Birthday Surprise!

The lifeguards at work surprised me with a cake for my birthday! The writing says my name in Kanji and happy birthday underneath. It was really good whip-cream and fruit filling!

Shopping! American Village at Chatan.

This is the main place we go to shop off base. There is a "mall" called Jusco. It's like a mall in the fact that it has many stores, but it's different in the way that there is not much dividing the stores. There aren't really walls, and sometimes you're not sure which checkout to go to! Outside Jusco there are many shops and open areas. You can also see the ferris wheel. It's really nice and open compaired to the rest of the island. That's prabibly why it's called American Village because of it's more American style layout and space.

An Early Birthday

I made Carrick pose for me :) He cleans up pretty good huh?

The actual Marina part.

I was trying to get a good pic of the waves breaking. :) It was really pretty at sunset.

This island is in the middle of the marina. You can kindof make out the stairs that lead to nowhere. Our guess was that it might have been a building destroyed in WW2.

This was posted at the beach. Little Scary!

Carrick took me out last night for my birthday, since he will be gone for the real one, and he has duty tonight. We went to the Kadena Marina and it was soo yummy! I didn't take any pictures inside the restaurant but these are of right outside, and our view while we dined. I had the filet Mignon and Carrick had the same with crab legs. A good steak is hard to come by here since they barely have a beef market. It costs more than in the states too!

Lots to update!

Hello friends and family!

Life has recently taken off for us and I haven't been the best at updating, sorry! My head has been swimming with ideas for the Girl Scout camp this summer. Speaking of swimming, I have been offered a job with MCCS as a lifeguard, fulltime, which was a surprise! I'm excited to get back to working again and hope to meet more people through the pools. Carrick has been really busy at work getting things set up after the unit's deployment and taking over from the person he's replacing. Ironically, he's being sent back to North Carolina. He'll be there the 18 of March through the first week of April (I don't remember the exact date). I'm pretty sure he'll miss my birthday though :( We have yet to celebrate my birthday together. No worries though, he's really excited and he'll be one of the first corporals to take this course because it is usually reserved for higher ranks.

As far as exploring our island home... We tried going shopping this past weekend. I am in need of new clothes. We went to American Village to shop and it was terrible to find a parking place, and didn't even get to go to Jusco (like the mall) because the parking was all full! Come to find out there was some live entertainment (that must be pretty popular) which created the parking problem. I came away with no new clothes, but of course Carrick found two shirts he liked. That always seems to happen to us.

The picture is one I don't think I've shared yet. A couple weekends ago we went up North to the city Nago. We went to the pineapple park and ate at this place we both love. We went on a tour there last time we were here and it's sooo good. They bring you a big plate with meat and peppers and onions on it and you cook it on a grill thing right there on your table.

Well, it's late and I should really get in bed! We miss you all!

A job for me!

Things are going great for us. We're officially all settled in. Our car is fixed and finally driveable, the fuel pump went out. Carrick's unit is coming back from Iraq today! And I've found a job! I'm the assistant camp director for Girl Scouts of the West Pacific. It's a council comprised of military bases in Japan, Korea, and Guam. We're organizing a week long camp on Torii Station. This years theme is The Amazing Race. Girls will get the opportunity to participate in high adventure sports like kayaking, rock climbing, rapelling, and zip lining through the jungle! There's also fun stuff like horseback riding, swimming, arts and crafts, and of course camping! I'm so excited to be a part of this and the people I work with are awesome. I'm still planning on working as a lifeguard part time as well. :)

Where we live

Across the bay from Camp Courtney


Blossoms



Our Backyard





Master

Where our guests will be staying :)

Kitchen

We've got our house, government furniture, and express shipment. So that's about 1/10th of our stuff, but we're just happy to be out of the hotel!

Life on the Left Side

Driving here... is an experience. It's getting easier though and It's starting to seem like I've always driven in the left lane. The roads however, will always be crazy. They are very narrow and it's hard to choose a lane on the 4 lane roads. This is because cars always park on the left side half in the lane, blocking traffic, and they don't have turning lanes here, so when cars are turning right they stop traffic in the right lane. So there is a lot of weaving between the two. Another thing to get used to, motorcycle and scooter riders. They are everywhere and follow about zero traffic laws. They can drive in between lanes and cut around cars to the front of the line at stoplights, a practice called "white lining." You have to watch out for them, especially if you are turning left because they may be driving on your left side to go around you, even if there isn't a lane there. As you can prabibly guess we purchased a car. It's a skyline, which I guess is a "cool" car here amoung service members. It's a more American style car, not like the small boxy cars most Okinawans drive. It was Carrick's "Okinawa Dream Car," so I was ok with us getting it. I think when I buy a car it will prabibly be a small suv/jeep type though. The picture isn't of our car, but it's of a skyline that looks like ours. (I don't have my camera cord and can't upload our own).