As per usual, Jules and I have been quite busy lately, except for when we?re not, and when we laze around in the projector room watching TV shows on the computer.  About a week ago it started getting consistently sunny out, so we slathered on the sunscreen and went to the beach grabbing our new friend Beverly on the way.  Julie took us out to Moon Beach, a great little beach up the road which was funky because the roped off swimming area got no deeper than about 2 feet, so there was no actual ?swimming? to be had at all.  There are, however, big floaties to hang out on and a beautiful mermaid statue above the little bay.  That, added to the sun, greenery and clear, blue water made for a lovely and relaxing afternoon at the beach.

 

The dive trips continue as well.  Drew, Julie and I have taken a couple trips out and about the island to dive.  Last weekend we woke up early to drive down to the southern tip of the island to hit a cool dive site only to arrive there an hour later and discover that the surf on the reef made the site was undivable.  Ouch.  Then on the way back up north we ran through a torrential rainstorm thus realizing that Drew?s van had major leaks on the front seats.  J  Anyways, we got all the way up to another dive site on the other side of the island which looked divable, but in the 15 minutes it took us to get all our gear on and walk back down to the site, the surf was up and the spearfishers climbing out of the water told us there was a strong current going through that day.  Eventually, after a good 4 hours of travel, we ended up down at Sunabe Sea Wall a mere 10 minute drive from the apartment.  Oops.  But at least we ended up getting a dive in.  That was a long day.

 

Besides diving, we had a great time last week when Julie invited over Haruna and Yuko, some Japanese friend of ours, to make tempura and udon.  It was a quite a time, we chopped up a huge bowl full of veggies and Yuko showed us how to batter and fry them up.  By the end we had a huge pile of food in the middle of the table plus a bowl of noodles in front of each of us and we stuffed ourselves full.  Those girls are so much fun!  Next time they are coming over and Julie is making a German dinner for them to try.  It will be interesting to see what they think of the meat and potato style of food after the standard vegetable and rice dishes that what you find in every restaurant here. 

 

Last night we had a slumber party!  A bunch of Julie?s friends from her work at the Japanese community center had kind of created and invited themselves to a party here, not that she had a problem with that.  And we understand the need to come here as well because all of them still live in their parents? homes with their extended families.  It was so much fun; we ordered pizza, played cards, ate cupcakes, drank marguerites and introduced the girls to ?Napoleon Dynamite.?  Girls? night, Okinawa style.  J