A year later...

September 8, 2009
Lethbridge, Alberta

Well -- I never finished that last blog post, and never posted even that part of the story of our trip home. I have forgotten (blocked out?) many of the stressful details of the flight and miserable time at the Vancouver airport. But after a hard day with many tears on my part and unbelievable kindnesses from strangers at the airport, we made it home -- about an hour AFTER John and Jack arrived.  Our luggage didn't make it for another 12 days, arriving in dribs and drabs... but we were all just so happy to be home together, and just in time for Christmas.

There are so many good stories still to tell -- how Jack was kind of a "movie star" at the Tokyo airport, how John "went American" (in a good, assertive, confident, speak-your-mind kind of way) and got himself and Jack through the post-storm carnage of grumpy and delayed passengers and onto a plane out of Vancouver, how much luggage John and Jack had to carry, how the girls were SO amazing during our hellish day of standby in Vancouver, how we ordered Fruit Loops and a chicken sandwich by room service at 4 a.m. at a hotel in Calgary, how we caught a Greyhound bus home with a friend's daughter and son-in-law, and how wonderful, wonderful, wonderful it felt to come home.

Many people wrote after I stopped the blog -- many to ask "DID THE GIRLS GET CHICKEN POX?!?!?!" Yes. Katie got them first -- but on Day 19 after exposure (more than 10 days after we got home). Livie didn't get them from the exposure in Japan, but about two weeks after Katie broke out in spots, Liv did too, and had a much more severe case. We think, looking back, that Jack also had a mild case of it in Japan -- he had only had one of the two vaccinations, and that last week he had a night of fever and swollen glands and two spots on his back that (at the time) we thought were strange, but which later we realized were clearly chicken pox.

We had a wonderful Christmas and then a bit of a rough time with jet lag (and a case of strep for Jack). But by the time the new year rolled around, Jack happily went back to school, only a little bit behind in his French reading and right on track with everything else. At the end of his school year, thanks to a lot of work on his part and a lot of help from teachers, his French reading was back on track, as though he never missed a day. Kate and Liv started at preschool in Lethbridge with some funny quirks. They were so accustomed to NOT speaking at Japanese preschool... and so they said very little the first few weeks at Lethbridge preschool (once their pox were gone, of course). So if one of them needed to go to the bathroom, she'd quietly walk up to a teacher, point silently to between her legs, and wait patiently. It took a bit of time but they soon found their groove (and started speaking in class).

We have had a great time sharing our stories with the other University of Lethbridge professors and their families who have had the opportunity of living in the Guest House in Sapporo -- it's a community of people who feel like they have been given the chance to do the most wonderful thing (and wonder why more people don't sign up to do the exchange). Jack's classmate, Mina, spent the spring semester there with her parents and older sister, riding his bike and sleeping on the same tatami mats our kids slept on. We had the newest professor heading out to the exchange and some former exchange profs and families for a dinner last month, a few weeks before she and her husband left for Sapporo, and the stories didn't stop all night. It's remarkable to think that so many people could have had such great experiences there in that house and as part of that exchange, but that seems to be the case. We feel very blessed, indeed.

And we have stayed in touch with Hiromi, Ayumu, and baby Fuuka as well as Tomoko, Taiki, and Keita throughout the last nine months. Birthday gifts have gone back and forth across the Pacific, and we email each other regularly with news of the kids, the weather, and our thoughts of seeing each other again. When I look back on our time there, I count their friendships as one of the best experiences of all. What would have happened if we hadn't met Hiromi in the park that day? And how wonderful that Tomoko spoke to me that first day at school. Her friendship opened the door to the mother's groups at the kids' school and both of them gave us the rare glimpse of "real" life for a family in Japan. I do hope we are able to see them all again some day... maybe their kids will come visit us later on, or maybe we will get to return to Sapporo.

And that's the most surprising thing of all. I would LOVE to return to the Sapporo. If you had told me two years ago that those words would ever come from my mouth, I would have said you were crazy. But we all fell in love with that city and space, I think. And I imagine there are still a lot of wonderful Sapporo stories to tell.