Bittersweet Goodbye.

• Our final “Thrilling Thursday” evolved into “Super Saturday” because of the 3 day typhoon that messed with our usual routine. It was definitely a bittersweet end... I had to say goodbye to some really amazing kids and parents which was really hard but everyone joined together to have a fun day filled with games and delicious food. 

• Claire and I were invited to one of my kids’ 3^rd birthday party! (Spider Man themed, complete with a Dino Jump and piñata.) For the few hours that I was there, I probably heard my name repeated more than I ever have.. Miss Jessa, Miss Jessa, MISS JESSA, MISS JESSA! … watch this, hold this, eat this.. I was cooler than Santa to those preschoolers ;) …but after being gone for 2 days now, I already miss those little tykes like crazy.

• Forest Adventure! Zip lining through the jungle was a pretty awesome way to spend my last Sunday in Japan. I defeated the Tarzan Swing and jumping onto 40ft lines with amazing views of the ocean and tropical scenery. I used a few of my Japanese phrases to help coax an Okinawan girl to jump off a ledge, so I was pretty pleased with myself about that one. It was all thanks to my preschoolers who were scared to jump from the diving board, haha..I was pretty close to singing the Alligator Song to this Japanese woman. “Alligator, alligator stand so tall, alligator, alligator jump off the wall!” (with matching hand movements that go along with it..definitely a hit with all my swim lesson kids.) I’m not so sure how she would have felt about it, however, so I simply stuck to saying “it’s okay,” and “1, 2, 3, go!” in Japanese.

• Todake Falls. One of the most gorgeous places I had seen in Okinawa. After taking a river trek up to the waterfall, the view took your breath away. Hiking through the jungle to the top of a waterfall was definitely a great way to end an amazing summer in Japan.

During our last nights, we would ride our bike down to the seawall to simply watch the sunset. It's hard to believe that I'll never see that beautiful view again. Okinawa was, with no doubt, the most outstanding place I've ever visited. I can't see Iowa, with its endless rows of cornfields, ever competing with this tropical paradise...

So after four flights, endless hours sitting awake in the plane/airport (despite taking sleeping pills,) and a two hour car drive, I’m back in  Cedar Falls ready to start my senior year at UNI.  And after a summer like the one I just had, this year has a lot to live up to!  To all my friends, parents, and children in Japan, thanks for making  the past 10 weeks an experience that I’ll never forget!

Peace.
Love.

Japan.

Sweet Freedom!

After 3 days stuck cooped up inside during Typhoon Muifa that weekend, I have never appreciated the sweet freedom of being outdoors quite as much as I do now.  I lived the pilgrim life on Saturday after the power went off late Friday night. This resulted in no air conditioning for an entire day on a tropical island where the humidity is basically 100% at all times. For those of you who have never experienced a typhoon: it reminded me of a tornado that lasted 3 days: crazy winds snapping branches off trees with trunks bending to the ground, torrents of continuous rain, flooding, ripped off shingles, and vehicles flipped over. However, for me, all it meant was a lot of movies, Rock Band, and Facebook, until we lost power for an entire day; then it was reading, napping, and board/card games. Saturday at 5:00pm when they finally announced the all clear, we were running circles outside breathing in that glorious humid air.

Saturday night we decided we needed to go out to eat to celebrate the release of cabin fever.  We ate at Jack’s Place, a restaurant on base, with a teppanyaki bar. This consists of a talented Japanese chef who cooks your food in front of you, sets things on fire, and juggles knives. It was a pretty impressive show that succeeded in distracting me while I usually wait impatiently for my meal at restaurants.

Delicious Sushi :)

Last Sunday after typhoon cleanup, we were picked up and headed to Okinawa World. Here we saw a Habu race a Mongoose in a tank of water…among a few other snake tricks. (this show was all in Japanese so we just got creative, imagining what the random snake facts were and laughing along with the Japanese people in the audience whenever they found something amusing.) We saw some glass blowing, a Dr. Fish tank, and walked through a cave with gorgeous stalactites and stalagmites. After leaving Okinawa World we headed to Delicious, a sushi restaurant that I will probably dream about when I get back to the States. The Japanese owner made us the most amazing sushi I’ve ever had, making me feel positive that nothing back home will be even close to comparison.

My roommate doing work at the Guard Games.

Okinawa Guard Games: Monday of last week, all the pools closed and all the guards and CampA aquatics headed to Camp Schwab for some friendly competition. I chose to cheer Kadena on, rather than supply less than speedy racing potential. Kadena took home 2^nd place in the Olympics. MCCS served us hotdogs and burgers and we were free to spend our Monday afternoon at Schwab’s beach.  The Kadena life guards were feeling pretty confident in their sand volleyball skills so we decided to get a Camp Adventure team together to bring them down a bit. We ended up losing the first match by 2, but managed to take home the rematch. 

It's Raining..It's Pouring..The Typhoon is Coming..

TYPHOON MUIFA! 

Swim lessons were cancelled at TCCOR 2, we typhoon-proofed the pool deck, the storm switched to TCCOR-1 early this morning and now it has finally reached TCCOR-1C (Tropical Cyclone Condition of Readiness-1 Caution) which means that the entire base is on lockdown. No one can enter or leave, and we’re stuck inside for the next couple of days; the perfect opportunity to catch up on movies and eat plenty of Japanese junk food. Just as long as this weather clears up before the weekend, I don’t wanna spend one of my last weekends in Japan inside a hotel room!

I am proud to say that I am now scuba certified! …newest member of the scuba squad. 1 day book work + 1 day of practicing skills in the pool + 2 amazing dives in the ocean. This makes me really not want to head back to Iowa, I’m assuming diving in the Mississippi doesn’t quite compare to the East China Sea or Pacific Ocean. Rather than seeing colorful fish and coral with great visibility, I’m assuming I would see a lot of beer cans from partying campers. After the first dive, I realized that I have dive rage…(kind of like road rage).  However, this is much worse because it’s really difficult to get your point across under water. There were quite a few instances when I could barely keep myself from showing our dive instructor the middle finger or yanking on my director’s mask when she knocked my regulator out of my mouth; all nonverbal ways of showing hostility at a depth of 40 feet.

Karaoke: Okinawan style is a little more interesting than back home. You come with a group of friends and get an entire room to yourself with a computerized karaoke system and television. Someone needs to bring this method back to the States. We spent a night out at karaoke with the Kadena lifeguards, and they're a pretty impressive group of karaoke-ers. If it was an event at the Okinawa Guard Games, I have no doubt that Kadena would take home the gold.

So..Yoko has been absent from our room for the last three days; no clean towels and my bed hasn’t been made. I'm starting to get worried about her and this is just a taste of what it’s going to be like when I get home. I’ve grown accustomed to maid service so in 3 weeks when I head back to the real world, it’s going to be a rude awakening. 1 session of swim lessons, 1 week of teaching GuardStart, and a whole lot of packing til I'll be catching the plane home.