Hi Everyone! I spent all of last week in the hospital and I was discharged late Friday night. I'm at home recovering and doing well. For obvious reasons I haven't been able to write but I wanted to let everyone know that I'm still here. It might be a little while before I post again as I haven't had contact with the outside world for a while now.

One thing though. I've been here so long that I've lost my ability to understand European accents. I've become so accustomed to Japanese accents that I couldn't understand one of my male nurses who had a strong Irish accent. Instead of hearing and comprehending actual words, when I first heard him my brain kinda shut down and all I saw was a bunch of pretty colorful swirls and curly lines like a girlie drawing in my head that went to the tune of his noise. And that was all before the morphine. I felt so bad. He was really nice but all I could do was smile and nod most of the time. It was truly exhausting. What's funny is that I remember a time when I thought I would never understand strong Japanese accents. And then I adapted without taking much notice.

It's been a while since I've posted anything but work and home have kept me busy lately. This morning I took the family up to Ocean Expo Park in Northern Okinawa, with the sloooow traffic/speed limits it took over an hour to get there. The weather was beautiful - (12:30) over 80 degrees and not too humid, with a nice cool sea breeze the entire time. After a quick detour to a butterfly and tropical bird center just south of the park, we went to the aquarium and checked out the fishies and the dolphin show. The girls weren't too grumpy so afterwards we went North a mile or so to Emerald Beach. Since it's still so early in the year, the ocean was pretty icy but because it was so hot out it was refreshing. When my husband took this pic it was 3:00 and the tide was coming in. When I originally walked out to that floating thing I had folded my jeans up and was all good but by the time I got down to get the camera the water was already knee-high so my jeans got totally soaked but the girls were real troopers and were fine with the small trek back out there. I'm glad we took that trip up North because I think it might be the last nice weekend before the real heat gets here. I like to hit that beach during the summer because the water is perfectly clear and has a perfect emerald color. It's really a beautiful place.