All jumbled up

Hello.  It is getting late in the evening, but I am feeling a need to write.  So maybe today's entry will be shorter than usual...or maybe it will just have more typos from this very tired girl.

I am enjoying getting acquainted with people on Facebook.  I have connected with old friends from grade school, high school, from college, and from when I lived in Japan too.  But sometimes I run into an old friend who makes me feel all jumbled up.  What exactly does that mean?  Well, it brings back memories that I had forgotten for a long time.  Here's a story to illustrate:

When I went back to Japan after graduating from college, I went back to work.  I worked at a small, private university in a Tokyo suburb called Musashino.  It was a lovely area, with green parks and sidewalks everywhere.  And yes, those sidewalks were used a lot!  And by me!  And yet I could hop on a train and be "downtown", which I considered Shinjuku, in about a 30 minute train ride.  I could also be at Tokyo Disneyland's door in about an hour and a half.  :-)

I turned 20 when I was studying in Japan and I wasn't much older than that when I came to live and work there.  I often think that I grew up with many of the students who I worked with.  I mean I wasn't much older than they were when I first started working and we had a lot to learn from one another.  They were all preparing to live in another country...I was living in another country.  They were studying and using English as much as they could.  I was studying and using Japanese as much as I could.

I helped build an exchange program with five universities in Washington, Oregon and Idaho.  At one point we sent out 8,000 students in one year.  We worked with them to prepare them to go, worked with the schools to prepare them for the students coming, and then in cooperation with our sister schools, watched over the students while they studied. And then we would start all over with the next batch of students. 

My work team was awesome.  I look back now and really understand how blessed I was to be with such a great team of people, of innovators.  I learned so much from them...so much that I still use today.

But the "Hi" group was really an added bonus in my life.  This was a group of students who after coming back from studying in the States for 6 months, came and volunteered in our office and helped us prepare the next students to go.  They did so much for us.  They had such zest for life!  They inspired us as much as we inspired them.  I HOPE we inspired them! :-)

And now I am back in touch with several of these fine people on a regular basis.  It brings back memories, but it also makes me think how lucky I am to have had my life touched by them.  One is a photographer and is currently taking a lot of pictures all around the disaster areas in Japan.  He is encouraging people and finding hope himself.  One works for Nike and he says that he flies to Portland several times a year.  He has worked for them probably since before I left Japan.  One works for the Japanese government and is currently stationed with his family in Washington D.C.   

Good memories.  Good people.  Good to be reconnected.