PREDATOR

It all began with my friend Molly. When our boys were very young she, in spite of her true feelings of bugs and spiders and creepy crawlies, would carefully remove spiders to free them into the backyard rather than squash them and throw them away.

Five years later we are in a place literally crawling with spiders. I admit that I have squashed two of the brown huntsman spiders who were in the house uninvited. When I was painting some recently acquired patio chairs a large “friend” joined me. The kids were nearby encouraging me to catch it. Now it resides in our bug home.

The neighborhood kids joined Anthony and Audrey in catching flies, crickets and such to put in with the spider. Then they found it a friend thinking they might mate. Instead the original spider jumped on its visitor, bit it, and ate it.

Two days ago the kids caught two ENORMOUS black spiders (wood spiders) and put them in the box. They hypothesized that the largest of the black spiders would eat the brown spider and maybe the other black spider.

The hypothesis was proven false. Yesterday the two black spiders were fully deflated (drained?) and the brown spider as vigorous as ever.

They have learned other things along the way too. Spiders shed their skin. Some spiders build webs to catch prey, others hunt without webs. It doesn’t matter how big a spider is, it can still kill and eat something much larger than itself.

PREY

Anthony is off to his first day of 1st grade.  He has a spectacular experienced teacher and several good friends in his class.  Audrey is starting a pre-school program at a school off base.  She will go half-day Monday through Friday and is VERY excited about making new friends.  As I take the requisite “first day of school” picture I am reminded of so many years of pictures taken on our front porch in Iowa or backyard in Texas.  I now know why there are almost always two
pictures, one of us looking quite somber and the other of us giggling.  I am glad to have a digital camera where I know immediately if I got the shot or not!

We think and talk of our friends in the States often.  I am missing the crisp morning air of Lubbock, the anticipation of the corn maze cookout, hay ride to the pumpkin patch, tailgating at the EE building, and trick-or-treating.  But, I am looking forward to camping trips on the beach and much more diving while the kids are in school!

Shuri Castle has been completely destroyed four times, three due to fires, once and most recently due to war.  According to stories around here, during the battle for Okinawa the U.S. Army commanding general ordered that the Marines stay away from Shuri Castle.  The Marines were receiving the bulk of publicity for the war in the Pacific and the general wanted the Army to get some recognition for their efforts.  Unfortunately for the Army, the Marines waited and waited as asked, then went ahead and took Shuri Castle.   The present castle has been rebuilt, but the previous castle was only as old as the mid 1700′s.  I am hoping to get out to visit some REALLY old castle ruins before Alice has to leave for the states at the end of August.

For our day, we drove to the nearest monorail stop, parked in what we hoped was a tow-free zone, and rode the rail end to end out to the airport then out to the Shuri Park stop where we grabbed a bus, met some new friends, and hopped off the bus just in time to walk to the Castle.  The kids collected stamps for an activity page while we learned a bit about the Ryuku culture and architecture.  Then we caught another bus back to the monorail stop, back to our car which was still parked where we left it, and drove to Jack’s Place for some teppanyaki.

The kids, and the adults, were worn out.  It was another great day!

All of the pics from Alice and Glen’s visit are in one photoset – you can click here to see them, including the pics from our day.

The kids are still talking with amazement about their experience with the sea turtles.

Life is rough living in paradise, but someone has to do it!

Today we had our adventure at Maeda Flats with a plan of snorkeling and having lunch. To get to the beach we parked on a very narrow road off the beaten path, walked down another narrow road through sugar cane fields, found a path through the trees and bushes, and emerged on the beach just after high tide.

It was a surprise that there was a couple of Japanese volunteers who work with rescuing sea turtles and helping the hatchlings to the ocean.  They approached with an offer for the kids to come see the turtles and then the kids actually released a few.  It was very exciting and an extra special treat!  That was the highlight of the day.  There wasn’t much to look at in the way of sea life other than Anthony and Audrey pretending to be starfish in the water as we hit low tide.

Enjoy the pics for the day!

We ventured to Kokusai Street and the Makishi Market.  As I understand, this was the original WWII black market that slowly became legitimized post war and is now the hub for shopping and dining.  The shopkeepers, kind and patient while I tried to speak Japanese, often offered us samples of their foods.  We tasted through this sampling or buying our lunch and snacks: local pineapple, fried fish (Anthony’s lunch favorite), benimo mochi, fried potato pancake thing, salty scallions, onigiri (Audrey’s lunch), some sort of pork bit (this was all Glen), fried dense bread in several flavors, and a little appley/peary tasting thing that I can’t recall the name.  Even though the fish market was sad with all of the fish that should be left in the sea, it was an incredible positive experience that I’m sure to repeat again and again for the shopping!  You can see all of these pics and more on the Flikr site.

Hosting visitors has reinvigorated my motivation to explore the island. Although we do spend plenty of time lazing around the house, we have taken Russ’ parents to our favorite places to eat like Yoshi Hachi and the purple flag soba shop as well as the San A for groceries, onigiri, and mochi. For dessert one night we went to the Big Dip to try ice cream. Every flavor was a big hit, especially the Okinawan sugar cane and the Okinawan salt cookies. Dinosaur mud – well, you probably want to skip that one. Even Audrey wouldn’t finish eating it! There are pics of all of this in the flikr link.

Alice and Glen helped us batten down the shed and everything else for the impending typhoon. Luckily we weren’t hit with anything bigger than some gusty wind.

Now that the sun is shining again we spent yesterday doing the Battlesites tour through MCCS.  It was very interesting and well worth the cost of the babysitter to not have to haul the kids along.  No pics from this – the camera just stayed in the bag as we were too enthralled to take photos and instead just really enjoyed the tours.  Today we had fun and sun at Torii going down the slide and playing in the sprinklers. The sea is still at east/west RED so there was no ocean play today. After some snacks and a brief break we continued our drive west out to the lighthouse at Cape Zanpa. We saw the three huge rocks displaced by Super Typhoon Flo in 1990. I cannot imagine what kind of waves and wind must have been present to move such boulders so high up the cliffs.

Dinner tonight was at the purple flag soba shop. It was incredible as always. The kids ate up all of the cold tofu on the table and all of the pickled goya too. Alice and Glen were glad to share with them.

We were home watching the kids ride bikes while the sun set over our trees. The bats and bugs came out; we finally called it a day and put the kids in the shower and to bed.

It was a truly fabulous day.

Summer is fabulous here in Okinawa. The weather had been hot and humid, a lot like Aggieland or Houston in my opinion. Everyday the neighborhood kids play outside until the street lights come on. Often, then continue to play outside even after that!

In May we celebrated Anthony’s 6th birthday with a party in our backyard.  For the Memorial Day holiday, we spent a day at Torii Beach with friends and also got some diving in.  June saw Anthony complete kindergarten and Russ promoted to Captain.  We, along with Sasha and Ryan who was also promoted, hosted a wet-down/hail and farewell at our house.  I’m not sure if we have any pictures of that or not, but great fun was had by all!

The following week we took a family vacation to Sharm el Sheikh, Egypt to visit with Mom, Dad, and Lara and her family. Russ earned his advanced open water certification while there. We all had a great time diving in the Red Sea, especially our trips out on the King Snefro III, a live-aboard where we went out, did 3 dives, slept overnight on the boat, then dove the next day. The kids snorkeled and paddled around off of the boat. Anthony and Audrey are now able to identify a handful of fish and have become quite the little fish in the water themselves!

It is now nearly August.  I am surprised at how the time has flown by.  Russ returns from a few weeks of work in Australia serving as the Joint Task Force 505′s Staff Judge Advocate supporting Exercise Talisman Saber 2009 and shortly after that Alice and Glen, Russ’ parents, will arrive.  I am looking forward to all of the fun things we can do with them while we introduce them to the local culture. I’m sure we’ll have even more pictures to share then!