Our new front yard

It has been an absolutely INCREDIBLE first week here.

 {our new front yard: the East China Sea}

{and brown sugar cane}

As you can see, 

we fell in love with our new place as soon as we pulled up. 

We got authorized to live off base & immediately started our hunt ~ I got to spend a day and a half with awesome Okinawan realtors looking at places before we found it,  signed the lease yesterday and we move in Sunday!! 

WE ARE SO EXCITED.

One of our new neighbors told us he goes spear fishing in “our front yard” & there are coves and little beaches that all connect along it. We took a beach/corral walk last night to watch the sunset & can’t believe we’ll be able to do that every night together…amazing!

 I’ll take pics of our apartment on Sunday so you can see how beautiful it is.

{end of our balcony}

{where we’ll be drying our clothes}

We’ve been living this past week in town at a hotel run by the most wonderful people. They are so welcoming, friendly, sweet, funny, humble, loving, personable. Those characteristics describe every single Okinawan we’ve met so far. Being US military, we expected coldness toward us but we have only received the exact opposite. We truly share this island. They make us at home here. Some of the locals I’ve met this week boasted about our relationship and how safe the island is: in part from how Okinawans are raised; in part because of our mil presence. One local said, “we never have terrorist here, no, not welcome, never will have terrorist here!!”

{we love these ladies!}

And…we bought a car yesterday!
’96 Jimney. We pick up our mini me jeep Monday!

We found a sushi restaurant the other night on a tiny side street where we sat barefoot on the floor on tatami mats, ordered things we had no idea what they were, happily ate all of them, drank amazing tea, ate sooo much FRESH raw fish. It tasted like it just came out of the sea. We wandered home in awe of such a simple yet amazing experience…and at how much we need to stretch to be able to sit cross-legged on the floor under a 10 inch tall table… (:

We are so happy here. Soo thankful.
We can’t say it enough ~ God is so good!