July 17, 2012

• Who are the people in your neighborhood

  One of the things that is really important for us to do is to figure out who people are and begin to build relationships with them.  One of the first things you would notice if you came to my neighborhood is that we have one small mom and pop grocery store on the "main" street in our neighborhood.  This street is the street that has the train station at the end of it.  Besides the grocery store, there is also the post office and the police box.  The grocery store is run by a very sweet couple.  They mostly do all the work themselves, but sometimes their children help them.  (They children are young adults.)  

  As it turns out, we require the service of this small grocery store from time to time and my own children have discovered that allowance money is very fun to spend down at the grocery store.  We have had chance to chat with "mom and pop" as they often have down times, and they are very willing to chat with us.  They told someone they knew about us, and then told us about this person who is Japanese married to an American.  Long story short, the grocery shop owners passed on the information to us, and we met the Japanese lady.  

  The Japanese lady married to an American lives in America but returns about once a year to visit family here.  It just so happened that their visit here coincided with our move here.  This lady whose name is similar to my second son's name, has a boy about said boy's age.  We were able to meet this lady and her son.  Through this one lady, we have met a number of additional people.  This lady grew up on the Buddhist temple grounds about 15 minutes walk from our house.  Now, her brother is the priest of that temple.  

  The Buddhist priest loves to roast his own coffee which naturally has intrigued my husband.  The priest's wife communicated her desire to learn English, so now I am meeting with this Buddhist's priest's wife once a week to exchange English and Japanese conversation.  

  We have met a few other people who live near us as well just because of walking around.  The lady at the end of the street saw Skyler and was so taken by him that she asked him to come into her house to introduce him to her husband.  She introduced us all to her husband.  They seem like a nice couple, and the lady commented that seeing my kids reminded her of raising her own children.  It will be interesting to see where some of these relationships go.  We have asked a few people to eat with us, but as of yet the schedules have not have worked out, but hopefully that will change.

  • 3:31 am
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