No Gills Yet - But She Does Have A Bus Pass

Yep - my baby starts kindergarten this fall. And after registering her for Bob Hope Elementary School (Home of the Pandas), we had to get one of these! Thankfully, she's just about the last stop on the way in and one of the first on the way out - so she won't be sitting on the bus for long.
They have a video camera and a human bus monitor on there, so no funny business. (I'll have to make sure Mia waits until she arrives in class to beat up on people.) As you can see, she gets picked up at 8:05 am (not too bad) and returns home at 3:30. Awesome! She's super excited for this part of her kindergarten transition. Kids on base have to walk.


Saw this while driving to swim class yesterday:

I know, I know - my Japanese will NEVER be as good as their English, but the misspellings and translations will just never get old. Yesterday at San-A (local everything store, kind of like Jusco) I saw so many t-shirts that made me laugh out loud! They love Grateful Dead bears here. I am going to buy myself a Dead t-shirt or 10 at that store when I can because they're hilarious.


Here's the kid diving into the 12' deep end. She's learning a lot this swim session - I love her teacher, she challenges them and Mia's really showing improvement. Ms. Sea Turtle is no Mr. Mike, but hey - what can I do?

Just proof that we're in the flight line - this was taken last night about 3 blocks from our place - can you guess which direction? It's pretty cool though. If you stand on our roof you can wave to the pilots and they wave back. Yeah, they're that close.

As Punishment, You Must Don Hello Kitty!

Hysterical...

http://www.channelnewsasia.com/stories/afp_asiapacific/view/292488/1/.html

Great weekend!

Wheeeeee!!!! This is Mia descending the water slide on Foster, where she takes swim lessons. Yep, definitely sucks to be her.

As for the rest of us, it's festival season (or as Mia and Leah put it "festible"). Eisa/Obon is at the full moon in August (which falls on the last weekend) and it's one huge party until then! We hit the summer carnival at nearby Sunset Beach in Chatan with Hector, Kristina, Lars & Leah (Hector works with Craig, he actually did at Miramar too, so we met them while we were still in San Diego.) Leah's 5, so instant friend for Mia, and Lars will be 2 in February. He's adorable. We had a fantastic time, left at around 6:30 after gorging on some of the best food ever, and made it home to sit for a while and chat until the fireworks started with a great view right out on our balcony. It's good here.

So basically.... you have not had good food at a carnival unless you've done so in Japan:

This was one of OH so many wonderful food stands - I wished it wasn't so hot and I was a bit more hungry. Mia & Leah (and even Lars) won all kinds of tchotchkies at the booths and had a ball. All the pictures here:
http://www.kodakgallery.com/I.jsp?c=d0hm29f.2fvcow5r&x=0&y=-fy9tyj
Great music, great company, and great fun.

Oh - and by the way - no fiberoptic cable until September because they're so backed up. -sigh- And so we wait!

She loves to swim

Here's a video from Mia's swim class last Thursday - the kid is a born swimmer, she loves it. She's improving too.

Whale Sharks! Blog!

My dive buddy from class went diving with whale sharks today (largest fish on the planet - about 7m long). I'm going to see if I can put a link to his pictures here:

http://share.shutterfly.com/action/pictures?a=67b0de21b35360304522&sid=8AatGLdu1cuHnw

If that doesn't work for you, whoever you are, email me so I can pull it. I'll be doing this soon despite the $115 pricetag - gotta save up for that experience before I go!

I also found an incredible local blog - http://okimama.wordpress.com/
HOLY COW wealth of information! Categorized beautifully with pictures, directions to places - wow, I am more than happy I found this only 6 weeks in!

Off Subject

Ok, this isn't normally what I'd use a blog post for, but this video is really cool. Hang in there, I know it's 8 minutes long, but it's fascinating. Ryan, I think the guy that shot this sounds like you a little bit.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LU8DDYz68kM

Things are pretty much status quo - Mia's in swim class every day for a few weeks, Craig is at a seminar this week with a bunch of guys (at at least one woman) of his rank. We have been enjoying local food, meeting some more neighbors & stuff, and I just bought tickets to "Okinapa" - VERY excited for that! ( I hear from everyone that has been here for past Okinapa wine festivals that it kicks butt!) It's $25 a head (adult thing) for wine tasting, amazing food, and they sell the wine you taste also, and give you a 10% discount on mixed cases. One of the tickets I bought is for a friend from my dive class who even offered to be the DD. YESSSS!

This weekend Craig will probably play golf at some point. Saturday morning I have to take Mia to the family practice building (doctor) to get a form filled out that says she has all the immunizations & such she needs to attend school. Hopefully she won't need any shots, but I've prepared her for the possibility.

Otherwise, things are great! Some pictures soon - a weekend is coming and I plan on getting out to do something fun - Obon & Eisa festivals are this month - that means lots of dancing, drumming and musical performances - I'm bringing the SLR for that stuff!

I Predict I Will Become A Dive Bum

This weekend I did my first 4 dives - 2 on Saturday at the Kadena Steps, and 2 on Sunday off a boat in Ginowan. (I recommend a boat over walking out on coral, I have a big target bruise on my calf to prove why...)

Loved it. It's peaceful and fun down there, I was comfortable in the warm water with a very good instructor and a cool dive buddy in my class. The visibility was pretty crappy - mostly still due to the after-effects of the typhoon. (max was the very first dive, 25-30 foot vis)

But, we saw a variety of fun creatures. I don't have a waterproof case for my camera (yet...) so deal with the fact that I had to put pictures from the web in here to show you what I saw.

Yesterday off the boat in Ginowan, we saw 2 of these guys...one of the most poisonous snakes that exists anywhere. I'm glad he was about 10-15 feet away from us!


Yep - "Gill" was everywhere. These are super cool, we saw families of them swimming around & eating coral.


Lots of puffer fish. Some are pretty large too - but they only puff out if you yank their tail, so we didn't do that.

THIS was a gorgeous fish. One of the prettiest we saw.

Yep - the first day I found Nemo - in an anemone. Very cool.
Lots of these - I called them referee fish.

These nearly glowed in the dark down there.
But THIS blue one took the cake. WOW was this sucker bright. In turquoise waters, this guy seemed to have a light bulb inside of him. Amazing.

Lots of these butterfly fish - really pretty.


And tons of sea urchins, anemones, pretty coral - and one poking out head of a moray eel - orange guy. Very cool. I'm excited to get some more diving done here, I'm glad I got certified early. I hope Craig can drop the golf thing for long enough to get certified & come with me. Unfortunately Mia will still be too young for a while.

Other news? Not much - I was gone from the early morning until after 3 both days, so I just came home and relaxed. It's still hot. We're happy to have our stuff. And after a brief time of sleeping on the mattress on her floor (due to the movers losing the 8 bolts that hold her bed together), Mia should be on a bed tonight in a put-together room. My parents were kind enough to go to Ikea and find the bolts to Mia's discontinued bed and mail them out to us. THANK YOU!

Gotta go, she'll be up soon and then we need to start our day.