Recap on the week...

I think this was the roughest week in awhile - good that there hasn't been as many downs! It made me glad that life outside of school has been so good - it balances the rest. Anyway - school got interesting this week with report card drama, parent letter drama, font drama, pay check drama, George Washington drama - all kinds of interesting mishaps...my kids seemed to think the answer to everything was George Washington - that was NOT amusing after the 4th kid had said it and we weren't even doing History yet!! Don't ask - I don't know! Thankfully the kids and I have gotten into a good routine and that was just an off day :) We started doing table marbles and that's been a GREAT incentive for them. I think everything has gotten fixed with all the other drama, but there always seems to be surprises here, so we'll see! I had parent-teacher conferences which went well for the most part. I had some parents that were a bit shocked by them...but I was glad to say that all the kids have been improving and grades should reflect that next quarter if we keep up the hard work. I think the biggest hit was that almost every single parent LOVES the snuggle bags the kids get to take home for the weekend if they turn in their homework on time. (thanks again Mom for sending them!) Although I was a sucker this weekend and they all got one since it was along weekend :) The parents and kids are so excited about the books and stuffed animals - it reminds me again how thankful they are for so little - it makes me wish I could do more for them just to see some of their reactions. Rocky was a great translator, by the end I was sure he could have done it on his own! All in all everything went well which was a relief - 3 more report cards and one more set of conferences to go! Sunday we went bowling with Lori and the kids, Dennis and his mom, and some high school boys that were staying with Lori for part of a cultural exchange. The whole afternoon and evening was fun including all 12 of us at dinner! We had lots of laughs and it's a nice way to wind down a weekend. We have Tuesday off for Veterans Day (yes it's odd to have a day off in the middle of the week, but we take what we get!) We need to go get our re-entry stamp for when we go to Thailand...might get to the laundry mat to dry our much to big clothes along with a few other things! It makes it almost like having a 3 day week which is kind of fun! Please keep the school situation in prayer - there's been a lot of stuff going on that's beyond our control but still effects our day to day lives. Small things I'm thankful for: chicken enchiladas in my adorable ceramic cookers, Sunday School (and spice cake), pumpkin bread from one of Adrienne's parents, unexpected hugs, a surprise treat of Skittles in the mail from Kim (a good end to a bad day!), yummy croutons on my dinner salad, Adrienne cleaned the bathroom


I wanted to do a good sweep of the classroom before conferences...my kids thought it was HILARIOUS to be squished up front while they did their math page and I swept :)

Heji Falls...OOOPS, nope!

Well, we set off for the long trek up north...yes it's not that far, but 2 hours in the car with 8 people is a bit long :) I'm losing perspective about being in a car for any length of time since everything is relatively close compared to LA :) Anyway - Rocky, Lori, Adrienne, Rachel and I along with Dennis (one of my students), Carolyn, and Izzie set off for Heji Falls on Saturday. We finally pulled in and discovered that even though it was supposed to be reopened, it wasn't! We drove a few minutes back to another waterfall that Rocky knew (thank goodness for him or who knows what would have happened!) It had been raining off and on the whole drive up but thankfully it had stopped for the most part (not that the rain is cold here usually!) We turned the seats all around in the van and dug into our bentos we had bought on the way ($4 lunch and I was full with enough to share) We ate and visited for awhile before we all peeled of our shoes and socks to go wading through the river to the waterfall. We plan on going again - but with watershoes! My feet hurt a little but we had so much fun it was easy to ignore! Dennis and I were on the fast track ahead of the rest of the group. We picked our way through the rocks and managed to not get too wet until Dennis slipped in the water towards the end of the trip (he was fine and the kids ended up swimming at the end anyway!) We had such a good time walking and talking - we were making up stories about if the rocks were turtles or crocodiles, or koala bears or a dozen other things :) We didn't get to the big waterfall because there's no way to cross the last bit unless you swim or have shoes...next time! It was a really fun trip - a must do again!


Dennis and Izzie and the beginning of our walk

I'm getting pretty good at the self portraits :)
Izzie kept insisting on picking up rocks along the way back - this one got the best of her and she ended up sitting in the water - I cracked up and she still wouldn't let go off the rock till I took a picture!
The kids in the "swimming hole"

The whole gang (minus Rocky the photographer!) and some Japanese ladies we met on the way

Dennis and I were the first ones to the end
The BIGGEST snail I've EVER seen


Photo session on the way :)
Rocky, Rachel, and I all managed to stay dry the ENTIRE time!! We got awards for being the driest (Caroline snuck in the dry people picture and was getting Rocky wet!!)

All I wanted was quiet so I could read...

So I apparently will do just about anything in order to have some quiet reading time...Adrienne has been increasingly antsy in our little wood box (hence the trips to the sea wall!) but today it was raining. What are two girls to do? Well, we had coupons to the new Starbucks down the road for free drinks - it doesn't count against the budget if it's free right? I am on a mission to read my book in peace so we decide to go for a couple of hours. We get to the car and it's not raining so Adrienne thinks we should walk, if it starts raining we both have hoods right? I make her promise that if we get caught in the rain we take a picture. So off we set - a few misunderstandings later we have our drinks and have snagged some of the comfier chairs. We quickly decide this will not be our new Tuesday place - no English conversation to eavesdrop on but we settle in with our books (yes, Adrienne has finally settled into reading...can someone send her books 2 and 3 of the Dee Henderson series she has, she has 1 and 4...I'm afraid if she stops reading I may not get to read my books!) So I glance outside a little later and it's pouring - GREAT...we read a bit longer and the rain is not as bad so we walk home...slightly wet, but not worse for the wear :) In order to get more of our wet clothes I made Adrienne stand on a chair for the picture (she complained the whole time about her head touching the ceiling) but the whole evening was a good giggle!
After our photo session I got in pj's and Adrienne settled on the couch to read some more so I decided to have an Adrienne moment and sit really close to her and ask what she was doing, I'm not supposed to bother her when she's reading apparently ;) I pouted and said FINE as I walked back in my room and Adrienne wanted to know what I was going to do, go home? And without thinking I said I was home...HUH??? I seriously stopped, backed out of my room and stared at Adrienne, did I just say that? hmmmm, I guess when a place stops feeling weird and you start letting it be the place where you are and where God has you...well, I guess that's a good enough description of home.

Report Cards and Sleep overs

Let's see, since my last post my eye got better - hot compresses made it itchier, cold compresses helped and so did eye drops...I really think it was a bug bite contrary to popular opinion. After that first day it really was better except for the insane itching...only I (in Japan) would get a bug bite on my eye lid! I finished quarter 1 report cards...I know I've kept parents in the loop - but I was a little depressed after seeing it all together on paper so I'm not really looking forward to conference...but I can honestly say we're improving greatly, if we can keep up the good/hard work we might just pull this off :) Pray for me (and the parents)(and Rocky who's translating for me) that everything that needs to be said is said with wisdom and grace and that it is received knowing that I have the best intentions for their kids! We had a potluck on Friday (half day) before we worked on report cards/preparing for conferences. Adrienne and I brought seasoned roasted potatoes - a big hit, but I miss being able to bring some of my favorites. I have to say I'm finally getting used to cooking here and accepting my kitchen's limitations ;) We did find a cute pink polka dot splash guard at the 100 yen store...it helps to have some more color in our wood box and it keeps my mind off the minuscule kitchen! Anyway, potluck was yummy, report cards done. We had invited Izzie and Carolyn over for dinner and then to our church's Harvest Festival and to spend the night. We made our Japan style personal pizzas which Adrienne and I have gotten down to a very yummy science! Izzie wasn't as excited by them though so she had chicken nuggets. Then they got dressed in their assorted fairy princess outfits and off we went. There were all Bible based games - throw a sponge at Goliath, find the lost coin in jello, fruit of the spirit face painting, jump for joy bounce house and on and on...all kinds of fun things, and food...we splurged on snow cones (they are SO much better here!!) and by about 8:15 the girls were getting tired so we headed home for PJ's a Halloween Pooh movie and stories before going to bed by 9:30 (ok, Adrienne and I stayed up whispering while Carolyn was in my room and Izzie in Adrienne's) Carolyn and I woke up MUCH earlier than Grumpy Pants 1 & 2 (Adrienne wasn't really grumpy, she's just not a morning person) We made pancakes using our new shape pancake things - stars and hearts...very cute!

Izzie discovered my shoes aren't so big on her...
She's SERIOUS about shoes!
The girls were camera "shy" at breakfast - yea right, shy!


We had a really good time and then headed to the base to take the girls home. We did a little shopping (almost have all my souvenir presents bought!) and then headed home for a nap for Adrienne and quiet reading for me...Adrienne gave me the homework (and we all know how I have to complete my homework!) to find something fun for us in the evening. Well first I looked up the prices for the rock climbing gym...not bad if I had a normal paycheck, but a bit steep for us (made me think of the book I'm reading the Julie/Julia project which is basically a blog from this girl named Julie who decided to cook all of Julia Child's recipes in a year - needless to say this got expensive so she asked her bleaders, what she called her blog readers, hee hee, to hit her donation button and through pay pall donate money to her grocery fund...Adrienne and I giggled at the thought of having a blog fund) Ok, back on topic, rock climbing was out, but somehow I figured out this place that has like 50 kinds of Yakitori which refers to grilling food on a stick over charcoal - we've had it at some of the MANY festivals here and liked it so we decided to venture out to a REAL Japanese restaurant ALL BY OURSELVES! Can you tell I'm proud? Anyway, after a bit of confusion on how to get there we find the place and what we believe to be the Grandpa and Dad (the owners) and the grandson are all out in the parking lot playing catch -it opens at 5:00 and it was only 5:30 (people eat LATE here) So we sit down with a menu and the man brings us our towels to wipe our hands and a plate. We've never been given real towels, just wipes before so we put our towels on our plates...the man kindly tells us it's for our sticks, not towels...OOPS! We giggle quietly at our faux pax and move onto the menu - I got chicken, ribs (the BEST ribs EVER), mushrooms (AMAZING) and beef and cheese...they were all good with the rice it was a perfect meal! It was reasonably priced and I'm already planning what I want to get next time :) We then made a few stops at the different Asian Markets - kind of Pier 1, but not expensive - we both got a $3 purse :) All in all a fun night - church today :) and grocery shopping of course. We had lunch at ZaZou (one of our new favorite bakeries) and shared the yummy chicken sandwich and I had a little ham and cheese thing and Adrienne had a little pizza thing and I had chai that was actually good :) Now I'm avoiding grading...sigh...Things I'm thankful for this week: eye drops, sleep overs, bakeries, a new restaurant choice, I got a new fun dress on sale (something fit me here so I splurged!)

Something I'm not thankful for...the geckos here are GROSS looking and this one took up residence on the inside of our screen door - we're avoiding laundry right now because of it!

EWWWWW!

No, we didn't find a giant bug in our apartment, no more yucky smells, but I have what Adrienne thinks is a bug bite...on MY EYE! It was a little speck this morning that was sort of itchy and hurt and through out the day it was bothering me more and more to the point of a headache along with the irritation. Adrienne thinks I'm being my usual dramatic self - Lori suggested eye drops and some allergy medicine - need to get drops, but I took the medicine and iced my eye for an hour tonight. It feels better, but still a slight pain and some itching, so we'll see how it looks tomorrow...I'm VERY nervous if it's something I have to go to the Dr. for...not sure how I feel about going to the Japanese hospital for an exam...we'll just pray it gets better overnight :) Adrienne promised to post a picture of me being dramatic on the couch (she made me lay down, so it's partly her fault!) but I figured I needed to show off my eye...most of you had to look at my throat when it was enlarged, what's the difference right? :) Maybe I need to go lie down in Miss Dolly's office for awhile! I personally don't think the picture does it justice, but it will have to do.

Love,
The Drama Queen

Tour book day (again!)

Ahh another tour book day - that book gives me so many giggles (and Adrienne so many headaches!) I've been scouring the book for places to go and planned a whole day up in Nago for us on Saturday - lots of short stops, but plenty still to do when we go next time :) So we begin the day by going to this awesome bakery called ZaZou to get the best chicken sandwiches and a snack for the road (we didn't have breakfast) We got there just as it opened and got fresh sandwiches and our CC Lemon and set off down the 58. We laugh about needing a route 58 sticker because it seriously takes us everywhere just like route 66 at home :) So I'm flipping through the book marking our progress and looking up things we see to decide if we want to go there some other day (yes we do!) And we're watching the road go by and when we get further north all of the sudden the building aren't so close together and the ocean breaks into view and we both suck in some air with a big WOW to follow - it's is incredibly beautiful here!

The water is such a gorgeous shade of blue and turquoise - not a bad view while stopped at a light!





The Statue of Liberty and the Okinawa Hollywood sign made us laugh! We're not sure what it was for but funny for sure!

Our first stop was to a waterfall to eat our lunch (the book said it would be nice) The directions say to turn at Sukuta Village and follow the small sign that says waterfall. We missed the turn and had to turn around then we went all through the village and saw no sign, but there was only one road to turn on so we went back and turned there and took that road until it came to a dead end. Huh, no more directions in the book...and this is all we see!


Thankfully a Japanese couple comes out to their car and I march over with my tour book and point to the waterfall part and he makes a showering motion with his hand and I nod, he then makes his hand into a fish or something and waves me toward that VERY SMALL sign down this very small path - here we go....we start walking down the path and Adrienne looks at me and informs me this is the kind of place I might take her if I were going to kill her and leave her to die - no worries, I wouldn't bring lunch for that - ha ha! Besides, I'd be stuck trying to get back by myself - NO GOOD can come from that!


We come to the waterfall (yea!) and I insist on climbing up the rocks to sit by it because there's this AWFUL noise and we're not sure if it's power lines or bugs (not sure which is worse!) and I'm hoping the water drowns it out. So we sit and eat our lunch - YUMMY! and I stick my feet in the water which feels marvelous on my bug bites (I think they're from outside, not our apartment, thank goodness!) After we're done eating we trek back to the car and Adrienne asks where next so we head back to the 58 to find the Banyan tree that is over 300 years old and the stone tablet that was a protest to Nago becoming the capital instead of Shuri.


My directions say head south from the Nago intersection...UMMMM we have no idea what that means but I finally find some more instructions in a different part of the book that says it's near the grocery store and post office which we happen upon and finally find the tree. Adrienne sees no where to park so I make her pull over so I can go take a picture. We can't waste all that hard work and not go look at it! So there's my Banyan tree - exciting huh?

Next on the list was a short walking tour of a traditional Okinawan style house (currently a residence so we can't go in) and a prayer temple. There is a misprint in the instructions so we get turned around and back on the right road 449 not 448...oops! Adrienne was getting a little irritated with me, but was a trooper despite the directions and thankfully they were better after that :) We did say that if the only place we argue is the car then we're doing pretty well! Anyway, we park near a different post office and walk the 3 blocks to see the house...I snuck around the rock wall for a full picture (shhh don't tell) apparently the rock wall and the clay roof and the wooden sliding doors are the "old Okinawan home" style

We then went to the opposite corner and walked 2 blocks and turned and walked another block past the preschool (yes, this is what is put in the book) and come to the prayer temple which was under construction in one part and being prayed in at another. We look around and head back to the car - Adrienne just has her camera and I have my tour book and we're walking down the middle of the road - no other white people in sight and here we are trekking along - it was probably a really funny sight to the few people that drove past us!
On our way back we saw the world's biggest butterflies, think small bird size which I'm convinced came from this caterpillar - now I know I don't have big feet, but that caterpillar is almost half of my foot!! Crazy...
Next stop was the glass factory - I have a crush on the Ryuki glass, but this wasn't a very good shop so I was disappointed. Last on our list was the Pineapple Park (the real reason for the trip, but it seemed like a waste to just have one stop!) This was by far the highlight and on the list if anyone comes to visit! We bought our tickets and then got on our very own pineapple tram (programmed in English just for us!) We then learned that pineapple is a combination of pine cones, because it looks like one and apples for it's sweet flavor, hmmm, ok! The tour was fun - we giggled through most of it
Little pineapples

Us on our super speedy tram (it was slower than our car if that's possible!)

Afterwards we wound our way through the shell museum and then to the pineapple store - you could taste all things pineapple - cookies, cookies, and more cookies, cake, pie, wine, juice, candy, chocolate, yogurt chips, and who knows what else. They also had perfume which I would actually buy it smelled SO good (but they wouldn't let me spray it to see if it was still nice on me) and for the price I didn't want to risk smelling funny! We got a couple of boxes of cookies for our treat and headed home - good times - Sunday has been quiet with church and I'm off to grade so I can do report cards this week!

Friday Night Fun

We didn't have anything going on for Friday night and we had our yummy mac and cheese...didn't want to spend money, but didn't want to sit in the wood box either. Adrienne started looking through the tour book and I'm convinced the island that after 7pm all there is to do is eat and drink...so we decided to go find the US Forces WW2 Landing Monument. Now the directions say to go to Sunabe beach and walk to the northern end until a park appears, the monument and the beach are located on the other side of the park. UMMMM - ok...so we find what we hope is the park, and on the other side is a beach - good, so the park has a playground and what not and some gazebo type buildings, we check these out - they seem to be for looking out at the ocean, we cross over to the beach and find the following sting ray...if this is the monument that's just the strangest monument EVER...but we better take a picture in case it is. So we're walking back towards the park laughing about how we'll have to google the monument when we get home to see what it looks like.
We then find this at the edge of the park, we have no clue what it says, maybe THIS is the monument - WAY better than the sting ray at least :)
Oh wait, then there's this - it's hard to tell but there's people carved into the stone with guns creeping up onto the rocks...we decided this MUST be the monument (we googled it and we're right)



The whole evening was full of giggles and yet another funny tour book story :)