Buddy (the head Malachi guy on Kadena, an Air Force base on Okinawa) picked us up from the airport and we packed into three vans (we would have used a bus but he had lost his bus license on the first because of a change in policy) and drove to Cocos (a curry restaurant on Okinawa that is nothing like the Coco's in the States) where we had an amazing curry lunch that felt to us like it should have been dinner but it was only noon.
After lunch, they drove us to Kadena where we stayed in the on-base hotel. The hard part was forcing ourselves to stay awake until night. We achieved that partly by planning dinner for 6:30 instead of 5:30 but mostly just by hanging out and getting to know each other. I'm not going to try to list any right now because I'm really tired and can't think..
I, personally, went to bed at 8:30 that night and woke up at 4am just long enough to tell myself to go back to bed. I'm told pretty much everyone did that. We were loading into the vans by 7:30 the next morning and at the docks at around 9. We took a ferry to the island of Tokashiki where we will be running camp starting on Monday. The ride was about an hour and kinda boring except that we got to hang out, talk, and get to know each other a little better.
The island is beautiful. It looks like something from a move. I was half expecting to see a pterodactyl fly over our heads. The entire island is green from foliage and the water was like a turquoise color.
We ate lunch near the port then drove up to the facilities we're using which are really interesting. It is a government-owned resort designed for education. We must take off our shoes when we enter the dorm building and put on these little slippers that they provide (hope I don't get a fungus). If we don't want to wear the slippers, we have been told that we may dedicate a pair of our sandals to be for inside only (too bad you told me to only bring one pair of sandals instead of the two I'd been planning on Mom). The trash is divided into three parts: burnable, non-burnable, and recycle. I still don't really get it. At 7am we have to go to “frag raising” and at 5pm is “frag lowering”. You can make a pretty good guess about why we are calling it the “frag” by googling “engrish” but I'll probably include a picture that will help you understand. As I said, we have to be at the “fragpole” at 7am so I'm going to go to bed now. We'll see what happens tomorrow.
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