The Ex-Pat Life

It is easy to portray the Ex-Pat life as glamorous. We live in a foreign country. We visit temples on the weekend. We have full-page visas in our passports.

It can be great - we can easily take a jaunt to Kamakura or Kyoto. We fully intend to spend a long weekend in Seoul in the near future. One of my new staples in the kitchen is miso paste.

It can be stressful - it sucks that we don't speak more Japanese. Because we are here for Michael's job, his work takes a higher priority than we would like. The time difference makes it difficult to deal with our affairs that need to be conducted during business hours in the States.

Sometimes, though, it is nice to remember that it is just our life. We don't always have to be doing "Japan things."

This past weekend we:

• slept in
• made brunch
• went out for coffee
• did the grocery shopping
• took naps
• baked a cake, and
• cleaned up around the house.

This is pretty much exactly what we would do in Chicago (except the sleeping in part - we have gotten lazy in Japan). And it was a great weekend. Just what we needed.