Friday, July 1, 2011

First Week in Okinawa

First full week in Okinawa
This week was exam week in my high school. Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday were test days. Monday was just a regular school day.

Tuesday was exam day and I spent the whole day in the library on the school computer. It was pretty boring. My host mom asked me if I wanted to go to work with her instead and I eagerly agreed. She works at the Kitanakagusuku city hall/municipal building. She had a half day or something and around 12 we left her work and drove to Nago-shi to visit her parents.

Nago is in the northern part of the island and the drive was beautiful. You have small vegetation covered mountains on one side, and on the other you have the beautiful blue-green ocean. We stayed in Nago talking to okasans parents till about 4.

We drove down the Okinawa high way and got home around 5. I did some chores around he house (hanging clothes, cleaning dishes and set the table for dinner of delicious dumplings, kind of like dim sum. I spent an hour on facebook and emailing people and went to bed after that.

Thursday my host mom didn't have work for some reason, and she took me out sigh seein around Kitanaka. We went to Nakagusuku castle, a UNESCO world heritage site and made a tour of the castle ruins. It was about an hour long hike up to the main ruins of the castle and well worth it. The castle sits at the top of a hill/mtn and you can see the ocean on both sides.

While we were walking up, I saw a little catarpillar crawling on the ground and bent down and let it crawl in my hand. All of a sudden my host mom freaks out and slaps the bug out of my hand screaming "abunai! Abunai!" (Dangerous! Dangerous!) Then she said that the catarpillars bite is poisonous. I'm glad I didnt get bit! Now I know not to just pick up bugs from the ground when your in a foreign place! After we climbed down back to the car and drove to Nakamura house, a completely preserved 18th century Japanese estate. We went to lunch afterwards and hung out at home until Katsuumi came home from school. Then we had dinner. After dinner my host mom sort of forced me to go to her zoomba class and she insisted that it wasn't just girls. I tried my best but boy was that class intense. Those Japanese ladies can really move. I can't imagine it's as intense in America.
I went home showered and went to bed afterwards.

Friday was just a normal school day.

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