Home Sweet Home

Well, we are now back home, home....in hot and sunny Orlando, FL. We had to come back prematurely for medical reasons. Nick was not feeling so good and we decided it was best to return, for him to see his doctor, get tests and get better in our home environment. We have been back since Monday night (May 22). Nick has gone to the doctor, and since the symptoms were a little peculiar we are still waiting for the results of various blood tests to make sure he's 100% OK. He is feeling much better now and has finally been able to digest a normal meal.

No one in our families (except my sister) knew that we were coming home. We literally just walked into their houses and waited for their reactions. Nick's mom had a sixth sense about it and was not shocked at all. She had even spent the entire day cleaning the house for no reason...so she thought. My mom, grandma and aunt screamed and cried as soon as they reacted (there was a 5 second delay while their brain processed the image of us in front of them). Everyone is so happy to see us back home safe. We have been overwhelmed with their support.

It feels good to be back although we have experienced a little shock just like when we went to Japan. If you read the blog in the first month you might remember how when we visited the supermarket we could not find anything that we really wanted (especially because we couldn't read the labels). Well, after 4 months it's like our brains forgot what food we used to like. On our second day home we were excited to go to the supermarket. Oddly enough as we stood in front of aisle-long choices, nothing really looked appetizing. Our families kept asking us, "what do you want to eat? what do you crave?" and we had no answers. The only thing we are sure of is that we don't want any fast food at all especially hamburgers and fries. The only thing that sounded good to us was a home cooked meal. I guess that's one thing that I'll have to thank this Japan trip one day, I actually want to learn to cook!

Now that we are back the blog will continue although updates will be less frequent since our lives won't be as exciting anymore. Although now the purpose will be to keep our friends in Japan updated on our lives. I will be returning to Japan in August as a tourist because two of our best friends, Ashleigh and Tim, had already purchased tickets to visit us and they are non-refundable. I am excited to go back and visit the main island of Honshu and sightsee new places. I haven't figured out the exact date of when I'll be coming because I'm trying to figure out whether I will go a week before them or stay one week after so that I can go down to Sasebo and visit. We'll see.

For those of you in the US, you can contact us at our same cell phone numbers as before. For those of you in Japan, if we didn't get your contact information before we left and you would like to keep in touch please email us or leave your email as a comment on the blog and we'll be sure to contact you. Also, for the Nova teachers who may be reading this, Nick wants to apologize for the inconveniences caused by his rapid departure. Please feel free to pass on our email addresses to any students who wish to keep in touch with us.