First day in Okinawa

Everyone I know thinks I'm on this awesome family vacation full of rest and excitement, but in reality this is just another work trip for Daniel in which daily life for us gets a temporary week long relocation. The university the husband is researching at for the week is very much out in the boonies, far away from all the fun, touristy features of this Japanese prefecture. We arrived at 10pm yesterday night; I looked up and saw stars and actual constellations in the absence of any light pollution.

Regardless of other people's illusions, I'm glad to see a new place. Oftentimes I would rather experience the mundane lives of local people than the frenetic activities of tourism. Today comprised of playing two board games with the kids in the morning, checking out the campus and all the truly fascinating research that are taking place here, homeschooling Declan who is missing a week of school, hiking around to seek out reasonably priced food sources, and going to a play group.

I love how international this place of research is! At the playgroup, there was a Japanese story time, which I enjoyed immensely more so than the kids did as my Japanese fluency level was perfect for the preschool storybooks. (Booyah!) The kids ended up playing with kids whose parents were from Israel, Russia, Taiwan (besides me, I mean), and Pittsburgh! The Pittsburgh mom actually went to high school with one of my ex-boyfriends' brother. Small world. The Israeli mom invited us to her home in the faculty apartments for dinner, but Daniel came back from the day's research a bit depressed and wanted to just hang out with family. So I sadly declined. It was so nice to hang out with a bunch of intellectual stay at home moms who are familiar with cross cultural concerns. I miss being understood.

After dinner (Petra, as the birthday girl, requested penne, so I made an onion-mushroom-broccoli tomato sauce to go with a pot of that), the kids and I took a night walk with the husband to his lab and research unit space. One can just feel the energy of all the scientific explorations underway even as we strolled by. I showed the husband where the kids broke the water cooler and soaked the carpet in the resource center, and also the defibrillator whose alarm Petra set off when she went a-pokin'. 

Some chess pieces were missing 

so I told Declan to improvise

For tomorrow, and so on, I am once again on my own in planning our schedule sans transportation. Just taking it one day at a time and thank God today was really fun!