Christmas Card to You!

Merry Christmas from New York, everyone!!! We’d like to send our love and thoughts to you during this holiday season, wherever you may be! Thankfully, this year has been blessedly boring compared to the last few. I guess you could say this year we officially transitioned from wide-eyed, stressed to a crisp, livin’la-vida-loca jetsetters to feeling much more stable and at home in our little cabin in the woods. To be feeling more at home in a time when we look around and are reminded that nothing is permanent and how fragile the daily living we take for granted truly is, has been a great gift to us. When we feel we might be getting too comfortable, we try to think back to those hard days of looking longingly with job-envy into the windows of telemarketing firms on our way to the grocery store where we would argue about if we could afford a 32 pence packet of hot chocolate for a treat!

We started off this year with Ian getting a job! In February, he started working for the Mental Health Association as a case manager for clients with schizophrenia. He’s also busy volunteering for a local counseling service and working on his Masters in Social Work. Busy! Kristy-news includes finally getting properly certified to teach in the State of New York four four-hour state exams later and surviving her first year of teaching middle school Japanese! We both are learning so much from our jobs and have enjoyed getting to know our respective clients and students.

We are starting to feel like real New Yorkers now, complete with an appreciation for good restaurants, a tendency to speed and/or road rage, and the ability to walk around NYC without a guidebook. We’ve made some good friends in the area and found a good church to be a part of. This summer we joined an Okinawan sanshin (instrument) group that practiced in Central Park every week. It was fun to have the tourists come and gawk at us! We also raised our first garden this summer, Ian-and-Kristy-style (which means, don’t actually know what you are doing before you try it!)

If you ever get a chance to come to New York, please let us know! Our house is always open to welcome you. Have a wonderful holiday season, and we wish you all the best in the coming new year!

Much love, Ian and Kristy