Reunions with Santa Cruz girls!

Over the past two days here in Kyoto, I have been so spoiled to reunite with some sweet Santa Cruz girls!

This is my former 108 McMillan Dr. a.k.a the whale house, housemate Jennie Takagawa. Or as I like to call her, Keiko or Jennie-san.

If you were to rewind to a few years back while we were living together, you will find us playing with plastic balloons in my room with our Brazilian-Chinese 108 frequenter, Pat, not studying for finals or midterms and instead making cute avatars on Yahoo, searching for thousands of sheep in our canyon backyard, throwing pie-auctions to fund a so-cal road trip, eating a lot, burning a lot of food and possibly screaming about the discovery of arachnids lurking about in dark areas of our house. She's currently enrolled in the JET program and teaching in Hiroshima. We've been keeping in touch throughout this trip waiting for our reunion with one another! Lara and I met up with Jenny in Osaka today to have a quick dinner with her before she left to Hiroshima. She's recently extended her stay with the JET program for another year. I seriously bow to this girl for being incredibly brave and so inspirational in taking this leap in her career.

I'm so proud of you! I know it gets lonely sometimes, but just take this time for you and allow yourself to appreciate the process of the lost in translations and craziness that is Japan. I miss you, Jennie. It was great catching up with you. =)

Yummy dessert

Before departing

Before we saw Jennie, we began our day with another one of my friends from Santa Cruz, Mimi! She's currently living in Osaka with her family and misses the US like crazy. I met her while I was taking one of the many excruciating accounting series classes and saw her often during those dreaded toastmaster meetings for Bob's class. She's become one of 106's (my household from the last two years of college) good friends as well.

She was nice enough to show us around a bit and took us to a sushi restaurant outside of the Hankyu-Umeda station. The sushi here was tasty!

Yesterday, she also took us out to another restaurant here in Kyoto. I was excited to have dinner indoors for once and not having to be confused about the menu. Mimi took care of the translations for us =P.

It was nice to see a familiar face in so long! I think the last time I've seen her was when we graduated from college.

I'm really thankful to have friendships with people from other countries and reunite with them in their home country! It's so cool to meet up with them and see where they've been living over the years.

It's so good to see these girls again. =)