CoCo's!

I know I've mentioned CoCo's before, but Joe and I love it so much, it deserves it's own blog entry! Now, don't get CoCo's Curry House confused with my other beloved CoCok's where I get my pedicures done!

CoCo's was one of the first restaurants we heard about when we got to the island. We heard it was a favorite among American's and we were to try it out immediately! It is obviously a popular spot for Americans... almost everytime we go it's ALL Americans... maybe one or two Japanese peoples. I'll be honest, the first time I went and saw the pictures on the menu, I was not impressed. The first time we went we went with some other friends and we talked about how in America food is all about how it tastes AND looks. Visually, the meals I suppose don't seem that appealing... brown curry, some meat and a bunch of white rice. Well, looks can be deceiving because let me tell you, the food is amazing!!! The service is great too!! The first time we went, we didn't know that you're supposed to push a little electronic bell on the table for the servers to come to your table to take your order. We just sat and sat and sat there! Now we practically don't even need to look at the menus and order immediately!

There are tons of different options you can do to your curry. You choose your spice level starting at mild, regular then on a scale of 1-10 (10 being the hottest). I'm a baby and can't really handle spicy food and I get mild. Joe switches it up sometimes getting anywhere from a level 3-6. Some of our friends love to get level 10 and it's funny to watch them literally sweat throughout their meal! You can add all sorts of different toppings and of course you can't go to CoCo's without getting their delicious nan bread! I'm not sure what makes it so good, but it's so soft and yummy! I always order their mango milk lassie, which is so good! Probably the only milk I really enjoy drinking. Joe said on his last trip to Hawaii he saw a CoCo's Curry House! I'm excited to hear it's made it to the states! I think every state should have CoCo's!

Here's a picture of our typical meal:

Did I mention we go here... at LEAST once a week? :)

Solar Eclipse!

They'd been talking about the eclipse for quite some time now, so everyone was pretty excited to see it today! They predicted it to happen between 9am-12pm and I think it got the darkest around 10:30ish. It was pretty neat, it did get pretty dark, but most people thought it just looked like it was going to storm outside (there was a lot of cloud coverage today). Joe showed me how to see how much of the sun was covered by poking a pinhole in a piece of cardboard and shining the hole onto a white piece of paper. It reflected how much of the sun was visible! Pretty neat! Here's a picture from the internet. Asia and India were able to experience the most of the eclipse. Apparently the next one isn't going to be until 2023 so I'm kinda excited that I got to experience it today!

Island Fever...

Well, it's only been about 5 months and I'm beginning to miss the states. I've been thinking about it more and more and I guess the island is beginning to wear on me, but only a little. However, I thought about it and there are definitely some thing that I do not miss! I've come up with this list so far:



What I miss from the states:

1. Shopping malls, enough said.

2. Bargain shopping (Ross, Marshalls, TJMaxx, etc.- Yes the top two are shopping. The Japanese styles are very punk and shopping online is HARD!).

3. Olive Garden (Ok we have a Macaroni Grill on one of the marine camps, but it's still just not the same.)

4. Chipotle (Yes my other top reasons are food. Hmm, shopping and food are the way to my hear! Hehe! Hm, while I'm at it I also miss Arby's, Chick-fil-a, Sonic, Jamba Juice and well, pretty much every fast-food place and restaurant!)

5. Street signs! There are hardly any street signs off-base. Directions are solely based on landmarks (i.e.-turn at the little mirror thing).

6. Seeing more than 10 different style cars... and more colors than white and silver (that's the majority).

7. The newness of the states. Everything here seems a little old and rundown.

8. Being able to turn right on a red light. Here, you have to sit through the entire light.

9. That motorcycles don't have their own traffic rules! Here, they do whatever they want!

10. How in many places they don't allow smoking in restaurants or other public places. Not here, they smoke wherever they want!

11. The convenience of 24-hour Wal-Marts.

12. Target.

13. Cell phones. The ones here are crazy. I can't even understand half the functions on my phone and it takes entirely TOO long to try and send a text message.

14. Having more than 1 radio station to listen to. I miss my country stations! :(

15. Convenience. It all boils down to everything is so convenient in the states! You don't realize it until you don't have it!

16. Take-out Chinese food. Ok you're probably thinking I'm crazy since I live in Asia, but take-out Chinese in the states is completley different than authentic Chinese food.

17. Being able to run to the store and not run into a million people from work/your husband's squadron. It's a SMALL island here! I seem to run into someone I know everywhere I go.

18. DVR and having HD channels. We are fortunate enough to have about 70 cable channels (which is cool, I thought we were only going to ge tthe 5 AFN channels). However, DVR was awesome and I can't wait to have that function back!

19. Having a mailbox at my house instead of having to drive to the post office and pick up the mail everyday. Not to mention our combination box is possessed and only likes to open after about 5 perfect attempts to open it!

20. Being able to pick-up the phone and call friends and family whenever I want to. With the crazy time difference, it's very difficult to schedule phone calls (via Skype which is AMAZING!).

21. Not having many other options when the commissary is out of something. If the commissary was out of something, we could always run to Wal-Mart or another grocery store. Not really an option here! So when we see something we know is hard to get (i.e.- ground turkey, Pillsbury pizza dough in the can, ground pork, spinach & a few other items) we stock up! It's a drag when we stalk up and then don't use it before it goes bad...

Well, that's all I can think of for now. But don't get the wrong impression, I do like it here in Okinawa! It's just after awhile, a foreign country starts to lose it's sparkle and you start to miss "home"... wherever that might be?! I can't complain about being minutes away from beautiful beaches, being exposed to some awesome culture (I love how polite and friendly the Japanese are!) and having some of the yummiest food around! We also have made some great friends and it makes it all the better. We hope if any of our friends/family want to come visit us that they do!!! Really, there are plenty of great things here! Hm, I'll have to compose a list about the things I like about Japan soon!!!

It's my favorite time of year.... summer's here!

Well, it's been summer for quite some time but it's really been hot outside recently and the humidity is high too!!! On base they have different flag conditions. White flag means there are no restrictions, you can spend as much time as you want outside. Green flag is advised to only spend 45 minutes outside, yellow flag is 30 minutes, red flag is 15 minutes and black flag means to stay inside. I forget the different temperatures, but I know black flag is 86 degrees (not including the humidity and "feels like..." temperature reading). Lately, the kids at school are lucky to get 30 minutes of outside play time at 9am and then by the afternoon it's always red or black flag. Such a bummer!

Today we went to a close by beach and just enjoyed the sun and cool water for momentary relief from the heat. We spent a few hours there, hanging out with a friend, eating yummy food, reading books and just chit-chatting. The sun was so strong we had to leave by mid-afternoon!

Thinking back to a few weeks ago, I realized I didn't blog about our 4th of July festivities. Every year the base hosts a big 2-day "America Festival" with tons of tents/stands with food, drinks and games. Joe's squadron was selling drinks and ice-cream and Joe and I decided to help volunteer for a shift for the day before the 4th. Unfortunatley, the shift we signed up for wasn't very successful. We set-up got everything ready and it POURED!!! We all huddled under the little tent while the wind blew, the rain was inches high and there were few people who braved the weather to check out the Festival (it didn't help there was a "Lightening Within 5 miles" warning out). Needless to say, we didn't make much money... apparently ice-cold water/gatorade and ice-cream isn't popular in the cold rain.

The next day for the 4th the weather cleared up and people were out and about enjoying the Festival! Susan and I went to get our pedis (as shown in the previous post) and then we went to the Festival. It was insanely crowded (they open it up to the public and the Japanese LOVE to come to American events). It took almost an hour to get a parking space. It was so crowded we didn't get any food (the lines were WAY too long). We walked about the static displays of all the airplanes and got to watch the fireworks. It was a fun night and the weather at the time was awesome with a nice cool breeze! It was a nice 4th of July.

We've been enjoying new restaurants, time with friends and busy trying to stay on top of things! I'm working 40-hours a week and Joe's schedule is as always, ever changing. I'd been sick for several weeks with a bad cough/cold, stuffy/runny nose type deal and unfortunatley it seemed as if all my girlfriends and co-workers at work had it too! I finally was able to rid of it (knock on wood) and am starting to feel better and have more energy. We're still waiting on the phone call for a date to move, but we're very anxious to have one of the brand new rennovated houses! We are still tentatively planning to go to Hawaii in September for Joe's marathon and to visit some friends and family along the way. My birthday is coming up in a few weeks and we're planning to spend a day at one of the nicest resorts on the island's beach.

We hope everyone else is enjoying their summer and is staying cool. Here are some pictures of recent events.

Pedi :)

My friend Susan and I went to the beloved CoCok's to get pedi's! Here's my newest one:

It just might be my favorite one yet!