Picture of the Day: Tuk-tuks Lined Up in Chichi

Chichicastenango, Guatemala
07.04.2010 

Fresh Coat of Paint for My Guest Room

The first thing I decided to do to spruce up my guest room was to give it a fresh coat of paint. I really like the blue on the walls but the saturated color makes the room seem a little small so after looking at about thirty swatches of lighter shades of blue I settled on Valspar Inhale which seemed like a nice, light neutral looking blue.

I also wanted to paint my trim white. To save money I had the trim around the windows and doors made out of the salvaged wood paneling that had previously lined my stairs. Now I am not such a fan of the look since the wood had knots in it and looks a bit too country for me. Painting it white gives the trim a cleaner look which matches my style more.

To prep the room I moved my furniture to the middle of the room and removed my switch plates. Since I wasn't doing the ceiling I only taped down paper around the perimeter of the room. I planned to cut in by hand for the trim so I didn't do any taping there, but on the inside of the window I wanted to be extra careful so I taped there. When you remove tape, always do it at an angle to reduce the chance that some of your paint will come up with your tape.

I started by using two coats of a stain blocking primer on the trim followed by a two coats of a warm white, Chamois Cloth, which was part of the discontinued Martha Stewart Colors Valspar line. I like the color and I had some on hand because it is the same paint that I used for the trim in my master bathroom. Because I was going to do the walls afterward I made sure to overlap the white onto the walls so that I would have a nice area to cut in against later.

With all of the coats of primer and paint to make sure that the knots and grain wouldn't show through, the trim took a long time. The walls were a comparative breeze. Because the color I bought was a Valspar Signature color, it could only be mixed up as a paint with primer so the coverage was really good. In fact, I had planned on two coats but when I looked at how the first coat dried I decided a second coat was unnecessary.

I am really happy with the new color of the room. The white trim and lighter blue make it seem bigger and will allow me to add some brightly colored accents without overwhelming the room.  I have a bunch of ideas to try out in the room and with the fresh slate the new wall and trim color gives me I am ready to go. 

What do you think of the new, lighter color? Have you been doing any painting around the house? Do you have any plans to do so in the future?

Picture of the Day: Horse at Little Bighorn

Little Bighorn Battlefield National Monument
Outside Billings, Montana
09.28.2005 

Coming Home to the U.S.

Today marks three years since I moved back to the U.S. from Japan. That spring and summer of 2009 was a really difficult adjustment for me. Moving over to Japan was hard but moving back home was even harder.

When I first went to Japan I was nervous and lonely. Everything was new and foreign, but I had expected to have culture shock so I was mentally prepared. Mixed in with my frustrations was the excitement of exploring new places and meeting amazing people from around the world which helped balance things out. The wonderful expats I met were going through the same experiences and emotions as I was and they enriched my time in Japan while making me feel I wasn't alone.

Repatriation was a completely different story and the reverse culture shock hit me hard. After living in Japan for over a year I was used to my life over there. Upon returning to the U.S. I was quite disoriented and everything that was supposed to seem familiar seemed odd. On empty roads without the cues from other cars driving I would find myself on the left side of the road. I was used to everything and everyone being tightly packed together in Japan and back in Ann Arbor the open spaces seemed strange and the relative scarcity of people made me feel like I was moving through a ghost town. In Japan when people were talking in Japanese I could only understand them if I was concentrating on listening. In the U.S. with everyone speaking English I could understand passing conversations again and it felt surreal, like I was reading people's minds. I felt like a foreigner in my home culture which was really unnerving and I was completely unprepared for it.

At work I was off balance readjusting to American business culture. In Japan I was used to music playing at exactly noon and again at exactly one o'clock to signal the start and end of lunch. No one gets up from their desk before the music and everyone is sure to be back in their seat before it plays again. The music was so ingrained in me that back in the U.S. I would not realize it was lunchtime and look up from my work at 12:15 to see an empty office. To add to my confusion I came back to a new group with a new boss and my company had built and moved to a new location while I was gone. I didn't know where anything was and didn't know my way around anymore. Nothing was familiar.

In my personal life not only had I changed as a person since I went away, but the world I left behind had also changed in my absence. My best friend had moved back to California and the guy I was dating before I left and I had broken up while I was in Japan. Several other of my Ann Arbor friends had also moved away or had started families and didn't have much free time available anymore. The guy that I started dating at the end of my time in Japan came to visit me, but the literal ocean between us made things really hard and we broke up not too long after. My ex-husband married a former friend of mine that summer and although the divorce had been two years prior and I had healed and moved on, hearing the news reopened some old wounds. I felt completely lost and alone.

I was in a bad place and craved the company of my good friends so I spent many of my weekends visiting my friends around the country. I hadn't seen any of them since I had come back on my home leave the previous October and it was great to spend time with them and be around people who knew me well and loved me. As wonderful as it was seeing all these special people in my life, it meant that by not being around Ann Arbor I wasn't doing anything to rebuild my life here and I needed to do something about it. 

Even though I just wanted to lay in bed and read (my typical escape when I can't deal with the world) I started making myself get out of the house and do things that I enjoyed, even though it was by myself. I wandered around the Art Fairs and the other festivals that close down Main Street in the summer. I walked up to Washtenaw Dairy for ice cream cones that I would eat while sitting on the rocker of my front porch. I renewed my membership to the Michigan Theater and went to the movies, eating big vats of popcorn and listening to the Wurlitzer organ before the show. I brought my books to Sweetwater's Coffee & Tea and hung out there to read. My friendship with Trisha (who I met in Japan and also moved back to Southeast Michigan) evolved to fit U.S. life after we repatriated and was something I relied on to help me cope since she knew first hand the difficulties of moving home. Slowly, I got to know some new people at work and I made some new local friends. In time, I fell in love with my life in Ann Arbor again, just as I had fallen in love with my life in Japan.

Living in Japan taught me a lot about myself, but in some ways moving home taught me even more. I was lucky to be able to live overseas and am even luckier to have such a wonderful place to call home in the U.S. Change is always hard and on more than one occasion I have lamented the fact that several times in my life due to moving and other personal circumstances I've had to start over. Looking back, however, these "restarts," including moving back to the U.S., have given me the gift of forcing me to reevaluate who and what I want to be. From each of these transition periods in my life I decided which things from my experiences I wanted to keep and what I should let go. It has made me a better person and for that I am grateful. 

Picture of the Day: Auckland Skyline

Auckland, New Zealand
09.05.2005

My Someday Travel List

It's no secret that I love to head out traveling whenever I can get the opportunity. I love the way my passport has developed a broken in, well loved look to it and I am always ready to jump at the chance to use it some more.

I've had some questions about where I haven't been that I would like to go so I thought I would share my someday travel list. I pretty much want to go everywhere but below are a few places on my wish list that I particularly want to see.

Scandinavia: My maternal heritage is Swedish and Norwegian so I would love to visit. I especially want to see the fjords.

Tanzania: I want to climb Mount Kilimanjaro someday...

Egypt: Cruising down the Nile to Giza to go see the Pyramids and Sphinx is a dream of mine.

Alaska: Of the fifty states of the United States, Alaska is the only one I haven't seen. I want to go on a cruise and visit Denali National Park.

India: There is so much I want to see in India, but I especially want to visit the Golden Triangle and see the Taj Mahal.

Jordan: I would absolutely love to see Petra at some point in my life.

Argentina: I've briefly been to Argentina when I crossed over the border to explore Iguazú Falls from the Argentinian side, but I want to go to Buenos Aires and visit Patagonia someday.

Croatia & Slovenia: I want to start in Dubrovnik, relax along the Dalmatian Coast and then head up to Ljubljana and Lake Bled.

I could go on and on listing places I want to visit but I'll stop now. Now that I have shared some of my dream destinations what places are on your travel wish list?

Picture of the Day: Archway at Westminster Abbey

The Collegiate Church of St Peter at Westminster
London, England, United Kingdom
11.24.2003 

Quick Trip to Upstate New York

Today I had to go to upstate New York for work. It was just a quick day trip and I was busy working the whole time but two things of note happened.

First, when I was going through security at DTW I got flagged to go through an expedited security line that the TSA was testing out. All I had to do was take my phone out of my pocket and walk through. There was no need to take off my shoes and coat or remove liquids or my computer from my luggage. It was awesome! It really is the little things in life.

Secondly, I had a little extra time between when my meetings wrapped up and when I needed to be at the airport for my evening flight so I snuck in dinner at the original Dinosaur Bar-B-Que on Willow Street. I was first introduced to Dinosaur Bar-B-Que when a friend of mine from grad school who was from Syracuse gave me a bottle of their sauce. It was really awesome so a few years back when I was in the area I made a point to go there and was not disappointed.

This evening I ordered a pulled pork sandwich with a side of macaroni and cheese. My sandwich was fabulous. The pork was tender and juicy and the sandwich was served on a nice soft roll with tons of cole slaw. I also really liked my macaroni and cheese which had a nice little kick of spice and pepper. It was definitely a great treat in an otherwise very long day (I left home before five and won't be home until ten thirty tonight at the earliest). If you find yourself in Syracuse you should definitely make a stop.

Now I am hanging out at the airport (yeah for free airport WiFi!) waiting for my delayed flight to go home. It's been a long day and I hope we take off soon...

Picture of the Day: Overlooking Gustavia, St. Barth

Gustavia, Saint Barthélemy
5.30.2010

Spray Paint Makeover & Japanese Pottery Fun in Seto

I've been trying to find just the right thing to put on the back of my toilet in my bathroom since it looks a little empty and plain. When I spotted this little chalice for two dollars at the Ann Arbor Reuse Center I knew it was a diamond in the rough.

The gold paint with the speckled red finish on the interior was absolutely hideous, but it had a cute shape and with a few coats of teal spray paint it was the perfect vessel to house a few shells and sit on the back of my toilet. I never stop being amazed at the power of a little spray paint. 

As a fun aside, I made the little bowl sitting next to the chalice when I was living in Japan. Not too far away from where I lived is a small town called, Seto, which has been famous for its pottery for centuries. In fact the generic word for ceramics in Japanese is setomono (瀬戸物) which literally means Seto objects. I signed up with my friend, Trisha, to go to one of the pottery studios, Kasen, to learn about traditional pottery in Seto and try our hand at making some of our own pieces.  

The owner of the studio, Hiroshige Kato, is a twelfth generation potter using clay from the same place as his forefathers 400 years ago. He showed us the spot where he digs for clay as well as how his kilns work and the traditional glazes used in Seto.

Back inside the studio Kato-sensei taught us how to knead the clay and then form bowls and plates on the potter's wheel. After the introduction we had an hour to play around making our on creations. Trisha was a little overly ambitious on the wheel and when her clay got a little off center had a few bowl collapses. She decided to keep one of her collapsed pieces anyway deeming it art and as a result Kato-sensei started calling her "Special Artist." Trisha decided the nickname was a badge of honor and we had lots of fun joking about it.

The whole experience was an awesome time and a really great deal, too. The cost was ¥2000 (about $20 at the time) for the class and then ¥500 (about $5 at the time) for each piece that you decided you wanted to have fired. In the end I decided to have seven of my bowls fired and picked out different glazes for them. After a few weeks the bowls were available to pick up at the studio. I love having my pieces around my home because in addition to being pretty they remind of the fun time Trisha and I had making them.

If you ever find yourself in Aichi prefecture in Japan I would highly recommend arranging to take a class at Kasen. The price structure is a little different than when I did it and the exchange rate has also changed, but it is still very reasonable and it is a really great chance to have a hands on experience making Japanese pottery.

Have you recently spray painted anything totransform it? Have you ever tried your hand at throwing pots? Did it turn out well or did you make some "Special Artist" pieces?