Lina's 30th Birthday

Message from Lina: Whatever you want to call it - "Dirty Thirty", "The Big 3-0", "The New Twenty" - I have entered my fourth decade of life. Today, I am 30. I need to be congratulated for making it this far, and in mostly one piece ("Congratulations Lina!"). I blinked my eyes and somehow, those years called my twenties, are gone. What a totally crazy decade. Despite all my mistakes and thinking I knew everything when I pretty much knew nothing, I have a memory bank the size of an iPod storage space full of stupid and funny stories. I have no regrets and that's the way I will live my 30s. What better way to start the first year of this decade and marriage, by travelling the world with my husband and making my dreams come true. This is a photo of me at Kumamoto Castle where we spent my birthday. To everyone who has shared my 20s with me, thankyou. Cheers to more mistakes, more funny stories, more magic to be created and more Moet & Chandon. Happy Birthday to me.

Country life

Life on the farm is simple and happy. We laugh everyday, get to know people over extended meal times at the long wooden kitchen table, eat ice cream for afternoon tea and Lina sleeps under a tree at lunch. As we work, the farmers whistle, we think about life, the women chat in Japanese, the frogs croak, the dog that doesn't like English follows us around and we play our small role in creating organic vegetables for people to eat. This is a photo of some pots and things in the yard with a greenhouse in the background. It was taken at about 5pm after we harvested vegetables to be sold the next day. The kitchen utensils and other objects in this shot are typical of the things lying around the farm that represent simplicity and comfort living. We love the orange sky because it means the day has nearly come to an end, we feel a strong sense of accomplishment for another day's work and dinner is just a couple of hours away. Everything here is so easy and makes perfect sense.

City slickers hit the farm

We're on a farm in South Japan. A real farm with rabbits, a tractor, pick forks, hay and greenhouses. There's a 19 year old dog, a Christmas tree, a volcano, two cats that spoon each other, a dog that doesn't like us speaking English, cob webs on glass jars in the kitchen and a brown snake that bit one of the farmers 5 ago (actually, we don't know if the snake is still here). We eat around a big country kitchen table 3 times a day, pull out weeds, feed the cows, sow seeds, harvest crops and pack organic vegetables for sale. This is just perfect for us city-slickers for the next couple of months.