Hardin County looks different from above! I knew that we had a great agricultural base, and I have always loved driving through long stretches of fields... What a beautiful place to drive!! But today Em and I got to fly up above it all... It was incredible to see how far the fields stretched, and how small the towns seem compared to all of the greenspace. It is the opposite of Japan... There the towns and cities are mostly crowded into spaces between mountains and along the coast...We are very blessed to have such great natural resources! And it's no wonder we build such big houses and drive such big cars...

One unique aspect of life on the boat was "departure ceremony" at each port. When we left behind new friends or visiting family members the tradition was to throw paper streamers to them. If they caught them we would hold onto both ends as the boat pulled away from shore. They held us together for a few extra minutes. I usually helped collect the streamers after they broke to keep them from going into the ocean. Jovan, Rose and I then became the three-headed streamer monster!

One unique aspect of life on the boat was "departure ceremony" at each port. When we left behind new friends or visiting family members the tradition was to throw paper streamers to them. If they caught them we would hold onto both ends as the boat pulled away from shore. They held us together for a few extra minutes. I usually helped collect the streamers after they broke to keep them from going into the ocean. Jovan, Rose and I then became the three-headed streamer monster!

I Miss My Bike

In my childhood, I rode bikes to play. It was fun! It was good exercise! My friends were all doing it. But that’s all I thought bikes were about. Fun. Turns out I was dead wrong.

When I moved to Japan, suddenly my bike was my main mode of transportation around town. (For out-of-town excursions there was my beloved, truly wonderful train system. I’m still waiting for America to catch up.) Of course I never my bike anywhere more than an hour away. It didn’t have gears and it had a basket on the front. It was what they called a “mama-chari,” more suitable for old ladies than for the Lance Armstrongs among us. But I loved it.

It took me to work and back every day, to my favorite park for hiking, to the beach when I needed a change of pace, and perhaps most importantly, to the grocery store. I am not a big shopper, but grocery stores are the one place that I can really blow a wad. I love food, and I love cooking. I could walk through a mall and not spend a penny [except at the food court] but I cannot walk out of a grocery store empty-handed. Lucky for me, my bike gave me the perfect excuse for portion control.

Granted, the first few times I shopped I was still in my US mentality… fill up a cart full of groceries and throw them in the car. That made for some interesting rides home. With my bike basket overflowing and a couple of extra bags hanging on each handlebar, it was harder to control where I was going. I came to admire more than ever the Africans that I used to see riding their bikes up and down mountains, loaded down with a hundred pounds of charcoal, bananas, etc. It was even more unbelievable to me when I later visited Vietnam and saw entire families sharing a bike. I will never begin to match them. But once I got used to the carrying capacity, I came to really enjoy the limitations of my bike, and of the hand-held grocery basket that I carried with me up and down the aisles. Furthermore, the ride to the store and back helped me feel better about the meals and snacks that I was carrying home. Now that I am back in Hardin County, I desperately miss those bike rides to the store. And I have some extra pounds that prove it.