bivouacked

By far the best night here so far was the most unplanned and not expecting one of all. So we wake up Saturday morning around 11 and it was raining we had planed to go to the beach but the weather seemed kind of iffy, but we ended up going anyways and im so glad we did! We took the 30 min bus to foster and then another hour and half buss to a camp called Schwab. It is the northern most base on the island and is an all men base because it’s a combat / jungle warfare base and only men can go into combat and women don’t therefore when girls come to that base it’s a big deal. Its also the most beautiful base I feel like because it is right on the water and has the really pretty beach.
When we were walking to the beach we saw about 20 guys getting out of this huge camp cargo jeep thing that I had only seen in movies. So here were these guys dressed head to toe and it was sooo hot and we were all staring at them in disbelief, they had huge backpacks that looked like they could hold almost 2 of me inside of them, they even had a bullet proof vest they were carrying on top of all of that and later we found out that those alone weight about 25 pounds! Hanging off of them there were all sorts of things bedding tents and everything you could imagine. we watched them put the back packs on they had the flip them over from the fount. I guess we were staring and they could tell we were in disbelief because of them was like “yeah this is what you need for 2 weeks in the jungle” . later we found out that they are given a map with ten points and a compass and told find all the points and when your done you can go home so they have to have enough food and clothes and everything for up to two weeks just living in the jungle of Okinawa. That blew my mind I mean I thought my backpack for the beach was heavy and we were only planning on staying for a few hours. Planning that is….
So we get to the beach lay out our stuff and almost immediately these really nice guys came up to us. Told us they had some food and stuff if we wanted to come join them or just take it and come back to our blankets just being really nice and hospitable. We kind of just laughed and said maybe later. Most of the girls ended up renting snorkel gear but I didn’t get one so everyone was snorkeling except me and Alyssa and so we were just standing on the beach and watching everyone and was like oh I wish we could and then suddenly those guys came up us and said they had snorkel gear and we could use it. So we barrowed their stuff and swam out they also swam out and we ended up talking to them for a long time just in the ocean and they were all really nice they were all around 20 and one of the guys was even from south Africa! We ended up hanging out with them all day and playing volley ball climbing rocks, finding new parts of the beach, and collecting beautiful sea shells. They took us to the gym where we showered up and get ready as we could because they invited us to go to dinner with them.. We figured we would just go to some off base place and it would be pretty cheep but we ended up going to this really fun Japanese restaurant where you get your meat and cook it yourself in front of you! It was so much fun there was 7 of us camp girls and guys and 6 of the military guys. There was one guy who was a little bit older and he was a sergeant (which is a high rank and he was telling us how he is getting promoted in a month or so and going to be a sergeant general and at that point only the president of the united states of America can fire him!) but he was so nice he paid for all of our food! And it wasn’t cheep, all they did all day was try to make us feel comfortable and welcomed. It was amazing time they even paid for our cab ride there! I couldn’t believe how hospitable they all were. After dinner we went back to the beach and they went and got some more food and stuff and sheets from their own room and we call camped out on the beach it was so much fun we stayed up late swimming in the ocean playing games and just having the time of our lives! They even though us some military lingo and camping like that is called bivouacked. So all night we laughed and played sang camp song and just had a blast I honestly could not have asked for a better night, the stars were so beautiful I swear we could see every single one in the whole galaxy. Those are the kinds of nights I live for.

rain rain and more rain

We have been hearing of tsunami warnings but it really didn’t seem real till today when the weather started getting bad. One of the groups was supposed to go to the pool today but because it was thundering and lightening all day they couldn’t go because of it. That made it a long day full of tears and “its not fair that the other kids got to go “ wining.
Anyways I guess ill take this time to tell you about some of the funny on the island. During orientation we hear that there’s something about the Okinawa vibe or water but everyone gets pregnant here. I thought they were over exaggerating but today when we went to the PX which is the target kind of a sort here on base we all realized that there must be something about the island when instead of having handicapped parking places they had “expecting mother” parking spaces. Anyways this is a short post but hopefully I can get some more pictures up soon!

living the life

Yesterday was Tuesday so that means field trip day! We went to the pineapple park/ factory it was pretty neat! The park itself was a lot smaller than I had originally thought. We walked though a maze of pineapple plants but they were really small like the size of my fist or just a little bit bigger. After the maze of pineapples there was the tasting room unfortunately we could not taste the half dozens types of wine that they made from pineapple juice. We could taste many of the plates and bisects though. They were really good and I would have loved to buy some but its kind of hard with 50 children. Another kind of funny thing that we have been noticing a lot were these huge pickle things that we have seen everywhere like stuffed animals and pictures all over the island at first we thought they were sexual and then we thought they were just pickles. I knew they were some kind of Okinawin vegetable but I couldn’t think of the name so finally when we got there they had a huge sign that said goya and then it finally clicked what these pickled shaped things were everywhere really were! After a not so brief bathroom breaks with 50 children we walked next-door to fruits land. There it was a lot of fun because there were 3 sections. There was an tropical fruits section where they had all different kinds of exotic frits. They also had a butterfly section with huge butterflies that glide around and had a path from where they emerge from their cocoons and then where they are so friend and land on you. The third section is a tropical birds one of the girls got a cup with sweet juice in it and they flew to her arm and she had two birds land on her arm and she screamed it was funny seeing all the kids screaming and stuff.
Today we worked and went to the pool with the kids for the first time but it was cut short because of lightening and thunder. That put a damper on things because we had to go back to the center.
After work our whole camp A staff went out to eat with one of the SAC (school aged center) the people that we work with staff named Justin he is 20 and was really fun. Him his girlfriend and his cousin and all of us went ot this sushi place up by foster. It was soo good many of the girls had raw fish for the first time so that was exciting I had unagi and teriyaki.. the atmosphere was great because we sat on the floor on tatami mats which are like woken mats. The place we went was supposedly the originator of the California roll. And when we asked Justin why he said they had to make something that all the marines would eat. the dinner was a blast and so fun. Everyone was cracking jokes and having a fun time. After that we went to blue seal ice cream place and I had green tea and it was amazing! It’s a famous ice cream place on the island. But now im home and its time for bed because tomorrows another 9 hour day at work!

second week of work

I can’t believe is already Monday again. Last Monday seemed like forever ago and now all I can think about is the weekend again. Mondays are defiantly the longest days but its also exciting because Tuesday is fieldtrip days so you always know its right around the corner. Today was full of stress both from the kids and other staff members. At the end of the day we all do thins thing called closing which is a serious of songs kind of a mellow and end with lean on me and god bless America. My director who is this really cool guy from Ohio just found out about a death of a close family member yesterday so when we did closing a lot of us got emotional. And in turn the kids were crying and it was just a very emotional day all around. Seeing the kids crying during god bless America made me start to tear up because listing to the lyrics it hit me hard. These kids parents moms dads and sometimes even both are in the service and a lot of them are serving over in Iraq. I can’t imagine what it would be like to know that my father or mother could die from a bomb or land mine and never to come home. Many of the kids call us mommy or daddy to the guys and one time one of the guys asked the little girl who does it the most why she does it so much. And she said, “ It is because one day my daddy went to work and never came home”. It’s just so scary to think about that these give up so much just because their parents choose to do this. When I first came here I thought working with military kids would be easier because they would be better behave and i've talked to a lot of my other staff about it as well and we both thought that originally and now seeing actuality we were completely wrong. They aren’t too bad but they aren’t as well behaved as I thought but I can understand why. Why should they trust us everyone else in their life that they thought they could rely on to be stable aren’t. Constantly moving changing stations and waking up to have their daddy gone for a year would be terrifying. I’m glad I can be here to give them some sort of support and consistency, even though I know ill be living in 2 months I hope I can make an impact on their summer.

okinawa update

I’ve been here for about three weeks now and it’s been amazing. The first two weeks were training and they weren’t too exciting but it was nice to get used to the island and such. We were at camp foster which is a larger base than the one I will be at for most of the summer. Last week we moved to kinser the base that we are staying at for the rest of the time till June 16. That was also the first week of camp. When we got to our rooms we were so excited because we each got our own room and full size bed with our own bathrooms full size fridge and big TV with wireless internet. The accommodations much better than foster because at foster the rooms were smaller than my dorms last year and had to share them with another person and then had to share a bathroom and shower with the whole floor of girls add no wireless internet. The first week of camp didn’t go as smoothly as I had originally thought but the kids are still amazing. They are full of energy and never listen but they are all working their ways into our hearts. The people I’ve met here are also amazing. I feel like I’ve known them for ever and its crazy to think that just 3 weeks ago I had no idea who they were and we were just all strangers sitting on a plane together. Keni (Mss. pebbles), katy (cheerio), Lauren (lucky), are all from UNI, talia (honey) is from Florida and Alyssa (cocoa) is from Chico and Jordan (pops) is from blowing greens and I am miss KIX. It’s crazy because right where their college is is where all the flooding is happing in the Midwest.
I already have my favorite kid and his name is Milton. He is crazy wild and always gets in rubble for being too physical with us like hugging and stuff. He also calls a lot of us mom and we found out that he doesn’t have one. And his dad is the military so probably not too affectionate and that’s probably why he craves it from us so much. It breaks my heart to see these kids sometime. And talking to a lot of the marines it’s surprising how many have been to Iraq.
Although we have been busy with working 9 hours a head Monday though Friday we have been able to do some amazing sight seeing around here. We went to okuma which is this beach up on the north side of the island about a hour and half away from us who are on the southern most tip of the island and it was amazing I went snorkeling and jet skiing and just spent the whole day there with all of the camp people from all 3 of the camps. It was so much fun!
Yesterday we went to kokusia street, which is this street that is full of shops it was so beautiful and had such crazy shops with huge penis ashtrays and weird stuff like that. I also went to this restaurant called the crocodile and had crocodile salad which tasted amazing. They even had a pet crock outside in a cage. We go on field trips every Tuesday with the kids and last week we went to the ocean expo park and that was amazing! They have 3 huge wale sharks and really crazy they had so many huge fish and we saw a dolphin show. It was kind of sad at the same time though because they were in kind of small tanks for being such big fish.
Our base is on the ocean so we can see the beach form our window but we also went to the beach today called tropical beach. It was crazy crowded but still fun.
There is so much more but I don’t even know where to start. Another random thing that we have being a lot at camp is stop and steep stuff! The little girls at camp taught us step things and they are so funny keni and Katy is really good at them but I’m still working on it.
Ill update you all more later
Love you