Skip to main content

5 Year Anniversary

No, not Koichi and me, we've just been together over 2 years now.


No, today is my 5 year anniversary of arriving in Japan!
My first view of the island nation from the air.
View from my hotel room. I must admit I was a little freaked out seeing as it was my first time abroad and Tokyo felt huge! (It is by the way, absolutely huge.)
One of my fellow travelers from New Orleans, Sarah. We ended up being roommates in Tokyo and became good friends. She was in Osaka for 3 years and I visited her a few times and she made it down to the countryside to see me once! She's married to a British guy and living in England now. 

I can't believe it's been 5 years since I left Texas. I certainly never thought I'd stay away so long, but I guess we never know who we're going to meet or what will happen along the way, right? There have been days along the way that I've questioned myself for making the move, but there are way more days that I know it was the right move for me. 

To celebrate the occasion, I will share a couple of pictures everyday this week of the last 5 years!
In other news, I've joined the website sparkpeople.com to try to help me with my healthiness journey. So far I like it pretty good. 

Last week I did pretty well as far as eating helped in part by having to take my lunch everyday. The weekend however, has been a bit of a bust! I was craving Coke all weekend long and drank quite a bit. I used to drink sodas daily, but have gotten out of that habit. I usually drink water or green tea.

So my goals for this week are:
1) No sodas! 2 liters of water per day (I have a bottle at work and my goal is to finish it daily)
2) Track my food all day everyday!
3) Get in more fruits and veggies, at least 5 servings a day.
4) Exercise at least 120 minutes - that's just four 30 minute workouts! However I don't want to think of workouts in 30 minute increments. On days that I can't get a full 30 minutes in I'll try to get 10 minutes here and 10 minutes there!

Until tomorrow, mata ne. (That's "see you" in Japanese!)

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

This week`s goals

Goal #1 -　ｒｕｎ It`s Monday morning here and I`ve got my first run of the week done! My goal is to get out and run everyday this week M-F and maybe on Saturday too. From Saturday I`m going on a 2 night camping trip with 14 students from the English conversation school where I work. I`m hoping it will be fun, but who knows... This morning I set my alarm for 6:00 to get out and run before Koichi woke up, but that didn`t happen. I ended up getting out of bed around 7:40. I made breakfast so Koichi could eat and then I packed his lunch while snacking on the watermelon that wouldn`t fit in his lunch box. I considered not running since it was already after 8:00. but I decided to just get out there and do it and now I`m glad I did! Goal #２ -　ｅａｔ　ｈｅａｌｔｈｙ　ｍｅａｌｓ & track food About to make some breakfast now. I`m thinking I`ll make a green smoothie and have 1/4 of an avocado and some sliced tomatoes on the side, may even throw in an egg. Lunch will most likely be chicken taqu...
Post a Comment
Read more

TGIF

I love Fridays! Thursdays are pretty long for me and I have a few tough classes and then on Friday I have a really easy day with good kids and almost the entire day free. Plus, the weekend is near! Yesterday I was lucky to finish at 4:30 in the afternoon. I had to do some shopping for our upcoming camping trip so I texted my friend Kazuko to see if I could drop by her place. She said yes and I picked up some take out curry and headed over. We had dinner and talked and I played with her kids who are so adorable. It was a nice break from the kids I get to see everyday! I needed to get away from my everyday routine so it was a good visit. Here`s what I`ve got going on today: 1) fold and put away laundry (I`m bad about folding and leaving!) 2) clean kitchen and dining room table 3) Swiffer floors because they`re gritty with volcanic ash 4) exercise at 9:00 (that will make 3 days in a row) 5) Face Time with my sister!! I love planning things to do on the weekends. So far this wee...
Post a Comment
Read more

Headache -> Cancelled plans

I was supposed to have friends over for a 鍋 (hot-pot) party tonight. I`d invited Kazuko`s family and Miki`s family and we were all looking forward to a fun evening eating, drinking, talking and laughing. Unfortunately I have had a headache since yesterday evening so my plans were cancelled. I thought it would be better when I woke up this morning, but it wasn`t. I went to work at 9:00 for a lesson and thought some coffee would help, but it didn`t. After work I decided to suck it up and go to the gym to work out thinking the exercise would clear my head and take the pain away, but it didn`t. After I came home I discussed with Koichi that I would take some medicine and if my head was still hurting around 3:00pm that I would contact both friends and cancel the evening. Around that time I got a message from Kazuko that her son had a runny nose and that he and her husband would stay home because she didn`t want his germs to spread to Miki`s 8 month old baby. So I made the decision then to g...
Post a Comment
Read more