On Three Months in Japan

This week marks the beginning of our fourth month in Okinawa. I’m sitting in the office (which is almost done- meaning pictures are coming very soon!) and I am reflecting on all that we have accomplished over the last three months in Japan.

I keep wanting to write that it feels “like we just got here,” but that could not be further from the truth. No part of me feels like we have just arrived… Except, perhaps, for the fact that there are still a few things lurking in boxes that we haven’t found a suitable home for yet.

In all honesty, I can hardly believe how much we have accomplished in three short months, and how much this country has already started to feel like home. During our first two weeks here we got scuba certified and on black friday we filled our guestroom closet with everything we might ever need to dive. Time will tell whether or not that was really the best investment… but hey… when in Okinawa! Dane has already built 4 beautiful pieces of furniture (posts coming with plans on all of them at some point!) And I have finally been cleared to work in the schools (there was a whole lot of background checking for a girl whose background consists of a speeding ticket.) I start a long-term subbing assignment in the second grade on Monday.

We’re finally starting to plan our honeymoon, and I have already booked a yoga retreat in India for later this year with a girl I met less than two months ago but who has become a great friend! I’ve also had the opportunity to partner with a friend who is a gifted baker to design and decorate cakes. With the amount of babies born here, showers and 1st birthdays are quickly filling up our schedule.

I’ve also become borderline obsessed with the quality of girls that I am surrounded with at every spouses event and pleasantly surprised by how well and how easily everyone gets along. They come from such diverse backgrounds and are so broadly accomplished that I feel lucky to be counted in the number. Naturally, my mom keeps urging me to write profiles on all of the interesting women I have met, but there is just no way I could keep up. Instead I’ll just say that we have lawyers, nurses, veterinarians, political campaign managers, artists, pilots etc. etc. etc. I’m not-so-secretly glad that we are not a dual pilot family, (although I’m sure we wouldn’t mind the income), I can’t imagine both of us keeping the schedule Dane keeps. In the last three months he’s spent a little over 3 weeks away with trips to Guam, Hawaii and San Diego. Two months from now he will spend 8 weeks back in the States at a training, while I hold down the fort and –maybe- do a little traveling myself. (Mine will be more fun!)

I’ve started learning the language, and I think by the time we leave (in three years) I might actually be able to order off a menu. Let’s just say, it’s not coming easily.

Sydney has adjusted to island life perfectly. She loves that her daily walks involve crab-chasing and she takes after me in the climate department, so hot and humid year-round is A-OK with her. Dane and I have also been loving that we live across the street from one of the island’s most popular dive sites and I’m not sure how we will ever adjust to living somewhere without fish markets again.

I realize that this post is sounding more and more like a Chrismas card, so I am signing off now. But I think I will do these little quarterly updates for our first year out here. Then I will move on to the yearly ones… and who knows, maybe I will time them to come out right around Christmas time. ;)