Stateside backup

I hopped on a plane to Auckland from Kyoto for a quick 5-day sojourn to celebrate my best mate Claire's wedding and serve as her maid of honour. It was a perfect wedding, small and elegantly simple - the best wedding I've ever been to, actually.

Oddly enough, of the whole wedding group, there were 2 non-Kiwis - me and Andy. This isn't by itself an odd thing, but considering that there were two Americans at the wedding, both in the wedding party, and both of us had flown in to Auckland from East Asia for the wedding, Andy and I had some fun things in common.

Andy is a pretty cool guy who lived in Korea and taught English with his girlfriend (ok, now they're married!) for a long time while really wanting to make pottery. And he's really good at that. We talked about life as an English teacher in Asia and traditional Kyoto pottery, and a few months later when I went to Seoul for a long weekend I had a friendly familiar face to hang out with. So double serving friend he is.