Yu Have Come to the Right Place.

Summer has flown by and tomorrow is already Taisei's first day of school.  The family besides me spent half the summer in Japan with the in-laws.  Taisei went to 2nd grade there.  He loved it.  At the same time, he faced some mild bullying for the first time.  I guess it's natural that some of the boys didn't like this popular foreigner kid that speaks perfect English and is a big hit with the ladies.  At least, he says in a non-bragging way that the girls like him and some of the boys seemed to not like him.  It was strange to him - he didn't quite know what to make of it.  Hopefully he can hold his own going forward.  Not a big problem yet.

Mirei went to hoikuen, and Leina went a few time, but mostly didn't like it so much.
While everyone was gone, I hung out a ton with Braden, and tore up our upstairs bathroom.  I'm going to make it more ergonomic and code-friendly.  At this point, it's still just studs and insulation.

The second half of the summer was mostly about swimming.  We got the kids through two sessions of lessons as the SL Sports Complex.  Taisei finished the season at a Blue level.  He can jump off the diving board and swim back to the side now - good progress!  Mirei finished at the Yellow level.  She's totally comfortable with the water and is way ahead of Taisei at this age.  On the weekends, we went to the South Davis Rec Center several times and the Murray Park Center this last weekend.  They're loving the swimming!  I'm realizing now how much time my parents must have spent to get my swimming level up so early!  Also, our big disadvantage in Utah is that there aren't a lot of pools and lessons are only in the summer times.  :(

Today, we went to Spring Lane Elementary and met the new 2nd grade teachers, Mrs. Benevento, who I volunteered for several times last year as a "Watch D.O.G." and a brand new Mrs. Lai from Si Chuan, China.  Mrs. Lai's mandarin is perfect, obviously, but her English is pretty weak.  You have to speak slowly to her in order for her to understand.  She should improve pretty quickly, having been immersed in this situation.  I think she'll be fine, as she seems very comfortable with children in general.  Taisei is totally wide-eyed because Mrs. Lai speaks Mandarin so much faster than Ms. Ridge did last year.  It should be good.


After the school visit, Mirei said that she "wants to have something on her teeth too."  We were like "what"?  We thought about it and realized that she's talking about Mrs. Benevento's braces!  I asked her if she thought they were pretty and Mirei said "Yes."  haha

Also, tonight, when we were going to bed, Mirei realized that we have two Anpanman pajamas. She said that she wants to wear one at the same time as Leina.  She knows that Leina often gets her hand-me-downs.  I asked her if she means when Leina gets bigger?  She said, "no, when the clothes gets smaller, then Leina can wear them."  She hasn't realized that she's outgrowing her clothes.  She thinks that the clothes are shrinking to Leina's size!  haha

Leina is learning new words every day now.  Today her big thing was hanging clothes hangers on the door knobs and saying "kakette?"   That means "to hang" in Japanese.  I don't even know that vocabulary!

I played in an Ultimate Frisbee tournament, earned the reputation for being the fast guy, guarded the fastest guys on the other team, and scored some points.  No one even came close to beating us this year, even the best team from last year, BD Medical.  We got the gold!

First score of the championship game.

It wasn't our typical summer of flying all around and enjoying different parts of the US and world (except for my family in Japan), but we have fun hanging around, going swimming, and just spending family time together.  Lots of good memories!