A time of relief...

Conferences went well on Friday and I am thrilled they are over with, for now anyway...we also have 3rd quarter conferences...I had a few blessings at conferences. First, after I was done going through the report card with one of my parents I asked if she had any questions. She responded with. "How are you liking Okinawa?" Not exactly the kind of question I meant, but it led to another 20 minutes discussing Okinawa, thanksgiving and christmas plans, my family, the boyfriend I don't have, shopping, etc. etc. and even included taking pictures! It was a lot of fun and provided some good laughs for a potentially long day! My other blessing was from a parent that brought in some homemade pumpkin bread and several different yummy marinades and sauces that she recommended. This is a missionary family that has been on the island for several years and is well acquainted with good food and things we may be missing from the states.

On Saturday the plan was to make the 2 1/2 hour drive to Hiji Falls, a great hike and a beautiful waterfall. We survived the drive with 3 children and 5 adults in one van only to find that it was closed down for construction. Luckily Rocky was with us and knew of another waterfall that he liked better down the road a bit. It had been pouring rain so when we finally arrived to the second waterfall we ate our bento lunches (Japanese lunches to go) in the van. There was only one problem with this waterfall, you had to walk in the water about knee deep, on rocks, for 30-40 minutes. We figured we would go as far as we could without shoes, since we weren't prepared for this kind of hike. Though the rain had stopped it was still quite the journey! I hung at the back with Izzie, Lori, and Rocky, while the rest of the gang took up the front. We made it to this point (see picture below) only to find out that you needed to climb up some steep rocks to take a path to the actual waterfall. Needless to say we stopped here and decided we'd come back another time with appropriate water shoes. The Japanese ladies in the picture happened to be trekking through the water with us. Notice how I am only wet just above my knees...Getting to this point was a bit easier than heading back.

After holding a wet child and slipping and sliding on rocks, I wasn't so lucky to stay real dry...This was a hilarious moment...you can see that Izzie just about ate it in the water! I thought for sure I would end up completely in the water, on several different occasions!

Here we are after making it back to point A...

After church today, we joined up with Lori again for some bowling with a group of high school age boys who attend a Canadian school in China and are visiting the island for a cultural exchange program. She hosted 4 of them for the weekend. We had a great time bowling, followed by a trip to the 100 yen store (where the boys bought little red and white hats that many of the Japanese students wear for PE...it was hilarious!), and then back on base for dinner at Chili's...oh how I have missed Chili's! There were lots of laughs tonight...much needed! ...Looking forward to a short week...No school Tuesday in observance of Veteran's Day.

1st quarter down...

You've gotta love it when you go to church and the pastor preaches a sermon right at you. There is nothing better than a safe place to just be you, regardless of the struggles and frustrations of the day. Alison and I may have made people wonder about our sanity with the amount of tears last night. :) The pastor's sermon was titled, "He is with you in the land." God never leaves us regardless of how far we are from home, family, friends, and comfort. I'm sure this sounds like what I've said before, but it is so true! It really hits home to think about the fact that God is always right next to us just waiting for us to ask him for help, yet we (I) continually try to do it by myself. There have been times in the last few weeks when I have literally not known how to deal with certain situations in class. I've began to quietly pray for the kids in my class as I am walking around the room during rest time. Do I automatically just get answers on how to fix it? Not exactly, but it does help me to let go and give it to God, after all he is my guide. My kid's Bible verse last week was "I am with you, and will watch over you wherever you go." It is so easy to say...then you get hit with difficulties along the way and suddenly it seems you're in it alone. Every day is another test, another trial, with a purpose of bringing me closer to the one who will NEVER leave me!
Tomorrow are Parent-Teacher Conferences. Can't believe the first quarter is already over. Time really is flying by. I've just about got everything ready to go, just need to put up my cute little "I'm thankful" turkey mobiles and we're set. I'm looking forward to having a day to breathe and just spend some time with my parents, since I never see 95% of them. I had one conference after school today and this student's mom and dad both came. I had my translator sitting right next to me. A lot of these parents understand quite a bit, it's the speaking part that is more difficult. But I thought it was funny because mom told dad that he needed to come spend time in my room so he could learn English too. They were very sweet and it was a good first conference. We'll see how the rest go!

Halloween...oops "Harvest" fun :)

This was an exhausting week! 4 year olds pretty much drive me crazy...but I get to help them make things...like monkey puppets and monkey bread for the letter M!

I've taken to needing afternoon/evening naps after getting home from work. Pretty sad huh?!?! Yeah, especially when it doesn't affect my bed time! :) Friday we had a half day of school with the afternoon to potluck and finish grades. You should see this intense report my 4 year olds get! whew! Though it was really nice to dismiss at 11:30!

Friday night, being Halloween, Alison and I thought we would take Izzie and Carolyn to our church's harvest festival. We really wanted to go but couldn't go by ourselves so we adopted some kids! :) We picked up the girls from Gate 2 and headed home for a pizza dinner, then dress up time and off to church. There were a lot of fun booths all scripture based; fishing, fruit of the spirit face painting, Goliath sponge toss, worship karaoke, find the lost coin in jello, etc. It was a good time! I saw many of my students there as well, so nice not to be responsible for them! After church we went home for a sleep over!

This morning, once everyone was awake, we made heart and star shaped pancakes! I just had to take a picture of them! :) We had a great time with the girls and were exhausted this afternoon, so I did what I do best...took a 2 hour nap!! However, prior to falling asleep I asked Alison to find something fun for us to today tonight. She came through big time! We went to our first Japanese restaurant on our own! It's called Tenkai, a yakitori restaurant. SO GOOD! The owner was really nice and was showing us a few articles written about his restaurant. The menu has about 50 different kinds of yakitori, meat on a stick. I tried baby back ribs, chicken, and beef and cheese and a side of rice. Funny story...when we sat down the man handed us our towels to wash our hands and placed a plate in the middle of the table. Since the towels were actual towels and not towelettes we thought the plate was for us to put our towel on after we'd used them. Well, after we'd placed them on the plate the man walked back over and took them off and said it was for the sticks, from our yakitori...he smiled kindly as Alison and I tried to contain our laughter. Even now as I am writing this I'm trying to contain my giggles, it was quite funny! After dinner, Alison and I hit up a few Asian markets with all kinds of jewelry, clothes, housewares, and other accessories and home goods. These stores might be my new favorite places to shop! Fun stuff, decent prices.

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Here is Alison icing her eye after in my opinion was an attack of bugs!!! :)

Then she decided she would clean the smelly trashcan while using a "hot compress" to get rid of the itch! lol The whole situation was hilarious! She's all good now!

Tour book adventures...

Friday night Alison and I had yummy mac and cheese which always seems to make the day end so much nicer. Upon my declaration that we needed to do something I searched in the tour book for something to do at night, nearby. I figured we could go see the US Forces WWII Landing Monument. Cool right? Yeah, so we drove up the road a bit where it told us to find a park that had a beach beyond it. The monument would be there...no picture of what we're looking for or anything...We make our way to the park and see the beach so we start our walk. At the end of the beach there is this huge stingray looking animal. We'd hoped this was not the monument but figured it would be the start of a very interesting journey so of course a picture was taken! We walked back towards the park and found this huge stone with something written on it. Okay, so maybe this was the monument...THEN we walked up a few stairs and saw the real monument which we only found out when we looked it up after getting back home. Needless to say the directions in our tour book are real sketchy...which takes us to Saturday. The plan was to go see a waterfall where we would have lunch (an awesome chicken sandwich from one of our new favorite bakeries and of course CC Lemon), a really old tree, an old traditional Okinawan house, a temple, a glass factory, and finally the Pineapple Park. We were off at 10am, picked up our sandwiches and headed out to the waterfall. The drive was BEAUTIFUL though the directions a bit scary... the book said we should turn right on the given street and that we would find a small sign pointing to the direction of the waterfall. Let's just say there was no sign, at least not one that pointed anywhere, instead there was a sign that showed a fish in water being strangled by trash. Hmmm, okay, let's follow that one! lol we eventually came to a dead end and saw a couple walking back to their car. Alison walked up and pointed to the tour book and after a series of hand motions we followed their same route and found the waterfall! Alison forced me to climb the rocks, past the rope that was in place, and there we sat and enjoyed the wonderful noise of the water falling along with this awful buzzing noise that is either made by certain animals or in order to prevent animals from coming near, not sure which one. We made our way back to our car and headed to the ancient tree. The directions here were even better! Go south from the Nago intersection...Can i just say that Nago is the capital of our island, not a small place. Go south from the Nago intersection? Which one? Driving stressed me out, but believe it or not we did find it, though I was so excited at this point I took a picture of the tree from the side mirror. :) And so we continued to our next destination. This time we were on our way to a typical Okinawan house and the temple. These directions were a bit better. We parked and walked several blocks to these two places. Our surroundings were very "local" and we were definitely the only Americans around. After a stop at the glass factory, which proved to be disappointing (I've seen better on the island) we went to the Pineapple Park. So cool! Definitely the highlight of the day. It all began with a ride on a self operated, non-track, golf cart with a pineapple on top. The lady programmed our tour to be in English and off we went viewing all different types of palm trees and pineapples. It let us off at the top to walk through the pineapple wine factory and tasting centers for everything pineapple you can think of...cakes, candies, cookies, juices, wines, and fresh fruit...they also had perfume and face wash (I bought some to try out for this face of mine that doesn't seem to like Okinawa weather). We browsed through some more shopping areas and headed home. All in all a good day with new adventures.

No...not this one

Hmmm...don't think it's this one either

AHA! I knew it had to be around here somewhere!

"Okinawa Hollywood" is what the sign says on the side of the hill

Walking to the waterfall...

Okinawan house with the typical stone wall at the entrance

Prayer Temple

Itty bitty pineapples...

Alison and I cruisin in our pineapple cart!

Fire Station and "stuff"...

I took my pre-kindergarten class to the fire station today since our community helper of the month is firefighter. We walked about 15 minutes to the station along the side of the street. There are not sidewalks down the back streets which basically meant we trekked down the side/middle of the street...something that would be unheard of in the states! The kids got to ride in the fire truck, hold the hose as they squirted water out, and also walk through an ambulance. It was a very cool experience! The firefighters were all very nice though I must say it's strange that the kids could understand them and I could not. From the fire station we walked to a nearby park. It had an awesome slide that the kids couldn't use because the base of it was soaked from the rain yesterday. We will walk to this park some other time so trust me there will be pictures later! :) I may even have to slide down too. Apparently the thing to do is use cardboard since it is made out of smoothed cement and ruins anything that rubs on it. It is one of the steepest slide I've seen! Anyways, there were lots of fun things for the kids to play with and climb. After some play time we ate lunch and packed up for home. Remember in my last blog when I said 7 of my kids fell asleep? Well today every single child took a nap, some for over and hour and the rest for at least 30 minutes! SO EXCITING! I just wish I could've crashed too!

Supposedly this means "do not bother anyone." SERIOUSLY??!!??!!

On another note...this morning I walked into my classroom and found some "drops" of something brown on my covered cabinets near the entrance to my classroom. After much staring the conclusion is that it may be left by a large roach or a shrew. I was given a roach house and a mouse trap so we will see what treasure I get in the morning! To the left is the paper that used to cover my cabinets and to the right is the newly covered cabinets. Just wanted you all to share in my joy! haha

Starbucks Day...

Tuesday nights are the designated Starbucks nights provided by our food envelope, since we put out almost $10 for us both to get tall drinks! Alison and I decided Tuesdays are the hardest to get through; Monday is Monday, Wednesday is church, Thursday is just before Friday, and well, then there's Friday. Therefore, we've taken to making Starbucks runs on Tuesday night to sit, listen to music, read (if you're Alison, though I must say that I just finished my first book in Japan! woohoo! lol), and watch a gecko run around on the ceiling. We've gone 3 weeks in a row now and each time we have seen a gecko on the ceiling! Tonight we saw a guy who had just gotten a new tattoo covering most of his arm. It was wet, shiny, red, and his one sleeve was up.

My class has had a bit of a rough week. They just don't seem to listen to or do anything I ask them to. But today there was a bright spot. During rest time I usually give them about 20 minutes to lay their heads on their desks and I have never had more than 2 fall asleep on the same day...Today, however, 7 of my kids zonked out! I am convinced they wore themselves out driving me crazy! I went ahead and let them sleep for almost an hour! :)

As I write this Alison is getting frustrated with me cuz I'm not paying much attention to her while she's reading our tour book deciding what will be on the agenda for this weekend! Gonna go and be a good Japanmate. :)

Fall Fun Part 2...

RRRROOOOAAAARRR! The sound my kids made after making our lion masks this week...lol It was a pain in my rear to make but they sure looked cute when they were done! Yay for the letter L. I have to stay excited about this otherwise it will be impossible to make it through!


Today was the Fall Festival. This was my little set up for the Sucker Pull. It went pretty well. One of the dads stood behind my table while I was refilling the cones and told his son and friend which ones were prize winners! Such gems! :) It provided a good laugh anyhow.
Here is Carolyn at the Stoning Wall. A few kids tried to throw wet sponges at her. She thought it was great!
Here is one of my students with Lucky. This weekend was her turn to take Lucky home and she decided to bring him with her to the fair! Too cute!

The kids enjoyed themselves while playing games, getting candy, jumping in the bouncer, and eating hamburgers, hot dogs, curry, yakotori (my favorite japanese food...lol chicken on a stick), and shaved ice. We got home a little bit ago and are now chillin, literally, before we head out later on to go with Lori to a pottery fair on base. The weekend continues...