long time...no blog

hey everyone, we were having alot of trouble getting online in okinawa because of the wi-fi connection. ill try to write a little bit about what happened each day.
Saturday- Our bus driver who works on with large trucks and hum v's took us to the hum v yard to go for a spin. AMAZING! he dressed us up with the whole nine yards, ammo hats and vests so that we could get the feel for what it really feels like to ride in the desert. The vests were 30 to 50 lbs each and i posed for some g.i joe pictures. Then we had the option to go to one of the beaches on okinawa and hang out but i decided to stay back and rest.

Sunday-We were finally aloud to go off base with our sponsors for 6 hours. I joined up with some people and we got a bus and traveled an hour to a pineapple plantation, which had everything pineapple that you could imagine and more. it was seriously like bubba gump shrimp from the movie forrest gump, because there were rooms filled with pineapple product for us to try. To bad i am here for a meet because they had pineapple wines that I guess are the main attraction.
Then we went to one of the worlds largest aquarium. This aquarium had tanks so massive that they could comfortably hold whales and massive manta rays. i got some great pictures and video to show .
Then after this we went to the famous sushi restaurant on okinawa where several celebrities have been and had their picture taken with the head sushi chef there, so we did the same thing. For the picture the sushi chef brings out a samurai sword and poses in front of you with it, kind of intimidating but made for a sweet picture.

Monday-after the night practice we got dressed up for the fairwell dinner that the base was putting on for us. This was a classy formal dinner that we all dressed up in the same uniform for. All of our sponsors and other important people on base accompanied us to the dinner to experience the Japanese isa dancers put on a 20 minute show during dinner. They also had the japanese dragon dancing around the room. The dinner and afterwards the paralymic track and swimming team presented about 20 framed posters that we had signed to show our appreciation of all the hard work that the base had graciously done on our behalf.