I now have a helper...

OK - I admit it - I finally caved (certainly didn't take long!) and got a helper. The culture here is to have these "helpers" who are everything from housekeeper to nanny. I have seen many different levels of "helper-ness" from dropping off children at school to actually ironing sheets.

I happened upon my helper, Terry, through another Corning family. Turns out Terry (who is Filipino like most other helpers) needed some extra hours - she had Tues & Wed available for 4 hours each morning - I took Tuesday. She arrived at 8AM and made herself at home and by the time I left at 8:30 to take Sydney to school, she had collected all of the laundry, started a load, and wash finishing the dishes. I also had discovered that she had almost perfect English and had been in Tokyo for 10 years.

When I returned around 1PM - the house was about as clean as it was the day we moved in - all of the laundry was done and folded. She apologized because she didn't put it away since it was her first time - HA - found that funny since I didn't care since now all I needed to do was put it away! She let me know that before she comes again I need to get "the windex and the 109" so she can more cleaning. I'm thinking she meant 409...

I keep thinking about a quote I read during my Tokyo: Here and Now class. It said, "expats are a new type of aristocracy in this age, and an expat wife in Tokyo is perhaps the most privileged person in the world." I am seeing all of the different levels of this from the woman who gets the driver to drop her child off at school to the woman who really never has to be with her children and then there's me, who hopefully falls somewhere below that! I am extremely blessed and fortunate to have this opportunity and although it's consistently challenging, I am doing things that I would never have had the chance to do back home...

Because while someone was at my apartment cleaning... I went to the American Club to listen to an author speak! Should you get the chance, check out Arlene Blume. She is the author of "Breaking Trails" - a novel about her experiences as a scientist and mountain climber. She was the first American female to attempt to climb Mt Everest and has since gone on to do amazing work in the field of flame retardants and how they are adversely affecting our world. Very interesting and extremely scary at the same time...