Visitor Update

So my penpal has now come and gone and I believe I did an adequate job of showing her around =-). We did Tacoma touristy things one day, and Seattle touristy things another day. She went from having a very efficient driver in California (my Dad) to having me - someone who had to call for directions on how to get to a park in my own town (and then I actually got lost inside the park!). When I told her my Dad was a better driver than me (direction-wise), she said "Yes, your Dad is very perfect" =-p. Now, of course I think my Dad is pretty damn close to perfect myself, but she meant efficient and precise on the driving and all that stuff.

Anyways - I think she had fun. And she bought about $100 worth of Ichiro stuff at a Mariner's store to bring as souvenirs to the folks back home (for anyone out there who is as baseball-uninformed as myself, he's a totally famous Japanese guy who plays for the Seattle team). We went to Safeco Field, to Pikes Place Market (I finally saw them throw a fish, but I seriously don't know what the big deal is!), up the Space Needle and all that good stuff. She got to eat a bunch of different stuff while she was in CA and WA, I also took her to one of those Spirit Halloween stores (since they don't do Halloween) and I took a picture of her with some of the stuff even though I knew I would get scolded by the teeny-bopper at the counter (TeenyBopper: "Ma'am - please don't take pictures in the store!!!" ME: "She's from Japan and she's leaving tomorrow." - I knew they wouldn't want me to take pics, so I waited until we were ready to leave, but I should have had a better comeback ready, like "Oh - we're only doing this so we can plan a Corporate takeover that will annihilate all Spirit Stores"), but the biggest achievement of the whole visit was probably that I even managed to get her to the airport on time in the 6 a.m. hour on Friday morning!!!

So I think she had fun - and it just impresses the hell out of all of us at how well she does with the language considering how crazy different it is from English. And now she's back in Japan where things are smaller and the food portions aren't so huge (evidently they totally have Subway over there, but the sandwich sizes are much smaller =-p - she also had my parents take a picture of her behind one of the "big" grocery store shopping carts =-p).....she wants to come back in a few years after she finishes up her PhD. Shoko and I have been penpals for about 15 years I think - pretty impressive (or is it frightening that me and my family are the representatives of the entire nation =-p)!