Not to negate the joys of becoming familiar with my new neighborhood, but it's great to be able to make contact with friends and family again!
Not 20 minutes ago, I walked my Internet technicians to the door bowing gratefully and stuttering in broken Japanese telling them arrigato arrigato arrigato for my successful connection to the Internet again.
It's been an interesting 8 or 9 days since I last posted, that's for sure. I'll try to cover as much as I can here while trying to refrain from being too verbose.
First off, it seems that when you move into a home here, it is not guaranteed to be cleaned before-hand... Not so much fun to discover that on day one in the new home, about 15 minutes before 6000 lbs of your personal items are to begin arriving. So this week has been quite busy with scrubbing drawers and cupboards just to be able to begin unpacking, followed by double and triple vacuuming of carpets, wall washings and such, not to mention that while it's fabulous to have 7 huge closets (pictures to come later) as well as 7 upper storage areas to put things in, it's not a ton of fun trying to get years worth of accumulated dust and grime out of them (I was told that this home stood empty for some years).
Then about a day into the moving and unpacking, I spent many hours with DD at the hospital because she had a fever of 102 for a few days. They determined that it was just a cold, and miraculously, after we left, her fever broke and she's been getting better and better ever since.
Monday we took gifts to our new neighbors and, with the help of our housing agent, introduced ourselves. Which worked out well, because on tuesday as I tried to figure out which 'transfer station' I was supposed to be taking our garbage and recycling to, my very nice next door neighbor chased me down to show me the proper kind of cord for tying my cardboard as well as to let me know that the place I was moving my refuse to was also not the place for our side of the block (I had been directed here by a well meaning woman who caught me putting my garbage in the one for her side of her block). I'm starting to get the hang of the garbage system now though, so I'm happy about that. Tuesday is Cardboard, misc paper and food garbage/burnables, Wednesday is unburnables, misc heavy plastics and straws, glass bottles, dry cell batteries and one the 2nd and 4th Wed plastic bottles marked with the 'PET' recycling mark on the bottom. Thursday is styrofoam of all kinds, plastic wrappers, and any other kind of plastic that has a recycle symbol on it. Friday is the same as Tuesday. You can always tell when you've missed the garbage truck, because over a loud speaker it plays the tune Fur Elise as they make their way through town picking up the garbage. I bet the garbage men hope to never hear that song when they are off work!!!
So far we've had electricians in and out of the house to install more heaters (there were no heaters whatsoever upstairs), and to try to fix a broken heater in our livingroom, as well as a plumber out to fix a leaky toilet and try to figure out what's wrong with our hot water tap upstairs. So far the heaters are intalled and the toilet is fixed. As far as the broken heater and the tap upstairs, there is no answer as to when those will actually be fixed. I do understand and respect that thus far the home owner has already spent his whole 'owner's bonus' from our move in costs on the heater instalation and repairs, so I am willing to give him some time to come up with the funds to finish the repairs.
To add to the fun, I woke up a few days ago feeling like my left eye was on fire. After 4 hours of gritting my teeth through it, I drove to the base and headed into the hospital to get diagnosed with conjunctivitis, and have had the pleasure of putting antibiotic goop in my eye twice a day since and being forbiden to wear my contacts until next Wednesday. I guess some of the dust or something got in there and caused quite a stir.
We've had some pretty interesting weather here. Mostly it's been very cold in the mornings, and by about 10 or 11 am it's warm enough to go out in a t-shirt and jeans, and begins to cool off again by 3pm enough that I close the windows and by about 5pm am closing the shutters or at least all the drapes to try to keep the warm in and the cold out. Last night we had very strong winds which seem to have brought warm weather with them, as even now at just after 3pm it's about 70°F (not sure the conversion to C), and I have clothes drying on the poles. Amusingly, I am so excited to be able to dry clothes outside, and had a field day at my local Yen store, picking out cool do-dads to aid in the clothes drying.
I tried to add more pictures, but for some reason it totally messed everything up.... grrrr... I'll have to do them later. I was actually supposed to be doing the dishes, but got fully distracted by my new internet access, and now must return to it...
