I arrived home on Friday--and very happy to be back.  Gunther and Eliza prepared a wonderful Middle Eastern lamb and chicken feast yesterday for Easter.  Eliza's mom, Carmen, is here for the week from San Diego, and we also had Steven and Marian and their two kids over for an Easter egg hunt and dinner.  The weather cleared up just in time!  

I had an interesting talk with Steven (while he was helping Luke, his 2-year old with his log-like building block set.)  He's returning to India (the whole family went last year) to do more research on Bhopal, and the organizations there which have been taking environmental action since the 1960's.  "People think it's a new idea to be challenging the multi-national companies," he said, "but they've been doing it in India for a long time." 

Eliza has decided to only buy food that is locally grown. "A lot of pollution goes into the air because of transporting food," she told me.   

Still pondering so many things about Japan--relationships, communication styles, projects.  Jet-lag kept me up and I started reading the book Fumiko had given me last year, Polite Lies, On being a woman caught between cultures, by Kyoko Mori.  It's quite interesting and makes me wonder about how my friends see me there!  It seems to me to be so easy to be rude without knowing it although I keep trying to understand the most obvious customs.  

Before that I finished the book that Banana Yoshimoto gave me when I met her in Tokyo--Argentine Hag.  It's very good.  It's also illustrated in a most interesting way that complements the story.

I don't feel like working today, but I have many things to catch up on.

This morning there were five patches of rainbows, like little rocket ships, on my bedroom ceiling.