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In: Japan

This year has been quite the year for natural disasters in Japan. Well, for everyone, really…but since I’m in Japan, it just feels like every week there is something happening. First, we had a long and extremely cold winter with the unusually large amount of snowfall. The cold weather threw off the arrival of spring and caused confusion to the cherry blossom trees. Of course, we also had that horribly destructive earthquake at the same time and with all the chaos that it caused, spring went by without much notice. Then, when things were beginning to settle down, summer approached, leaving us with a veryRead More →

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In: Parenthood, Photography

It’s no secret that I’m a photographer of some sort…at least in an academic sense. Still, I love to document things I see and experience through my lens everyday. So it’s no big surprise that E picked up on that interest and wants to be like me. Now I’m all for fostering my child’s interest in learning and exploring new things. I just don’t want to do it with my cameras because, frankly, they are nice cameras and E has butter-fingers. I use to let her play with my Fujifilm instax a lot but she kept dropping it due to the weight and she alsoRead More →

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In: Parenthood, Reflections

Jason and I are quite proud of how far we’ve come as parents. I mean, we were completely clueless as to how to raise a child but so far, we’ve done a fairly decent job of raising E. We’re not experts in this whole parenting thing and we’re constantly learning and relearning things that we thought we had down pat. Every time we thought we had some of this all figured out, the rules change on us and we’re back to square one. Still, we were doing a pretty good job keeping E from doing something dangerous and hurting herself. At least until yesterday afternoon.Read More →

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In: Reflections

Today marks the 10th year since 9/11 occurred. I still remember what I was doing on that day when this tragedy struck the United States. I was asleep. Yes, I was asleep for most of that day because I had just moved into a new apartment and the school year had not started yet. I was in my last year of college at that time so I was somewhat poor and had no furniture other than my computer, a mattress and a tv. My roommates had not returned for school yet so I had nothing else to do but to waste my day away byRead More →

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In: Life, Reflections

I’m not much of a crier. Well, at least not when I’m around people. It’s a strange habit of mine to cry alone. For some reason, I have it in my head that crying in front of people is a negative thing because it shows weakness. Plus, once you start crying you just can’t stop. That display of uncontrollable emotion is something I’m not comfortable with. I’m not quite sure how all this came about but I know it has to be a childhood trauma of some sort. All I know is that I try to avoid situations where I would find myself unable toRead More →

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In: Life

When I went home in August to clean out my room, I found quite a bit of things from my childhood that brought back so many memories. It also reminded me of how strange a child I must have been for my parents. One of the many interesting things I discovered during cleaning was this: My journals. It seems that my habit of writing down and recording the silly, mundane moments in my life started when I was rather young. And just like how I am now, I had a very bad habit of not writing on a consistent basis, sometimes leaving a whole 3Read More →

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In: Parenthood

E is at quite a fun age right now. I’ve been told that the toddler years can be a lot of fun as well as frustrating since it’s when they learn how to communicate and at the same time test their boundaries. These days, E is very talkative. Sometimes a little too talkative….like those days when I have a migraine and all I hear is “mummy, mummy, mummy.” Despite those days, it’s actually a lot of fun conversing with E especially since she has quite an extensive vocabulary now. Her vocabulary is about 70% Japanese, 15% English and 15% Ellie-go (her own language). She singsRead More →

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In: Life

We are all storytellers. I believe that every one of us has stories to share.  In fact, our lives are made up of many little stories all woven into one big one. Our stories are an important part of our lives because they are reminders of our past memories and experiences. We share stories as a means to bond with others as well as to teach the lessons we’ve learned from our past. There are so many different ways to share stories too.  Many of us share them verbally when we talk to family and friends about things that happen in our daily lives orRead More →