Good Bye Princess Peach and Princess Daisy 😥

We can't take our pet rats, Princess Peach and Princess Daisy with us to Japan, so Papa P found them a new home through his network at work. We're grateful they found a home. They have two new sister rats, a bearded dragon sibling, and a dog sibling. 

Our sentimental child, C, took it really hard. ❤️ 

Loading it all up in the truck for the trip to their new home.

Highlights from their time with us:

In my pj pocket.

In a box and on G's head.

Cuddly sisters!

In their tube.

A couple of my real life villagers (I'm wearing an Animal Crossing t-shirt and the animal characters are "my villagers" if they live on my island. 

Cookie time!

In G's pocket.

More tube time!

Super cute!

Carrot in Papa P's pocket.

Who couldn't love that face?!

Getting a ride!

Little hammock I made them. 

Tissue box "fort."

They love avocado! 

Still cuddly...

Last family photo with all the animals. 😥

I recently started doing photo shoots. I should have started it a long time ago!

Princess Peach playing pool.

Tea for two!

Yummy summer!

One of these things is not like the other!

My crochet assistant!

Playing my favorite game, Animal Crossing!

Peaches for Peach!

Last treat with me. 😥

Japanese Lessons Progress

I have been doing 4-6 hours a week of Japanese lessons since May 9. I feel like I have had a good refresher on many things, plus added new things as well. This time around is different in that I am doing the lessons one on one and it is geared specifically towards my life and goals of using the language in Japan. 

Practicing verbs conjugations. 

This is writing about my daily schedule. I have a lot of mistakes in the second paragraph. My sensei said I must have been tired. I did work on it at night. 🤷🏽‍♀️

With regards to writing practice, I feel like one of my elementary school students since I am writing about such basic things. You have got to start somewhere,  though. 

A lot of what my sensei has had me focus on are things that I will need in daily life, such as asking what something means in English, asking how to say something in Japanese,  asking for directions, finding things in stores, what to say at a beauty salon, etc. My short hair will need to be cut to stay short! 🤪

ありがとうございます

I just discovered that my Japanese keyboard has cute little faces on it when I typed in arigato (thank you) so fun! 

(*ゝω・)ﾉ 

The Serious Packing has Begun!

Our "serious" packing has begun as we have officially gotten a storage space for our stuff that's not going with us to Japan. We have also reserved our seats for a flight on July 31. Things are getting real!!!

This is our first load to go over to the storage space. It's mostly books and it looked like a really big pile in our house....

We may have a few books....or maybe 1,000! This isn't even all of them and we have donated quite a bit to the library as well.

Our first load in our storage unit. It looks so small in such an empty space!

Thunder Shirts

To make them more comfortable for their journey to Japan, we bought the cats Thunder Shirts. It's like getting a hug, the same idea as a weighted blanket, but uses pressure. We're going to work on getting them used to wearing it. I think maybe I will make it looser around the neck to give their front legs more room to move next time. 🤣🙃 

 "Why?! Why did you betray me?!"

I'll just drop right here...

Date Confirmed

Papa P had the date of August 1 arrival in Japan confirmed this week. We have known the date was August 1 for a while, but assumed we'd get a week or so to settle in before he started work. Apparently that isn't the case. He was told they strongly recommend arriving on August 1 and then he'll be starting work there on August 2. 

I'm not sure how this makes sense! We aren't taking a lot of "things" but there is jet lag and trying to organize our house. I guess we'll see and make it work.

We still haven't heard anything about our visas; none of the families have yet. Tomorrow we'll be meeting two of the other families moving from Texas to Japan at a nearby park. Hopefully the weather will cooperate and it will be a good day.