Move In Day and First Day of School

International School

Our daughter’s first day of first grade was on Monday (22nd) and we walked with her to the campus from the apartment hotel. We were all a bit nervous, since we had never been inside the school and M doesn’t know a soul there. When we arrived at 8:30am, we were greeted and brought inside to meet the admissions coordinator for a quick orientation. However, due to covid, we didn’t get to do a full tour of the campus. M was whisked away with her new classmates, and we then headed back to the apartment hotel to pack our stuff and move in to the new home.

We did get to the meet the teacher virtually during the afternoon, and it turns out she’s from California so M will be pleased to hear a familiar accent. She also presented a more progressive approach to learning and it looks like they will work on fun projects together, a couple sessions a week on Japanese, and the rest of the time in English working on the usual writing/math skills.

While we walked the first day to school (just about 20 minutes), M will be taking a school shuttle which leaves near our new home. We’re really glad that her school is near our place, when she starts doing after school activities it’s not far for us to pick her up. Starting in Sept, she will be doing soccer two days a week after school.

The Move

The actual move was less dramatic, since we only had to take a couple suitcases from the apartment hotel to our new home. We unpacked our bags and installed some light fixtures, then converted our empty appliance boxes into a makeshift table and put a couple new stools around it for our temp dining table.

Since our beds don’t arrive for another few days, we found a futon rental and those got delivered. I had no idea this was a thing, but huge props to the wife for setting this up. The futon rental place delivered everything we needed, including sheets pillow and extra mats for sleeping on our hardwood floors. I guess this service also makes sense if you wanted to host guests sometimes, but don’t have a lot of storage space for keeping multiple sets of futons. They will pick them up too, we just have to fold them back into the big storage bags they came in.

We tried out the washer/dryer, it took about 3 hours to complete the full cycle and out came dry and clean laundry. Too bad it can’t fold our clothes, we’ll have to wait for the Tesla bot.

The place is already wired with a LAN, and the switch is in the closet so I set up a new access point/router there as well. Wifi 6! As part of our condo fees, they provide internet service, which has been working out fine so far. They told us we could also get additional faster service from a couple providers, but we may not need it. We’ll see how it goes.

Also tried the ice maker in the fridge. I don’t think it’s common for water lines directly into the fridge, so we fill a little water tank in the fridge and it dumps ice cubs into one of the drawers. The nice thing about this type of system, you don’t have to refill the water until you need more ice cubes. The one we had back in the USA would end up with a massive chunk of ice clogging the dispenser if you left it alone for months, so at least that problem is solved.

Pickup M

After a long day of setting up the home, we walked over to pickup M. She had a successful first day of school, and said she said she enjoyed it. We were relieved that her first day went well, and she told us about the fun stuff she got to do with her new classmates on the way home.

A few more firsts

We cooked dinner at home, which was the first in a long time since our travels and move started. That also meant it was our first time using the new rice cooker, first time getting veggies from the super market nearby and sitting around a cardboard box on the floor with our grub. We also watched the sun go down, and the first of many sunsets to be.

We didn’t last much longer after dinner and a bath, I was probably passed out by 8:00pm from a long day. We also got to try out our rental futons, they did alright. Still a bit stiff sleeping on the floor, but we’ll be fine for a few more days.