November Festivities

OK, on to catching up with November. Early in the month we had a Marine Corps' Ball or two. I just went to one. He went to two. His job now means that he gets to narrate the entire ball, and everyone said he did a smashing job, better than anyone they'd ever heard. He did do really great, and the ceremony is always cool. Did you know that the Marines celebrate at the ball by cutting a piece of birthday cake and having the oldest Marine present pass it to the youngest Marine to show the passing on of traditions? This year, the youngest Marine present was born in 1993. That's even younger than my little sis now! I remember 1993. 

We were having a tea party with her magnetic Maggie and Cinderella dolls, which she loves. I thought she looked extra beautiful this day, so I had to take a picture. I looked back at a picture today of her with tight little curls when she was 2. I'd forgotten her hair was that curly. It's still beautiful. 

A good representative "look" of D, I think. She's so cute! 

Kissing her prince good night. You can kind of see the trees I painted on the living room wall. I was going to paint the huge old space, but I didn't really love either color when I put it up and didn't want to repaint that whole space when we left. So the trees will be easier to paint over, and they helped make that wall less stark.

D's room is the only other room I painted. I couldn't get quite the same lighting for the colors for the picture, but this is about how it looks. Just one accent wall. It's definitely bright and different, but I only have to live with it for a few years. It totally changed the look of her room from "barren echoing wasteland" to "a kid could maybe sleep here". I like it alright, so it's okay if you don't. :) Getting the lines straight took the longest. 

She figured out how to sit in the Bumbo, then couldn't fling herself out of it. 

We did Thanksgiving with some friends from church and others, at their tower apartment. This was our authentic dish - beni imo, our purple sweet potato. They put them in a pastry here that's really popular that I actually really like. Then there is beni imo ice cream, donuts, and who knows what else. They taste a little different than regular sweet potato, but not by much. 

A. with two of her friends from church

My Girls

I guess these are all from the last month or so - they're getting bigger! D. is saying lots of words. One of her faves is waving and saying "Hai" when we're out. "hai" as in yes. I got her to say "gato" too, not the spanish for "cat" but short for arigato. A. has been brave enough to shout her greetings out the car window to the guards, and although my intention of learning the language is quickly getting lost in the shuffle, I have every intention of bringing it back to the forefront. . . soon. The funny thing about living in a foreign country is that the majority of your life is still taken up with everyday living. I now fully understand why people come back from a foreign duty station not being totally immersed in the culture or not knowing very much of the language. It takes time, and is an "extracurricular" to the events of every day life, so it easily gets pushed to the back burner. But like anything in life, the things you put value on are going to be the things you invest your time in. A reminder for me in how my time is being spent.  

Halloween - a couple months late

OK, I will just cease to apologize for putting things up that have long since been forgotten. You should just be glad they're finally up. :) These are some pictures from the English class party we had at my fellow teacher's house. I took the girls and they had fun making some new friends. The Japanese kids come to our church "basement" room every Saturday morning to do some English lessons with us. I've had lots of fun doing it, and it's satisfying my urge to teach. The kids are ages 6-10, I think. It's great that their moms all speak very good English too, so we've been able to communicate more because of that. Oooh, I almost forgot. . the pictures you won't see of this party are my fan-TAS-tic parking job in my friend's garage. They live out in town and are actually fortunate enough to have a little open garage to park in. Now picture your two American cars. Two of them would fit in their garage, and maybe a third if you blocked your other two. Well, we ended up getting SEVEN of our Japanese cars all wedged in there. I stopped traffic on the main road for a few good minutes while another gal switched cars around. A. had to crawl under our car just to get out because we were in there so tight. Just kidding. I am pretty proud of how my parking in reverse has significantly improved since we've been here. 

The moms said they don't really do trick-or-treating here, but some people might have a little party just because. I heard and saw a few funny things. . one, I heard that people will take their kids on Halloween to knock on the doors of the Americans out in town to get candy, which I thought was pretty awesome. (We're all identified with a special "Y" on our licence plates - stands for "Yankee" and "Your Fault".) Also, probably a third of the kids that were trick-or-treating in the base neighborhood where we were were Japanese, so the people with base privileges definitely hit up that day for their kids to get some candy. 

A. and a new friend 

Some of the littler kids, not sure who they all belonged to

The four big kids are our main students - Liliko, Allen, Kaia and Loy

Of course this is one of the few nights that they both fell asleep in the car, with Daddy on duty, so I was left to get them upstairs alone. Did I mention I counted steps the other day and it's about 150 from our car to the front door (and that's taking the elevator)! I stood A. up and she almost fell over she was so sleepy, it was pretty cute. 

The wonderful 17-year old costume made by Great-Grandma B. of Little Bo Peep. Found the sheep ears at the 100 yen store for D. and dressed her all in white, so that was pretty easy. :)

I neglected to look at my receipt, so I can't tell you the exact amount I dished out for this pumpkin, but I'm pretty sure it was in the $11-13 range. Someone brought a pumpkin in for our pastor to carve Luther's seal on, because they don't sell pumpkins out in town. And to top it all off, that week was so random that we never actually carved anything into the pumpkin. So that's IT! No more pumpkin for these kids until 2014. :)

The only pumpkins they get are these wooden ones that A. and I made. I'm pretty proud of doing a craft project all by myself! Motivation was up there!

Then the Relatives Came!

OK, ok, so it's been way too long since I've posted. I had a bet with myself at how long I could keep this blog active, and it looked like I'd almost lost it, but here I am to redeem myself with a newfound effort to add some more pics in the coming days, or weeks, or before the end of 2011. :) These pics are from the last few weeks of September, when we had our first official visitors to the island - Abuelo and Abuela! It felt so great to have them in our house and feel like (for a few minutes at least) that we were all back in California. Things don't seem quite so foreign with family around, which is great. We crammed a lot into their 2 weeks, and the typhoon that had been sitting off our coast for the days prior to them landing even managed to bypass us, so the weather was pretty nice the whole time! I'm missing pictures of some of our activities, but 1. I'm lazy and 2. I don't want to give everything away for those reading this that might still be coming to visit!

A. moped around the entire day after they left. We can't wait to see them on our trips back to the states!

There's this huge system of climbing nets at the aquarium that the kids all love to climb around on. She's getting so big!

This was to capture D's little legs. I think they're the perfect amount of chubby. :)

She's pointing to the sea turtle cut out of bushes at the aquarium. 

At the "Tropical Dream Center". The name sounds kind of Native American to me. It was a really nice botanical gardens with tons of different orchids and some fruits we hadn't seen before. Now I can't think of what any of them were, but it was still cool. Actually, it was pretty hot walking around a greenhouse. 

At the tip of the ferris wheel in "American Village". I guess it's kind of like America. There is a Starbucks there. 

D with some fruit. 

Playing in the sand up north at Okuma. There's a little military lodge place up north that we hadn't been to yet. 

Beautiful water. 

This is the log cabin that A. cried leaving after 2 nights here. We actually didn't spend a lot of time on Okuma. We kind of just used it as a home base to see some more things up north. All 4 adults and the 2 kids slept in this nice little wooden box. Abuela would tell you she was a little freaked out by the geckos that were sharing the walls with us, and I would say that too, but maybe sleep was calling me more. I think we'll probably be staying here again before we leave. The girls really enjoyed being out in nature. 

I liked D. in her hat. It looks like she's serious about her phone call. 

Who does she look like?

We got to see some very authentic Ryukyu dances when we went to Shuri-jo Castle. I wouldn't say it's the most expressive form of dance. Actually, it's probably the least expressive form of dance I've ever seen. I gather that part of it involves keeping your face as blank and focused as possible. There were a few sets of dancers, and they all moved very slowly and methodically, a few with fans, one with an umbrella. Okinawa was not always Japan's land, surprise, surprise. It was part of the Ryukyuan Kingdom from the 15th-19th century, so although people don't speak the Ryukyuan language much anymore, there is still quite a bit of history that relates to that time in their history. 

Shuri Castle. This was almost completely destroyed in the Battle of Okinawa in 1945. They reconstructed it on the original site in 1992. 

There are all these t-shirt vendors on the main tourist street, and they put their t-shirts on stuffed animal dogs. D. really liked stopping to get down out of the stroller and move them all around for the shop owners. 

Sae and Ami

A few weeks ago we were privileged to be a part of a little exchange program here on base. 25 kids and a few adults were chosen to be flown down here from mainland for a cultural exchange. The few days were meant to be a vacation for the kids, a chance to get away from all the devastation they've been living in since March 11th. They were all from the little island of Oshima, which was hit hard with the tsunami. About half of their island was completely covered with the wave. Praise God that the kids were still in school when the wave came and that the school was on higher ground. I think only one little girl is unaccounted for still. The Marines worked closely to provide relief for this island immediately after, and so the friendship developed. 

We found out last minute about hosting them, right before we went on lockdown for the last typhoon actually. I had decided not to go to the commissary before the typhoon in case the power went out and we lost the food in the fridge. So there we were, after 36 hours of torrential rains and howling winds, with the big "American" meals I wanted to make them still sitting at the store. When we picked them up Saturday evening, we used our "greeting words" and gave hugs and smiles, using an interpreter to assure them that we were nice people and would give them whatever they wanted. :) We headed back to our place for supagetti, garlic pan, fried zucchini cakes and incredibly rich chocolate peanut butter brownies. It was kind of funny watching them politely choke down my sweets. I sent them back to the barracks with more brownies anyway. A few of the kids stayed overnight, I think with families that had wives who were Japanese, but I'm sure most of the kids were grateful to go back at night to the barracks and have sleepovers with all of their friends. They spoke no English and in practical terms I still speak no Japanese, which made our few days together quite quiet. Silence usually makes things seem "not fun", so I felt bad the whole time for not having become fluent in the last 4 months. 

Sunday we picked them up and brought them home to eat omelettes before wisking them off to church for a good half hour before taking them to a scheduled buffet lunch. Our pastor asked them if they had ever been to church before and they said no, and it just happened to be bilingual Sunday, so we can pray a little seed was planted there. The extravagant buffet after church was another chance to see their eating habits. Their last course consisted of a few leaves of lettuce and some veggies, putting us to shame once again as Jose let Addie start her meal with ice cream "for being such a good kid", haha. We took them to our aquarium (which has the 2nd largest tank in the world), bowling with pizza, pool party with hamburgers and hot dogs, and they ended their trip Tuesday with a little tour of our TV and radio station studios. They warmed up more to Addie as the days went on. It was cute watching them hold her hand and hold her up to the windows at the aquarium. The language barrier really was getting me down, but as the bus was getting ready to leave and the kids were all lined up, there were tears in the Japanese kids' eyes and tears in ours too. Addison actually sobbed the whole rest of the day that they were gone, and now her bedtime story every night involves talking about going to see Ami and Sae in Oshima. It was great to be part of the exchange and I hope the girls benefited too. What struck me most was the importance of language and how much we take it for granted. Yes, we could smile at each other and act warmly and gesture, but there was still a void. It made me conscious of every word that comes out of my mouth to another English speaker, and whether the words are helpful or necessary, as well as how quickly I can find out the information I need through common language. Have you ever pre-planned every single thing you thought you might say in a day? I did it - twice, and man, that sure got me thinking about how many of my words were really necessary! I pray that God can use my words for good whenever something leaves my mouth. In my feelings of inadequacy at not being able to reach the entire Japanese population with my words, I was reminded of how many people in the world speak MY language, people who still need to hear God's words of love and grace. I'll guess I'll start there, and in the meantime, our Japanese neighbors won't be short on smiles and large gestures from their American friend. 

Sae, a sweet 10 year old

Ami. Her house was destroyed in the tsunami. 

Enthralled with the very un-Sea World-like dolphin show. 

This picture is to show everyone my daughter's gorgeous hair. The humidity here helps. I'm never cutting it. :)

I hid the grandiose-ness of the tank so that people coming to visit will still be impressed. Trust me, it's huge. 

Do you see her dropping the hermit crab because it wiggled on her hand? 

More fun at the bowling alley.

Dishing out the High 5's. 

They were on air while the DJ talked. We told Addison we heard her breathing. 

Got to watch the TV Marines silently freak out while 50 kids explored their studio. 

The whole group of Japanese kids with the American host kids. I think Addison and Davenie were the youngest hosts.