Misguided

Sadie has decided that I made a very misguided shopping decision over the weekend.

I couldn't pass up a crazy Japanese dog outfit on clearance.

You can tell she's plotting to chew up my socks tonight in this picture.

Our Dragon

Meet Dragon, my Kindergarten class' newest member. I surprised the kids with this pet for our classroom because we've been studying living things. The kids just love him! Can you tell that they picked out his name?

Unfortunately, this is actually our 2nd Dragon. The 1st one died quickly (I think I purchased a diseased fish) and I had to replace him over the weekend. Thankfully, betta fish are easy to find and I chose one with common coloring. I decided not to tell the kiddos about this part of the story.

The only problem with getting a class pet is that now I have the "bug". My para and I have already discussed getting a bird next year and then maybe something furry, like a rat or a hamster. We'll see about that one. Having a class pet brings up lots of stories from the kids about pets they had to leave behind in the states (very sad) or pets they acquired while living here. Mostly though I hear about fish who didn't make it very long and ended up getting flushed down the toilet. I'm keeping my fingers crossed that this Dragon doesn't have to go there for a while.

In case you were confused...

My friend Teresa knows my penchant for humorous Japanese signs and took this photo for me the other day when she was out in town. I guess the standard bathroom picture signs with the male figure in blue and the female figure in a dress in red weren't cutting it anymore.

Pet Box

I haven't found a fabulous pet place yet, but this place is decent. Pet Box* actually sells some wholesome food** from the states, so I can't complain since I thought I would be forced to feed the cheap junk from the grocery store. Nothing but the best for my babies!! Anyway, Pet Box does sell puppies, which makes me sad, and also sells other little creatures, such as fish, rodents, and even the occasional spider monkey (Americans are not allowed to import these, so some military families have found themselves in a pickle after purchasing one of these crazy creatures).

This is where I found those dried fish treats. I also found it interesting that I found another product with an IG on the packaging (this is so rare in the states). This happened once in another pet store that sold small necklaces for dogs, but this time it was for something normal: dog treats! I also found this odd, since I have yet to see a local with an IG, even though the Japanese seem to favor the smaller breeds.

Anyway, REPRESENT!

*The wording at the bottom of the Pet Box sign reads, "keep happy friendship with your pets."

**Wholesome dog foods include, but are not limited to Natural Balance, Royal Canin, Solid Gold, and a couple of others. The Whole Dog Journal publishes a list of nutritionally sound dog foods each year.

San-A Seafood

There's a store here called San-A. They are everywhere, kind of like Wal-Mart. San-A is actually separate stores all housed together in one big building, so you have a clothing store, and electronics store, and a grocery store. Noa likes to pick up sushi from our local San-A, so I snapped a few pictures of the sushi and some of the other delicacies one can buy there.


Here's Noa's favorite San-A sushi platter. Just think; this is just a supermarket-type platter, not necessarily the most gourmet stuff around! It sure beats the sushi he used to get a our super Target (no offense to Target - as most of you know that's my favorite store and I miss it dearly).

Squid (yummy...)

These are fish heads. I'm not quite sure what recipie calls for these.

Since we were on a seafood theme, I picked up some dried fish for the dogs at the pet store. Check out these crazy treats. The dogs love them!!

Surprise Guests

My class is studying pets this week (yeah, it's one of my favorite topics). Today I had some surprise guests for the kiddos - our dogs! Noa had the day off and brought Sadie and Gunnar to school. The kids loved it and the dogs were great. They were surrounded by affectionate pats, kisses, and were given lots of cheese! I can't post photos of the kids, but here I am with Gunnar in the classroom (notice that he's more interested in Noa instead of the photo op).

Sunday Brunch

After church today, we headed over to the Rose Garden for brunch - a great place for omelettes, french toast, and crispy bacon (a rarity here). We ate with some friends and enjoyed conversing about Okinawa, travel, and told stories about "back home." As we were leaving we realized we had been there for about 3 hours! Although the restaurant staff was probably glad we were finally leaving, it was a nice way to spend a cool, rainy Sunday morning.

Here we are as we were leaving: Tom, Laura, Noa, Jen, and Perry.

And to you guys: welcome to the blog.

New Duds, New Attitude

A couple of collars came in today for the dogs. I thought I'd show them off by taking some photos. Look at what happened during my photos shoot:

First, I started with Gunnar, who is usually the difficult one to photograph. He doesn't like to sit still and he gets weepy eyes, so I usually can't quite get a good shot of him. Today, though, I finally got a few decent shots. Yeah!

His collar is called "sock monkey" which I think is perfect for him. Noa is not thrilled about it. He wants me to go back to his old camo collar, which is actually my favorite too, but not in it's current ratty condition.

Sadie was hard to photograph today. This was mostly because she was more concerned with Gunnar and Noa. She's here's a shot just to show off her new "cherry blossoms" collar, not my photography skills.

So, then I tried to get a photo of the two of them together and here's what I got:
My theory is that Gunnar was making comments under his breath the whole time and Sadie wasn't going to take it anymore. Yeah, these little dogs can be sweet, but it's WWF when you are not looking!

The Ultimate Experience

I'm going to warn you now and let you know that the following images are a little gross. Let this be a warning that you may not like the pictures in this post.







I bet you're curious now.....seriously, though...it is a little gross, so be warned......








Noa has decided that a fun bonding activity with some of our new friends is to play ultimate frisbee on Sunday afternoons. Now, don't get me wrong, I think ultimate is great. My sister is a champion player in fact*. However, I didn't realize that "ultimate" in this sense meant ultimate injuries.





Check out the trauma from a slide during yesterday's game:

Noa's right arm:

Noa's right leg:

*Well, she didn't actually play in a major tournament or anything. However, she'd always be my pick for an ultimate frisbee teammate. She'll take on the best of them!

Traffic

One of the more comical (or death-defying) activities here in Okinawa is driving. I always crack up when I see this light (and I see it all over the place). What exactly is the need for the red light in this situation, might I inquire?

No going backwards, I suppose?

100th Day

Do you think I like my job??

This was taken after school today. The kindergarten classes celebrated our 100th day of school. It was a lot of work, but really fun. You can kind of see the giant banner we made on the right. I'm wearing a t-shirt with the kids handprints all over it and each child's name written on one handprint. My kids wore matching shirts with handprints that counted to 100 by 10s. After all that work, I'm ready to sleep and then start thinking about our next event - a field trip on Friday!

Whaling Weekend

Sorry I haven't posted in awhile....as usual, I'm up to my neck in kindergarten. I was able to steal myself away for some fun on Saturday. Noa and I joined some friends to go whale watching. Here are some shots from the fun trip:

Our group and the boat we rode on for 3 1/2 hours. Thankfully, I took some medicine to help with the motion sickness. It was a gorgeous day - the only nice day of the week!

Noa playing with Charlotte on the boat.

This was the most common sight. The whales would come up to spout out water and we would observe them going back down into the ocean. It was beautiful and so amazing!

This photo shows how huge the whales were. We actually followed a pod of three whales, one of which was a calf! I don't think this picture shows it well, but we were actually right out in the waters off Camp Kinser where I work. I could see my school from the boat!

This is how close one whale got to us. This whale even sprayed a bunch of us when he first surfaced!

One of my favorite sights. We finally got to see the tail!

This is me with my friend Jen. Aren't we cool in our orange life vests?


Thar she blows! You can see the whale's face in this photo a little, which was also very exciting to see. I am so in awe of these amazing creatures.
Although I was a little seasick (no, I didn't actually get sick), I had a blast and just LOVED the whales. I hope to go again someday and get better photos.

Cola Candy

My friend Mike is an avid Coca-Cola fan. He has a borderline addiction to it even. So when the opportunity arrived to try some Japanese Coca-Cola candy, Noa and I jumped at the chance.

We have this collection of Japanese candy that was given to us a little while back. Unlike any other stock of ordinary candy, like a jar of M&Ms, this one has just been sitting in our kitchen. It's not that we don't like the occasional sweet, it's just a little intimidating because I don't know what the candy tastes like. The textures are quite different too (one bag looked like it contained dog turds, for example). So, neither Noa nor myself are raiding this candy stock very often.

The other day, we were cleaning up and happened upon this candy pile. I noticed a small red wrapper towards the bottom and found a miniature "can" of Coke. Now, I've seen Coke gummies and Coke jelly beans, but I've never seen this before. The candies reminded me of tiny sweet tarts, but they actually tasted like Coca-Cola (not super sweet though). It was strange, but surprisingly good. Oh, the little can said "Orion" on it too, which was interesting. I wonder if the Orion company cans the Coke over here. It's just a guess, anyway. I'm sure we'll be bringing some when we see Mike again. We'd want the Coca-Cola guru to weigh in with his opinion on it.

Food Court Cuisine

I was going through some photos tonight and ran across these photos I took back in December. We were checking out the Okinawa outlet mall and went to the food court for a bite to eat. As any good food court does, this one offered an array of cuisines from all over the world. This place in particular caught my eye - I didn't know NY was famous for hamburger curry.



I had to take a picture of this place too since it seems that Mexican food has been grafted into the Okinawan cuisine. Many, many restaurants here make "taco rice", which is actually pretty good.


Now, this one is new for me - maybe some of you can enlighten me on where this dish originates: the Spam and egg bagel sandwich? Yeah...um, no thanks, I'll stick with the taco rice.

Puzzle

Meg and Joe got us a puzzle for Christmas. We've had it out on the kitchen table since January, putting a few pieces in every once an awhile. Noa was far more dedicated to the cause than I was (I got easily frustrated). Today, we put the last piece in. That the last piece we found on the floor near the toy basket. Gunnar had decided that he wanted to leave his impression on the puzzle too.

Superbowl Monday

One of the more comical things about living over here in Okinawa with the military is "Superbowl Monday." Due to the time difference, the Superbowl airs at 8:30 Monday morning instead of the traditional Sunday night. I don't know if too many Marines were calling into work, but the Monday of the Superbowl is now an un-official holiday here; both the Navy and the Marines get the day off! So, Noa got to enjoy the game with a bunch of his clinic buddies at a Superbowl breakfast party. Schools happen to stay open, so I was at work.

Since I knew that Noa had the day off, I pushed to get home early. Thankfully, I got home early enough for us to take a walk on the sea wall with the dogs before the sun went down. I brought my camera (of course) and thought I'd share some of the photos.

Here I am with the dogs. Noa and I don't often get home at the same time, so if I take them on a walk by myself, this is usually what it looks like:

Noa and Gunnar on the sea wall. This is a beautiful point that is fairly new. You can see the construction barrier on the left. I think they are putting in some new apartment buildings.
The "egg building" (actually I think it is a water treatment plant, but a part of the building looks like a giant egg - hence, the name) has a huge shisa painted on it. I love walking by it - it's one of my favorite landmarks.
As the sun was setting, Noa and I noticed the Karama Islands (we hope to dive there someday) in the background under a beautiful pink-orange sky. That's our apartment building on the left.

This is the realities of our "neighborhood." At least, I could argue, it has character.

Crazy Dog Lady

I have officially become the "crazy dog lady."

Yesterday, Noa and I were on Camp Foster heading to Subway to get lunch. It was a beautiful day - a nice break from the cold weather we've had this week - the sun was out, it was warm, and people were outside taking advantage of the nice day. As we were driving down the road, I noticed a family up ahead walking their two dogs. One was a pit bull and the other looked like an IG. Upon further inspection though, I realized that it was actually a whippet because it was brindle and white (IGs cannot be brindle). So, instead of being a normal person and commenting about the dogs to Noa in the privacy of our vehicle, I promptly rolled down the window and stuck my head out. I shouted "Is that a whippet?!? I have two Italian Greyhounds! Your whippet is beautiful!" The people looked at me like I was nuts. Noa kinda slumped back in his seat and shook his head.



Yeah, I'm totally the crazy dog lady now.



Here's a photo I found on the internet that kinda shows what the whipped looked like in regards to coloring:

Surprise

I had a REALLY bad day yesterday. I won't go into details, but let's just say that I was pretty down.



Look what Noa delivered during my lunch break today:

Aww - what a thoughtful guy!

Soccer Saturday

Noa and some of his co-workers from the clinic signed up to play in a soccer tournament today. Although their team didn't fair well (okay, they lost), they seemed to have fun.

I hung out on the sidelines with the kids and dogs. One of Noa's teammates had a puppy there who was oh, so cute! The tournament just so happened to take place at the field beside my school, so afterwards I just headed to the classroom to work.

Noa is pictured in the center. They named their team, "Lester Lightning"

(named after the clinic).

You can see Noa better in this photo. Look at that block!

Here is that cute puppy I was telling you about. Gunnar was in major play mode, so it was hard to take a good photo.

And here is my desk in my office, where I spend many hours each week.* Notice my "old school" phone - any older and it would be a rotary phone!

Gunnar jumps on my lap after pacing for 10 minutes.

"Mom, are you just gonna sit there all day or play with me?!?"

Finally, both he and Sadie settle down and I can get some work done. Awww - how sweet!

*Noa thinks I'm a weirdo for taking a picture of my desk but I know Jess will appreciate it.