Back into the fray

Well hello there, this is Willa Marie.

Me and my parents have left the safety of our precious Chicago and gone half way around the world. Again.

This post is going to be focusing solely on what it is like to be "back into the fray" if you will.

I had a moment of deja vu as we prepared ourselves for the next leg of our journey: dinners with best friends, my grandmother crying as we said goodbye yet again, and leaving behind our wonderful, little bundle of trouble (our dog) as we made our way to the airport.

We spent two days in Washington with my aunt and uncle, and cousin. That helped us all spend a bit of time to be with other people before we went off to be alone, just the three of us for the next month. There have been some times when we have been a bit tired of each other, the worst was when I tried to make a deal that would ensure that none of us would speak a word to each other during dinner one night. However, all in all I think we have been doing a wonderful job not throwing anyone out the window of our humble Japanese style hotel room.

We are still suffering slightly from some 15 hour jet lag. As a result, we wake up at about at about 5:30 am here in Kyoto. At which point we all get our selves together as much as we can and head out into the day. On one such morning blood was found on the sheets from a miraculous leg wound on my mom's calf that was the size of a baby gnat. Another morning a was woken by the sound of my forehead bonking into the leg of the tiny table next to be head.Then there was the time when I was not getting out of bed so my mom took it upon herself to jump onto me and flatten me under her full body weight as she tickled my face. When I tried to take a video of this, she reached over to take my phone from my hand and threw it across the room.

So, as you can see the mornings here in Japan don't always go as smoothly as one would like but we manage to pull ourselves together once we have found some breakfast that does not consist of a tiny octopus on a stick.

Being with these two in Japan is amazing, if a bit stressful. I am having an amazing time being in a Buddhist country (being a buddhist myself from the day I was born) but I miss every single one of you with all of my heart.

This is my first, but most certainly not my last blog post of the Thebus O'Donnell's trying to understand the inner workings of a place like Japan.

Love you!

Willa Marie