bull city jamz: Room with a View

So this is the view from our kitchen / living area. Pretty sweet! This is facing West, looking out over the East China Sea. The Okinawa Institute of Science & Technology (OIST) is on a hill, and our apartment is on the third floor so our vantage point is great.

Our apartment is lovely. OIST is only a few years old, so the building is fairly new. We have 3 bedrooms and a bathroom, and the craziest Japanese toilet you ever did see. Bidets, heated seats, and optional sound effects seem to be the norm for toilets here! Until yesterday, we were sitting on the literal hot seat until a colleague of John's came to change the heat setting to low.

Maddox is thrilled to have a desk of her own.

We have an elevator in the building, a combination lock on our mailbox, very strict recycling guidelines, and a clown car with its own parking space. Said clown car also is driven on the left side of the road. Appliances are of course all in Japanese so I am still figuring out how to use them. The washer / dryer is one unit, so it washes and then dries all in the same tub. All of these things make life interesting.

Despite the lovely bed, Zoe tried to sleep in the closet the first night.

We were so grateful to have had a lovely hostess help us through the first day. Naomi is the assistant who has been helping arrange our stay and she took us to lunch, to the village office for our resident cards, the bank, and the grocery store. Best part of our trip to the bank? We arrived just past 3 o'clock (closing time!), but Naomi knocked on the side door and they let us in. And the best part of the grocery store? The guy in the parking lot directing us to a space for our clown car. No parking lot rage allowed!

We have already adventured some - future blog posts, I promise - but my days have a similar rhythm to our days back in non-sabbatical life. Groceries, laundry, feeding kids, dishes, and mediating frequent sister squabbles occupy much of my day. Tasks take longer because I live in a world here where I am mostly illiterate. There are plenty of people at OIST who are helpful (the housing lady came up to my apartment yesterday to help with the mailbox and to translate the dishwasher) and an impressive array of resources online (especially Facebook) primarily maintained by military spouses. And an English-speaking GPS lady who tells me things like, "Shortly after, turn left" or "Follow this road for a while." And my friend Meredith from high school who has been generous with her time and advice for many months. So we are finding our way slowly, but surely. It's hard to believe we haven't even been here for one week.

Besides, there is iced coffee in every vending machine. It makes me feel like I can do anything.

Also, this.