Halloween 2008

It was a fun costume, but not very practical at all...

Canadian Wannabe

But of course, Canadians are nice people and they wouldn't think such thoughts...!

Nozomi

Congrats to Steph and Doug on their newest addition to their family! Lots of hugs!

TV People

Highlights of Our Summer Trip

There you go, a comic with some of the highlights from our wonderful four-country trip! Thanks for all your awesome comments during the trip---I think I was finally able to respond to all of them last night. And most importantly---thank you thank you thank you to all our friends who hosted us and made our trip superawesome!

Yay!

North American Friendliness

I still think the people in Berlin are quite friendly, but the level of friendliness in North America is just unbelievable.

Small World

He was one of the project coordinators at the gallery. Boggles my mind.

Eh

I spent about three years in Toronto for university, during which time I picked up the infamous Canadian "eh." I tend to forget how recognizable that habit is when I'm in Europe---most people think I'm just American because of my generic (well, whatever generic is) North American accent. But it was a dead give-away to the American girl that I was talking to the other day that I'd spent at least some time in Canada. It's really hard to hide it when you use "eh" like, 15 times in a matter of 3 minutes, eh.

The funny thing is, because I use "eh" so much, it's rubbed off on G as well. And G's British-pan-European English combined with the Canadian-eh-rubbed-off-from-Japanese-girlfriend makes for a pretty exotic combo.

Anyway, G and I are planning a trip to Toronto and NY in the summer, and I can't wait to go back to the land of Eh.

Complete and Utter Confusion

More thoughts on international relationships.

Thanks to K for her story!
Earlier international-couple-anecdotes are here: Case 1 and Case 2.

Purse-n'-Backpack

I'm not anyone to talk about fashion, but yeah. No matter how you do it, you look like a dork.

Happy Belated Canada Day!

I know I'm a day late, but it's never too late to express my love for my second (third?) home, Toronto, where the people are friendly and the Chinatown is amazing.

Aaaand. Awesome breakfast this morning courtesy of G. First time in a while that we've had actual breakfast-y food for breakfast! (ie. We had homemade burgers for breakfast last week and fried rice before that...)

Quark+yogurt with Johannisbeeren and blueberries.
Leftover potato gratin thingie from last night.
Mango.

"Tall" is relative

Being "tall" is relative.

(click to enlarge)

Having been considered "on the short side" throughout university in Canada, I was pleasantly surprised when people in Japan thought I was pretty tall. People (usually old people, though) would actually use the adjective "tall" to describe me. It was really awesome . . . until I had to go buy shoes. Size 8 (about 25 cm in Japan), which I thought was pretty average, apparently is kind of big in Japan. I always got sent to the opposite side of the department store where they had "big" sizes and less variety, which kind of sucked. And then of course, Germany. Here, I'm just downright short. And when I borrowed my friend's girlfriend's bicycle in Denmark, I could barely touch the ground with my tippy toes with the seat lowered as far as possible.

Similarly, having a "high" tolerance is also relative . . . but that's for another day.