One of the things I like about Sean’s school, is that there is more than just reading and writing. There is growing. Two weeks ago, his school planted potatos in their garden at school. Then this past weekend, the family day was a trip to dig potatos. To be honest, it was a real pain, but I’m sure we’ll do it again next year. We had to drive over to the other side of the island. Fortunately I was able to find more directions than was provided by the school. We arrived 15 minutes before the assembly time, which ended up being an hour before we actually went to dig potatos. There was a go cart and remote control car race track at the parking lot where we were waiting, so that helped entertain the kids.

After some speeches, songs and dances, we drove off to the field (it was close enough that people could have walked/hiked). Into the field and another speech/instructions, during which it began to rain. So everyone ran back to their cars to wait. After about 15 min. it was back to the field. The school had trowels to dig with if you didn’t bring your own, and then it was in to dig.

We collected a bag of potatos, then everyone had to dump their potatoes in a big pile, which the farmer sorted through, removing damaged or buggy potatoes, then you filled up your bag again from the clean pile. We got a mix of potatoes, none of which we know how to cook! Of course, the kids don’t eat potatoes here….
The weather has been rotten since that day. There is a frontal boundary stuck over Okinawa and hardly moving, it’s just streaming rain up and over us.

So last Sunday, to kind of celebrate Jeff’s birthday, since he isn’t here, we went to where? You guessed it, the aquarium. We started off with the nets, which gave some great photo ops

along with some daring races

And a visit to a shisa

Then into the aquarium to the favorite stop

It was a rapid trip through the aquarium since Catie decided she was hungry. I was smart and packed a bento lunch for her which allowed her to eat enough to get a purple icecream cone!

Just after we started lunch it began to rain. We decided to head back into the aquarium and with perfect Japanese manners, they were handing out umbrellas. So we each grabbed one and headed back out the the outdoor venues. We visited the turtles, watched the dolphin show under our umbrellas (I had to separate Sean and Catie since they kept arguing when their umbrellas would bump, and them bump and poke the people sitting next to them). Last but not least we stopped by the manatees. It’s kind of ironic that they have manatees from Mexico here, but don’t have their own endangered species and cousin of the manatee, the dugong on display.

And here are some other pictures- chalk is very fun when mixed with water-

Halloween was busy again this year. We started off with the party at Sean’s school, which seemed like it would never end. They paraded every single child in front of the class for pictures, then played games for each class,

had unbreakable pinantas for each class (notice that it’s down to 2 moms with sticks and they finally resort to tearing them apart…)

It was a tough morning for Catie because they didn’t have activities for her size, so she was in tears because Sean got candy and she didn’t. Several children offered her some of their candy, so that helped for a little while.

Here’s a picture of Sean that afternoon, he wanted me to get a picture of Kitten lying next to him. Notice the peace sign. Many of the Japanese do that for photos.

And finally there was trick or treating Halloween night.

Sean quickly disappeared with some other kids from our building. I saw them down the road and was yelling for Sean, but they all kept going. He showed up an hour later with them. His bag was so full of candy that the handles broke. I took Catie to a few trick or treating stops, then we returned home to pass out candy. Sean and Catie made able assistants and fought over who got to hold the bowl and pass out candy. Catie was better at it, she commented if they didn’t say trick or treat, put the candy in the bag and said ‘ happy halloween’ often with a wave if there wasn’t another person waiting for candy. Sean would put the candy in the bag without saying a word.

In an hour and a half of passing out candy, we went through 27 bags of it. I had had a bad dream earlier in the week of running out of candy when I heard that the base would be open for the full 2 hours for Japanese nationals to trick or treat. When I went to stock up at the commisary here, they were already out. Fortunately another commisary still had a pretty good stock.