her parents. We had a wonderful two weeks in Oxford. We spent a lot of time with Lisa and Sophia, and worked on some projects at the Goold house. It was our first chance to see their lovely new home. David added a new fence to the existing fence and tore up a badly made walk from the house to the shed in the back yard. I then made a new path. It was so hard to leave Sophia. She is such a darling! Leaving was made easier because we knew they would visit us in December.
We spent the fall getting our Internet soap business up and running. Our website is http://www.gourdgardens.us. We also did projects around the house. We are staying with Tina and Lorrin, and did the work on their house. David put in a toilet in the basement, and I spent many hours digging a driveway parking area and scraping paint in the bathroom. The bathroom has now been primed and looks quite good even though it is not finished. The driveway will be a permeable parking space and is still in progress. I (Karen) also spent a lot of time completing applications for jobs.
David went to visit his former boss at Seattle Vocational Institute, and was welcomed by assurance that there would be work for him there. True to his word, his boss has hired him to do curriculum development and in April he will begin teaching. This is great news for us, although it certainly changes David’s schedule a lot!
Lisa, Ben, and Sophia came for two weeks in December and made our Christmas!! Sophia was talking when she came, but chattering twice as much when she left! She was great fun, and I miss her “Amma?” calls!! We do talk to her through the video camera, but it’s not the same as snuggling with her!
We miss Tokyo a lot. I especially miss working with Michiyo and being at Waseda. I went from having an ideal work world to having no work world. It has been a drastic change, and I miss the academic challenges, although it has been nice in some ways to not have to do academic work. I am ready, however, to have a job again.
We have enjoyed living with Tina and Lorrin and Louis (their dog) and Ella (their cat), and we love Seattle. It is not Tokyo, but it is a wonderful city!