It is SO NICE to have somewhere to call home for a little while. I arrived in Okinawa, Japan two weeks ago and Julie has made me very at home here, which is good since I'll probably be here for about 2 more months before heading up to China. The first night here Julie was busy teaching a couple of language classes, so her friend Marc, a very professional military guy, picked me up at the airport and drove me to her apartment half an hour north of Naha. We immediately took care of my pressing desire to eat sushi by walking 30 steps across the street to a tiny sushi restaurant and making friends with the sushi chef. Oh yeah.

Since then I feel like I've done everything and nothing. The house is fully stocked with a little kitchen and a projector-made wide-screen movie room as well as a tatami mat dining room. That's all I need to be happy; movies and an oven for baking. :) So we've been watching movies and making cookies just like we always did back in Bellingham, but we've also been quite busy roaming around the island a bit.

Okinawa is some 65 miles long and 15 wide at its widest point. Julie and I live about a third of the way from the bottom and are going to make a good attempt at seeing the entire place. So far she has shown me around Naha a bit, including a Pikes Place-type street and a hidden Chinese garden, then around our own city of Chatan, where we are located right next to two Military bases and a stretch of beach good for swimming, walking or just hanging out. Right down the street at our disposal is a Japanese supermarket and a Sushi-Go-Round conveyor belt restaurant that we've visited quite frequently already.

Julie has also acted as tour guide taking me up to the Nakamura Historical House and one of the eight castles that dot the island. Up on the ruins of the castle we could see the ocean on both sides of the island, east and west. The view was quite green and lovely. Then just 2 days ago we drove a couple hours north to visit one of the world's largest aquariums, the Churaumi, where there is a tank so big that 3 whale sharks plus manta rays, sting rays and extra schools of fish find room to swim around. It was really wonderful, plus there were manatees in another tank outside and neither of us had ever seen them before. They are so fat!

Last but not least, and actually, it was one of the first things I did here, Julie was the host of a cooking class in a local community center! I ended up helping out of course, and we led about 20 kids and 8 parents in making chocolate chip and peanut butter cookies! It was so much fun! The leaders at the center have already asked us back to do the another class next month, and then they invited us to participate in an oragami class at a different center.

It amazes me now, to write all this down, that I've only been here 2 weeks. These months are just going to fly by, I know it.