Polka Dotted Pickles

Introduction: No, really, we drowned a taxi. One Saturday, we decided to go to the Churaumi Aquarium in Naha (This is where the shark and cool sea snake pictures come from).

Chapter 1: It rained all day on aquarium day. I got pretty wet walked from our room on base to the taxi about an eighth of a mile away.

Chapter 2: The aquarium was awesome. I dried by the time we got ready to head home.

Chapter 3: *imagine tsunami like rain here* On our way from the exit to finding a taxi, I became as wet as if I had jumped into a pool. I even had a courtesy umbrella from the aquarium (I thought this was rather awesome of the Japanese to help people attempt to stay dry. Even if it was unsuccessful.). Because of the buckets of water falling along with huge gusts of wind, we got to our taxi dripping. Soaking. Drenched.

Chapter 4: Taxi man laughs and asks where we want to go. We say Camp Schwab. Taxi man starts driving.

Chapter 5: We notice that many of the roads are seemingly flooded. And many cars are turning around. Not taxi man. He laughs. And drives through.

Chapter 6: Well, on about the third occasion of driving through small flooded streets, we come to a large flooded street. Taxi man laughs. And drives through. Or tries to. Suddenly, I feel the tires lose traction with the ground and we float a little. The engine idles and we are stuck. In a small river on the road.

Chapter 7: I am amused and glad this is not my car. Suddenly, I feel my feet getting wetter than they already are. Is this possible I ponder? Well, apparently water is coming in the taxi.

Chapter 8: The water is up to my butt, so I move to higher elevation, i.e., Luke’s side of the taxi.

Chapter 9: We exit the taxi. With water up to our waists.

Chapter 10: We chill in a random Japanese hotel for a few minutes (The Japanese waiters give us towels to dry off. Very nice people….) while laughing taxi man calls other taxi man to finish taking us home.

Conclusion: We make it home. This taxi man does not laugh. And does not drive through flooded streets. By the way, it is still raining….

So, we had this thing we did while apart where we wore our matching superhero pj’s on Tuesday nights. We were pretty stoked to wear them together in “real life”. 🙂

I came across a shark while snorkeling! Just kidding….This is a picture from an aquarium. It just looks like I’m in the water….

These are real sea snake type things. They stick in the sand with their little heads popping out. SO weird!

The ocean from Japan. And me looking high. 😛

I have returned! I was not exactly stoked to leave-in fact, it was extremely hard to walk out of Luke’s hug at the airport-but we have only 5 weeks left. Just in case, someone has no clue what I am talking about…my guy and I got married December 28. He deployed one week later. Probably the biggest challenge I’ve ever walked through so far. We have done one other deployment before, but it wasn’t as hard, because we were just dating at the time. In any case, we had the opportunity to visit him in Okinawa, Japan for about 13 days. <3!!!!!!!! I mean ❤ L, not necessarily Japan. Yes, Japan was fabulous, but spending time with Luke was more fabulous. For the next few days, I will post some pictures of our many adventures.

Japan has the coolest vending machines. Each of them seriously has around 30 different drinks to choose from. The most interesting one we tried was called Pocari Sweat. It was supposed to replenish your body with all the electrolytes you had sweated off after exercise. Unfortunately, it actually did taste like salt. Thus, it tasted like sweat. Ew…

No, Luke is not eating icky Japanese food. He is eating icky instant camping/backpacking food. He tried to get neopolitan ice cream. It was odd. It tasted like cardboard. And it wasn’t cold like ice cream usually is….

This is Bob. Bob the hermit crab. There were TONS of hermies on the beaches. And since Okinawa is a small island, there was a lot of beach. Thus a lot of hermie. The beach that I went to just about every day was a five minute walk from the building we stayed in. It was on base and close to where the traks that L drives leave from.

I love the ocean. I was born near it, and think I was made to stay close to it. I am also in love with CO though…As you can see from the picture, it is pretty cloudy and green. It is green, because it is cloudy and rainy most days. We had one day of total sunshine all day. Other than that, there were probably 2 afternoons where it wasn’t cloudy.

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24 hours is the amount of time I have left before I get on a plane to Japan.

I really am flying United. That isn’t just any random airplane picture.

ITINERARY
0530-Wake up, shower, make lunch for later (since airplane food is not only expensive but disgusting), stuff bags in car, say a quick hi/bye to L on Skype
0630-The wonderful Madre is taking me to the airport two hours away. She is *insert sarcasm here* super excited about waking up so early.
1035-Plane leaves for LA. Whenever I have layovers in Cali, I have a happy sad feeling. Happy because Cali is where I always see L. Sad, because at that current point in time he is not there. (I hate airports by the way. L and I have had about 8 good-byes that range from anywhere from 1 month to 9 months in airports. Whenever I can manage it, all further travels should be conducted on trains, ships, or….hot air balloons to avoid this sad airport feeling.)
1302-1630 (+one day) Fly from LA to Toyko. 11 hour and 28 minute flight. Praying that I sleep through it all.
1745-2035-Toyko to Naha, Okinawa. Praying that Luke gets off work in time to come get me. If not, airport floor will be calling my name: “Sleep on me, sleep on me!”.

Next blog will occur at unknown time, but if and when I find internet, I will be blogging from Asia!!! Four continents down, three to go….