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.