Dan's birthday!

Its been a few weeks since my last post....so here goes trying to remember what happened!

Tuesday, October 9th, we had our October Ammo Spouses Social at the bowling alley. It was probably my favorite social so far! We had a good time meeting new people, chatting and playing a couple games of bowling.

Wednesday the 10th, I received a call from one of the principals from the other elementary school asking me to do an interview! I was really torn on what to do because the school I work at also wanted to interview me for a teaching position as well (They told me this on my first day too!). But in the end, it was an opportunity I couldn't pass up, so I went in on Thursday after school for my interview. I feel like it went really well and I enjoyed just talking with the principal about my experiences and what I think I can bring to the table. Hopefully I hear from HR soon!

Friday night, we joined two other couples at the bowling alley for a game. Dan just got off work at 6:30 and we went straight there and decided to see how good their pizza was. Not too bad! We think it may have just been a frozen pizza, but oh well! It was a good time hanging out. :)

Saturday, October 13th, Dan went into work until about 5 pm. Then, he grilled some delicious steak and we had mashed potatoes and green beans! I must admit that he is getting better on that grill. I spent the day researching things for the classroom just in case I do get the job, so I printed a few things from a wonderful website (teacherspayteachers.com) and started cutting things out. Unfortunately, we don't have a teacher store here so I can't really find any good classroom posters and such. Also, I need to laminate a lot of things, and have to wait to get hired to do that. We did go out after dinner to the 100 Yen store for the first time. I was able to find some kids size chopsticks in colorful pairs that I would love to use to match kids up. I thought it would be a fun way to assign partners by using something somewhat cultural. We also checked out the "Everything in the World" store again and they had a ton of Halloween stuff! I love seeing all the holiday stuff out! I found some little colorful containers and they have these cool folders that have pocket protectors bound together, so we got each size (10 pages, 20, 40, and 60) which would be really cool to store a weeks worth of lesson plans or student info sheets or something like that. That night, we rented a movie from ITunes that isn't going to be out until February 2013. I guess the movie has some agreement with ITunes to allow them to do that? No idea, but it was a good movie! I was only interested because Katherine McPhee was in it (Any Smash fans out there?!).

Sunday the 14th, after church we decided to try Manchu Wok for some Chinese food. It wasn't anything too special--just your typical fast food Chinese food. Then, Dan had some work to do that he brought home so I was able to catch up on cleaning the house.

Chipotle Chicken Salad with Salsa Ranch

For the whole week, Dan was busy at work in preparation for the big inspection the whole base goes through. Basically, it meant a lot of late nights making sure everything was good to go. I had another fairly good week at school. I found out that the position at my school was filled and my interview was therefore cancelled. Apparently there was a teacher who was on leave without pay that they didn't have to interview so that was pretty disappointing for me. I also found out that I didn't get the job at the school I interviewed at either. So it was a tough week just accepting the fact that I won't get my own class anytime soon. Maybe next year! I was definitely disappointed but I know that God has me where He wants me, and this gives me more time to learn from my current teacher and figure out what I would want to do in my own class, so it will be a good learning experience for a while until something opens up in the future.

We had an assembly with Mexican dancers!

Anyways! On a more exciting note, Dan's 24th birthday was on Wednesday, October 17th! He got off work around 6 and just wanted to chill and order Pizza Hut. When he got home, I let him open the gifts from his mom and I- all Syracuse stuff! He also had been wanting to buy the movie Captain America for a few weeks, so I surprised him with that, so we enjoyed our pizza with the movie and just relaxed for the night.

For small group Thursday night, I offered to bring dessert to celebrate Dan's birthday. I made one of his favorite things, pumpkin cupcakes, after hearing the girls talk about an easy recipe last week. They said it was just a can of pumpkin and a box of yellow cake mix! I'm not a big fan of pumpkin things so it was hard for me to be the judge, but they got several compliments! Must have been the cream cheese frosting.

Friday, the 19th, we had a little pumpkin party at school. Each student had a little pumpkin that they had to find in our "pumpkin patch" which was 2 rows of pumpkins with a few large ones in the middle. That is one thing about living in Okinawa that just isn't the same. I miss the fall festivals and the apple orchards and the beautiful colorful leaves!!!!! Anyways, I dressed up as the scarecrow and one of the dads was the pumpkin. I think this makes costume #4 so far, and its only been a month. :)

Friday night, Dan suggested we go to the Garlic Restaurant again (We went there for my birthday). We met up with a few others and enjoyed several different garlic items. He stuck with the usual garlic pizza and also got some type of cheesy garlic shrimp and fried rice balls. I had the beef and broccoli again, and also tried garlic potatoes and a garlic bacon pasta. The potato wedges were amazing, but the pasta was basically just buttered spaghetti with a few little pieces of undercooked bacon, so that was disappointing.

On the way there, I heard on the radio that our base is now under a curfew effective immediately because two sailors allegedly assaulted and raped a girl here. It really makes me sick to read this story especially because these guys were only docked here for one night and then they were headed back to the States. If you want to read the story here it is: 

http://edition.cnn.com/2012/10/19/world/asia/japan-us-troops/

On our way home, we drove by this house and then looped back around to take a picture! It is two houses that joined efforts to make an awesome cat for Halloween.

Saturday, October 20th, was the first full day I've spent with Dan in a while, so we really enjoyed that! We started out at a coffee shop to get a yummy iced caramel macchiato, then headed to Sports Depo to find some soccer stuff for Dan before the Ammo team starts their games. He is pretty excited to start playing soccer again. Then, we headed home and relaxed for the afternoon, and ate dinner at Chili's! It was a lovely day of relaxing with my hubby before another crazy week starts of him working the midnight-noon shift.

Sunday, October 21st, I went to church while Dan finished up his shift. There were four of us girls there without our husbands, so we went out to a sushi place after church. Of course, I had fried chicken instead of sushi. :) The great thing about this place was how cheap it was! It is rare to find items on the menu for less than 500 yen ($6-7), so I might have to go back someday when I start liking sushi. I did some grocery shopping that afternoon and finally caught up on this blog!

That's about it! We've been here for 5 months now...only 2 years and 7 months left to go :)
Krista

OH! 1 more thing! Dan finally found out his training dates. Remember how he was supposed to be there from June-August 2012?? Well now, he will be in Texas from January 7-March 13th. Of all times to go, that period is ideal because he will be here for the holidays and I will be busy with school stuff hopefully. So yeah! It's about time we found out!