Still alive!

And adapting, because when you ask a five years old what she had for breakfast on Tuesday and the answer "fish" sounds to you not only normal but also a healthy alternative to cookies, that's because you're adapting.

Anyway, for a sum up of my latest adventures...

Please enjoy your welcoming typhoon

Last weekend there was a typhoon. There's another one coming this Tuesday. They tell me this is just the season, but I think I may have brought them with me. Maybe I'm some kind of weather divinity. Who knows.

Anyway, an update on my life... Pictures included!

Leaving is easier when you have a return ticket.

You leave anyway, obviously, but somehow it helps to know that in x months you are going to go back home. When you feel homesick you can look at the calendar and count the days until you can see your family and friends again. When you leave without knowing when you will return, you lose that supporting comfort and even if you know you're going back someday, it's like it'll never come.

This is from the person who has just left, so I don't even want to know how I'll be in two months, when it's Christmas and I'm here alone.

And what are you doing all the way over there?

Because what people basically answer when I tell them I'm going to work in Japan is "Japan? But that's quite far away, isn't it?", and there's really not much you can come up with when faced with such a truthful, yet useless comment. What do you answer to such a statement? "Yes, it is" seems a bit silly, because everyone knows that already. "Yeah, well, but you know, nowadays with smartphones and computers it barely seems so..." and then the conversation kind of awkwardly dies out.

So let me explain to all of you how come I've ended up here, and why I wanted to do so in the first place.