It feels good to have a routine.

John and I went to NYC a little over a year ago. While there, I met up with a wonderful friend of mine who graduated college with a Fine Arts degree and moved to NYC to make her dreams come true. She fills her time with auditions and various odd jobs (guitar playing, small shows, modeling) to help pay her rent. When we arrived in NYC, one of the first things she did was apologize and say, "You know, when you work in a city, you never really get to see much of it." Now, take that mentality and apply it to a whole country.

I would say after almost a year of living here, John and I have finally found a routine that works. Since we've been married we've made three major moves and this move was the hardest. It seemed like everyday was a new crisis or a new rule we had to learn. I worked for a little bit and then I stopped working. John's job has him shuffling around to different duties.

Finally, after a year, we've settled into a pretty easy routine. One of the bad things about a routine is that you don't often break out of it. We have to have money to see Japan (and quite a bit of money as Tokyo was named the most expensive city in the world), you have to work to make money, you don't get to travel at a whim when you're working. It's the ultimate Catch-22.

We have some upcoming trips planned that I'll blog about and hopefully things will get more interesting. Last month, I didn't take any community center courses because any extra money went to paying our road tax and car insurance (about $600) as car insurance here is paid by the year, you are required to pay all the money upfront.

I'm hoping to sign up for some community center courses this month, specifically the flower arranging and art course. Just thought I'd give a little update and let everyone know things are okay!