Another Groovy Okinawan Park

After living in Okinawa, I have a fondness for their parks. To most Americans, the parks would be nervewracking at the beginning, due to the lack of safety features in the play structures. No foamy padding to fall upon, and watching kids actually sliding down slides made of cement (yes, you did read that correctly).


We joined on of Olivia's friends (and her mother) at a park that was new to us. Complete with large cement slide, awesome climbing structures and super fast slides that the Okinawan kiddos with nylon shorts on would actually slide so fast, their bodies would come up off the slide. Nothing better than a good Okinawan park day.

Above is the cement slide at the park (that is Olivia in the red).

Here is the fantastic climbing structure. You can see Olivia and her friend Marissa up on the higher climbing area. I think that is Alessandra on the lower part, but not positive.

Alessandra climbing up from where I was standing. Making her way to be "faster" than the Okinawan kiddo next to her. Little competitive spirit.

And the zippy slide

Where to next time?

A smoothie made for Brad

One of our local Ice Cream shops is called the Big Dip (the ice cream is actually called Blue Seal). A couple of weeks ago I went out with a couple of friends there for my favorite dip of Shikwasa Sherbert (yummo Okinawan lime flavor) and found a "Brad Orange Smoothie" on the menu. Best we could decipher, it is actually a Blood Orange Smoothie - but in engrish... brad=blood. Who knew they would make Brad a smoothie in one of his favorite fruit flavors?

Do not throw out your garbage?

Okinawan signs continue to baffle me from time to time. We pass this one on the way to karate every week and it caught my eye (and I caught the red light, so I could take a photo). Still unsure exactly what it means, but I am going with not throwing my grabage out. Not sure who the sign is directed at (because at this moment I was parallel to the sign and there was no oncoming traffic in the direction of the sign...), but good to know.

Eenie Meeny Miney Mo!

The Commandant's Own

All the way from Washington D.C. to here in Okinawa. We were visited by The Commandant's Own - Drum and Bugle Corps and Silent Drill Platoon. Brad, Olivia and I saw this special performance a few years ago at Camp Pendleton and yesterday the girls and I went to see an evening performance.

In the audience were veterans of Iwo Jima. Honored to be in the same audience as they were.

I didn't capture many "good" photos of the actual event. You can check out my facebook page and I put a link to photos that my friend Aviva took that were splendid.

The girls enjoyed the event. Olivia said that her favorite part was "all of it" and Alessandra particularly liked the band. Here she is dancing (or rather jumping) to the music. I think she jumped up and down for the entire performance.

Green Belt Girls!

We did it!

The weekend in general was a whirlwind with an earthquake waking us up on Saturday morning and a tsunami warning on Sunday. Our Karate testing began on Sunday morning, so it was smack dab in the middle of a just crazy couple of days.

It was a wonderful day. The adults all tested in the morning and the kids followed suit.

It was so wonderful to see my classmates after all of their hard work - be greatly successful. I feel thankful to be a part of this experience. They have all taught me so much about myself - and things that I never thought I would/could know.

The kata that Olivia and I had to perform was Seisan. This kata is one of the oldest in karate of all forms (and if you look it up on youtube.com it looks a little different with each person that performs it.

Here I am:


I felt good about my performance (although I was REALLY nervous).

Here is Olivia:

She did wonderfully. It's hard to tell sometimes, but she really does KNOW her kata.

Because of the tsunami warning, we didn't get to take too many other photos. I did get a couple...

Here are all of the adults that tested this past weekend.

My friend Cinda and I both received our Green Belts

Alessandra and mommy

Olivia shaking hands with all of the Black Belts

Receiving her Green Belt

Here is what little sister's do during karate testing. Playing Doctor I think - Lauren (on the left) was the doctor and Alessandra and Sophia were the patients.

Karate Kids!

Happy Day for all!

The Fire Station

I have more photos to add to this post, however, I wanted to get something on here this morning (I have SO many posts to catch up on).

Alessandra's class took a field trip to the Fire Station (off base, Japanese fire station). We had a great time.

Here is the class in front of the fire truck (after I coaxed Alessandra to get into the photo)

Alessandra sitting on the back of one of the trucks. She wanted to stay there.

Watching the fire fighters "training" routine. She loved this part

Going to work the hose with Ms. Nancy. Didn't like that so much ("mommy, I got wet")

More to come...