Oki friends and Oki biking

After the Steins left, we continued to stay busy with entertaining! We decided it was time to put our new patio furniture to use. Good weather + good friends + balcony with furniture + nice view + margaritas = GREAT times! :)
We had several friends over on a few different occasions...
One night there were some local fireworks...and we had a great view from our place! We had a few friends come by for the event.

Another night we decided to just hang out...with the 'fantastic five' as our friend Hanashiro-san calls us (Temi, Luke, Kirsten, Chris and myself). We had nowhere to go, so margaritas on the balcony seemed like a good idea :)

Temi, Kirsten and Luke

 Luke trying to show us that he really was happy.

Okinawa Biking:

Well, Chris is a seasoned road biker and has gone on several rides since being here in Okinawa. He's gone out both alone and with some groups to see some really cool parts of the island! I'm still a newbie at the road bike...in fact, I don't even have one! I'm just used to my trusty old moutain bike. But, as many of you know, we have a tandem roadbike here with us! Sounds crazy, but it's a lot of fun. :) We decided to take it up north one day (in a van), and get out onto some of the open, less traveled roads. We only went about 15 miles as it was my first time on a bike since last summer's broke back days! The day was a little gloomy and we probably could have gone farther, but thundering in the distance creeped me out and we turned around. It was probably a good thing we did b/c it started to pour during our last mile! The ride was SO nice though b/c the area was very pretty and desolate...just like we like it for riding on the roads! 

 So Chris wanted to go see the view but I was too scared b/c it was just starting to thunder and I was afraid lightning would hit the tower. I'm a worrier...what can I say! haha

Cool view, cool fish :)

On Easter Sunday, Chris was on duty at the hospital all day. So I decided to take out my mountain bike. I ended up riding a little over 25 miles and explored some new areas near home. I ran into one of Chris' coworkers near this festival for Children's Day. They fly 'Carp flags' of a certain color for the children. 

100 mile bike ride:

Yes, you read that correctly...100 miles and we did it on the tandem!! We met up with a group of riders at 6:30am last Saturday and rode 50 miles north (to Okuma-a resort area), had brunch, and then rode back!! It was really fun, but I was exhausted by mile 85, and near 3 year old breakdown level my mile 95 haha. j/k :) The group we rode up with was great too! Fun people to be around for my first century ride ever!!! Not sure when the next will be...I'm still sore haha :)

All done with my first century ride!! :)

And last but not least...our first of many...the military ball! Oh, which consequently was also Saturday night...after the 100 mile bike ride. Nonetheless, I was determined to still go in style and even attempt to dance a little...just couldn't work the quads haha...made for interesting dancing :)
Chris and I also decided that we had never actually danced together as a married couple! How funny that we just finally shared our first dance.

Kirsten & I

          

    Out on the floor bustin' a move with Jessie!

Favorite pic of the evening :)

Peace out April! 

The Steins Visit!!

Chris' sister Jenny and her family (Tim, Hannah and Chris) came out for about 10 days at the beginning of April. We had a great time with all of them...and despite a couple days of jet lag and funky stomachs, I think I can speak for everyone to say that everyone had a fun filled week. :)

We checked out the Peace Prayer Park... a very somber yet 'peaceful' place to remember all of the Okinawans lost during WWII. There's a lot more history here than I ever realized...I didn't truely understand the Okinawan role in WWII until moving here. Okinawans did not speak mainland Japanese until after WWII. They spoke their own dialect. They were not part of the Japanese forces. Just got stuck in the middle...fun fact: In the 1970's Okinawa was turned over from US rule back to Japanese rule. At a particular time on July 30, 1978, all of the traffic changed direction from driving on the right side of the road to driving on the left side of the road. Can you imagine that mess?!?

 Butterfly cocoon

 Found a cool frog on the wall :)

Snorkeling time!! Chris x2 and Hannah were in the water for several days for snorkeling and rafting adventures :)

 Chris and his waterlogged wetsuit!

Octopus!! Hannah was brave enough to pick it up and put it back in the tide pool. 

 Dinner then a walk along the seawall.

Renassaince Hotel Room: notice anything funny about Chris' outfit?!? 

They had Japanese 'robes' to wear. Aka 'really small whites that tall people like Chris don't fit into' haha

Taking out the raft...

Chris ran a 1/2 marathon on IE island the day before the Steins left. We took a ferry over to the island in the morning and rented bikes! So much fun! We rode to the beach and Chris x2 and Hannah did some more snorkeling while Jenny, Tim and I hung out on the beach. Then we rode back to the starting area and Chris ran his 1/2 marathon and did fantastic!! He was a true triathlete that day...snorkeling, Japanese bicycling and running! 

 Can you find Chris's head...

Clue: he's hiding haha

 So fast he's a blur! As usual :)

Great ending to a fun week!

A 'normal' work week

So I guess I don't write much about our 'normal' routine. Chris' is probably pretty obvious: Eye doctor by day and runner/cyclist by night haha. j/k. We decided to just stick with one car for now too, so Chris rides his bike to work a lot! Or sometimes he'll take the car and I'll walk or bike to where I need to go. I have not been as fortunate to find any optom jobs...not surprising! haha. I do spend a little time 'volunteering' my optom keratoconus skills when needed (ie. Chris schedules all the tough patients and I show up to help do the GP fits haha). Hopefully I'll start doing this on a more regular basis (like one or two days a week)...although it seems like with all of the budget cuts that this will be 100% volunteer optometry! It will at least be legit through the Red Cross so that it can go on my resume as a 'regular' job.

I also started working part time at the Navy Fleet Gift Shop! I know...sounds strange right?? Well, it's really fun! It's not your 'typical' gift shop where you find only keychains and mugs...the shop is run by military spouses. We are all in our 20's-30's and have a variety of background studies! A couple of the full time employees travel to Vietnam, China, Thailand and the Philippines each twice a year and buy stuff like glassware, furniture, lanterns, dishes, etc... and have it shipped back here. It's like having Pottery Barn or Pier One at your doorstep...for 1/2 the cost! The shop is 100% non-profit and all of the proceeds (minus operating costs) go to charity. Last year the contribution from the gift shop was over  $10,000!! The money goes to both Japanese organizations (ie last year they bought a kiln for a group of Okinawans so that they could continue their trade) and American families in the form of scholarships for high school seniors on their way to college. The girls I've met there are fantastic! We have a great time working together and hopefully we'll have some pics up soon of our fun times. So between optometry and the gift shop, I can usually fill about 3 days a week for now.

The other major thing I've been doing is learning Japanese!!! Back in January, I met a girl named Haruka. She's from here in Okinawa, fluent in English and currently learning Spanish! So we 'trade' languages. I teach her Spanish and she teaches me Japanese. It has been a GREAT experience. She's become one of my closest friends here on the island! We spend an average of 5 hrs a week studying and trading worksheets, etc... We even gave each other a test and have another one planned for the end of this month! We've cooked for each other and hung out on some fun Friday nights. She'll be headed back to the U.S. in August for a Master's, so we'll be hanging out as much as possible until then.

Workout time!! Well, Chris has been rocking them as usual. He's run some races and gotten into a great routine for staying in shape! He's been really supportive of helping me out too... I've started back to some smaller workouts and I'm actually enjoying swimming now since I can't run anymore. There's an outdoor pool about a mile away on a nearby base...and the hours are fantastic! I'm still a pokey swimmer, but it's been nice to have. I also found a great machine at the gym by the hospital where Chris works. I call it the 'crazy machine' b/c the only way I can use it is to stride out 100%...doesn't hurt my back at all, but holy moly it gets my heart rate up really fast b/c I have to work really hard to keep my posture correct...which means full out all the time! And last but not least, I've been able to get back on a bike a little bit! Chris rigged up the tandem so I can sit upright and we can still cruise... And I rigged up my mountain bike so that I can sit up a little bit better too. See later posts for more biking info & Chris' races! :)

Reef walking and the tsunami

My friend Jill and I went out one afternoon to check out the reefs around Cape Zanpa. Here are some of the fun things we checked out!

 Sea urchin

 Starfish...loosing color??

 Six legged blue starfish!!!!!

 Um. I don't know, but it looked cool :)

Disturbing & gross & fast moving. Eww.

Cool clam shell lodged in the coral...and there was living stuff inside of it!!

March 11, 2011. The day of the horrible Japan earthquake and tsunami. Well, we felt nothing from the earthquake, but we were under tsunami warnings for most of the evening. We were very fortunate that the time the tsunami was to come ashore was our low tide! So I took a couple pics, but they don't show much... basically, the tide usually takes several hours to go from low tide (where the reef near that pier is totally exposed) to high tide. When the 'tsunami' did come, it was very small and it caused the tide to change in a matter of minutes. I think it took about 3-4 minutes total to fill in the reef area...but the water level never rose above where high tide reaches. So the pic below really only shows the 'turbidity' of the water as the tides were changing. 

 This is a pic of what all of the ships did during the tsunami! You can see all of them lined up facing north to south out on the ocean. Once the ships started moving, we knew that we were probably in the clear.