Permanent Residence

Permanent Residence We are now in our Permanent Residence, yippee!! It is beautiful and spacious! The main floor is an open living room, dining room, kitchen and family room are, with a half bath. All the furniture is a dark collared solid wood, which is gorgeous! We have a nice showcase cabinet which has a mix of Canadian and Japanese items, and we turned the family room into Brooke's playroom, which she loves. The second floor is three bedrooms, 2 full baths and a large terrace. We already bought a new BBQ and a pool that is large enough for Graham and I to relax in at the same time, or for Brooke to play in, we all love it! It is still very humid here (up to 45+ degrees with the humidity), so having the pool on the terrace is a nice way to enjoy the sunshine but stay cool. Graham's commute to work increased however :( from 1 minute to 3 minutes, LOL!!! On a very good note, we now have full internet access, so we can Skype now and update the Blog more frequently, so I will now update the blog more, with shorter messages :)) Brooke Milestones - This morning she randomly counted to 12, I was shocked!! I asked her to do it again, and she didn't, it was pretty awesome to hear! - She has her colors and shapes down pretty well, she likes to walk up the stairs at our new home and point out the stairs that are rectangle and those that are triangle :) - We are slowly working on the Alphabet, but not to much - Japanese she knows about 5 words, just a few less than me so far, which is very good! We will be starting a language class together in September - Brooke has been showering most mornings, while I get ready :) She took up showering when we were in our Edmonton hotel, and really seems to enjoy it. - She saw her first fireworks last night, you could see some from our main floor window. The baseball stadium isn't to far away and they have fireworks at the end of each game. At least now she knows what fireworks are. The other day we could hear fireworks as there was a long 1 hour show outside, that we couldn't see, we could only hear. Brooke has been VERY sensitive to noises lately so she didn't really like hearing the fireworks, especially the finale as she was in bed trying to sleep. The last few days she has been saying "no fireworks" before bed and when she gets up, LOL.. However now that she has seen them, and understands what they are, I think she will get over this. We will see. Also if she randomly hears a noise outside, or in the house, she is always asking "whats that", so I am explaining lots of noises to her lately. New Friends We hang out with a few people at the Embassy. Mark and Amanda are the main two, they are close to our age, and are expecting their first child in November, very excited for them! They are very nice, and easy to get a long with. Brooke and I joined a mothers playgroup and have met up with a lady named Anna a few times, and her daughter Noa, Brooke is happy to be making new friends, as she likes to ask for "kids". I am very impressed, she has really picked up sharing the last few weeks, and loves to really explore when we are at new places. Graham and I went out for our first date night!!! So much fun!! We had Elaine, a Nanny for the embassy, watch Brooke for a few hours. We went out to a Canadian style pub for part of it, then decided to venture out and pick a random Japanese place. Wow, was it ever random. We walked into a building, which had several different names of different bars on a sign, and picked one, I think it was called 301. We went up the elevator and opened the door that said 301, it was a guy behind a bar, and two men sitting on stools, in this SUPER tiny room, LOL! Not really what I think of as a bar. I was ready to turn around and walk out at first, as I felt a bit uncomfortable, however we sat down at the other two bar stools. The 2 fellows and the bartender spoke a BIT of English, so we had a bit of conversation and some laughs. Through the conversation, we picked up the fact that on Fridays they play Jazz all night, and Saturday (the day we went), they drink, drink drink! We bought a few drinks, and the bartender also offered us a few freebees. One of the freebees was Amaretto. They said "shot", so I took it and shot it down in one gulp, oops, right away one of the guys started to point at me and say no,no that's how they do it in China, here we sip it. hahah, they didn't seem to mind, but I felt a bit embarrassed, oh well at least I know for next time. The next one they gave was Southern Comfort, ewww, I tried to say no, but they gave it anyway, I didn't drink much so he ended up adding coke to it, and I drank that one REAL slow. Overall it was a great night, and we will definitely go back on a Friday night and hear them play. Our next date night is going to be a Japanese Baseball game with a group of people from the Embassy, which should be very interesting! That's all for now. I now have photo bucket linked to my phone, however it will use my data right now. As soon as we get a wireless router I will be able to upload pictures right from my phone, without using data. This should happen next week, so I will upload more pictures then. All the best and chat to you guys soon. xoxo