Blue drinks

One important thing you should know about me is that I don't do blue drinks. I don't trust them. What the hell is making it that color??? Nothing normal is bright crayon blue so there is no way I will consume anything blue. It's not natural. I cannot stress enough how freaked out I am when I see someone drinking blue drink.

This last weekend I went out with some girlfriends and much to my horror and distress, my friend Sasha did this:

Not cool Sasha. Not cool at all.

Long awaited Aria Asia video

Labor Day Weekend Part 2

Are you ready for the second part of our Santillan Labor Day weekend? My slow computer finally is. It took far too long to load up all these delightful pictures.

So. Day two! Even though we were super duper tired from the eventful day uno, we still dragged our tiny hineys outta bed pretty early. And we started the day off right with a trip to the NCO club for a breakfast buffet. The words "breakfast" and "buffet" in the the same sentence together is one of the most beautiful things I've ever heard. Just add the word "dessert" in there and I'll be the happiest Tara in the land. And the fattest.

But the buffet was pretty impressive for club food and we even went back the following weekend because it was just that good. Plus, they have one of those pianos that play on their own, playing Beatles tunes the entire time.

The drive to Ocean Expo Park was pretty dang long. We'd been wanting to check out the aquarium foreverrrrr so we were pretty psyched. It's the second biggest aquarium in the WORLD, folks! On our own tiny island of all places! And they couldn't have picked a more gorgeous location for it. I'm still shocked and overwhelmed sometimes by how beautiful it is here and how lucky we are to actually get to live here for 4 years.

Ocean Expo Park is a large area way way way up at the northern most part of Okinawa. It includes the aquarium, a lovely beach area, an oceanic museum, an old style Okinawan village, the Tropical Dream Center, and a giant garden. We didn't see as much as we would've liked because it was still super hot and we were already tired when we got there. Above is what you shouldn't use to cool you off when it's super humid. It would've been perfect in dry heat though.

The pathway to the aquarium!

Have you met Dustin? He really loves sea turtle and tortoises. I mean LOVES them. No lie.

Oh my goodness. Just look at that! I can hardly believe it and I was there! You can see one of the resort islands out there with it's big mountain...of love.

That's the dolphin tank and the beautiful East China Sea.

Hello other island. We will visit you one day. Maybe for an anniversary. The hubby and I have been talking about it and we know we can get a pretty rad discount on base for your resort.

Our tickets and map! Dustin let me be the girl whale shark. But I had to fight him on it.

The amazing touch pool.

There was some weird tropical creatures at this aquarium that I'd never seen before.

"Let's make out. Num num num."

Jelly fish look harmless to me. What's the big deal with them anyways?

That's a fish! Do you see his eye??

Weird starfish.

GIANT lobsters! Literally bigger than my Jack Russell, Ariel. They probably could've eaten her.

Sea cucumbers.

I love these guys.

I thought this one looked like Slimy from Sesame Street.

The only aquarium in the WORLD to have a whale shark. And this is the biggest aquarium tank in the world as well.

It was pretty crazy. And there was a restaurant in there where you could sit right next to the tank and eat your soba!

I like this guy.

Soon we had to venture outside to get to the turtles, manatees and dolphin show. I just about melted from the humidity.

Hey little turtles! Dustin and Tara would like to snuggle you guys.

"OK, whatever Sea Pig."

Here's part of Emerald Beach.

The dolphin tank. They had normal bottle nose dolphins but also some kind of much bigger dolphin that looked like whales. It was pretty weird.

See the whale-like dolphin? He was very smart.

They like topiaries here.

We did shortly visit the Oceanic Museum but it was small and I wasn't allowed to take pictures. I think when it gets cooler out we'll head back up to Ocean Expo Park and see everything.

After we ate lunch we went to Fruitsland that was actually right next to Pineapple Park. I had no idea. Basically you walk through a kind of forest of fruits. Had it been spring, we probably would've seen a lot more than we did. But it was still pretty nice.

There were some bananas still growing.

And some crazy dragon fruit.

At the end of the tour there's a little cafe with fresh juices, smoothies and crazy huge desserts like this one. A huge bowl of shaved ice with fresh mango and dragon fruit in some kind of syrup. It was soooo good and perfect for how hot it was that day. Also, it was the cheapest dessert on the menu at about $10! Totally worth it though.

The perfect way to end our day, I think.

Labor Day weekend Part 1

Since everyone in the military had a 4-day weekend for Labor day, I decided to take at least 3 of those days off as well so that Dustin could have some adventures. And so I could blog about them.

We've done pretty much nothing all summer cause I've either been working, or it's been just too dang hot to do anything outdoors. Even the beach got too extreme unless you were in the water the entire time. So, needless to say, we were super excited to venture out and actually do funzy things.

Only one thing threatened to ruin the start of my wonderful weekend.

Presenting....a blister on my eye!

I'll be honest....it really friggin hurt. I have no idea how it happened but it really sucked cause I hate wearing my glasses. Let's take a closer look, shall we?

I love my camera.

On Saturday, we decided to take a trip to Nago to visit Pineapple park once again. Only difference this time was that we had lots of money to actually buy things there. And a good camera to actually take visible pictures.

We took the expressway because it takes about 45 minutes off of your driving time. Although it's a teeny tiny island, it takes forever to get anywhere because everything is so compact and there's a lot of people living here. You have to pay to take the expressway but sometimes it's worth it if you actually wanna get anywhere on time.

I, of course, had to take a picture of Dustin driving. And shaking a bottle of grape juice. Notice his red side burns.

I love the drive to Nago. And you will too! Just come and visit us.

I'd rather things be blurry than have sun in my eyes. Sunlight makes my eyes tear and that ruins my makeup. And THAT ruins my day. Just so you know.

That pineapple is a sign that we're about to enter a land of magic. And pineapples.

This is the outside of the pineapple winery.

Hooray! This place is so happy.

Pineapple popcorn is what I dream about at night. We got the BIG size.

Tickets and map that we didn't even use.

After getting our popcorn and taking a picture with a tiny Asian dressed as a happy pineapple, we got into our pineapple cars for an educational ride through the pineapple fields. That's not us by the way.

Mmmmmm. Pineapple goodness.

Please excuse my glasses and ponytail. And my face.

Tiny pineapples! I love them!

Pineapple fields forever.

I guess this is how some pineapples grow.

King Pineapple! And Dustin!

After our ride we headed towards the shell gallery. Because that's what you do at Pineapple Park.

Not painted. They're actually naturally in pretty colors.

In the seashell gift shop, I noticed that they still had their very racist coconut purses. I got Brittany one for her last birthday. I'm pretty sure she loved it. Or was extremely offended.

Go through the giant pineapple to enter a world of pineapple history and free samples.

I learned how to cut a pineapple.

I learned that Christopher Columbus was a pineapple.

This wasn't opened the first time we went. I love conveyor belts full of pineapples. Here the worker is moving them from the conveyor belt and into a machine that'll peel and core the pineapples.

It was moving super duper fast but thanks to my new camera I was able to get some nice shots.

There's all the peels and that blurry thing to the right is a core being shot out into a bucket.

See? Bucket with cores.

Then the pineapples move to these people who quickly examine and cut off any yucky parts.

Lots of fast moving with very sharp knives.

"Hey, take a picture of me with all these wine bottles!"

I love free booze! Especially if it's pineapple flavor. We bought a cute little bottle of wine and a bottle of the most delicious pineapple juice ever. These Okinawans know what they're doing.

Hello pineapple wine shot glass! I will take you home with me.

We also bought some yogurt covered pineapple which is amazingly tasty. And we had our fill of fantastic free samples. That's probably why we love this place to much. They give us free food and everything is just so dang happy.

On the drive home we chose not to take the expressway because we weren't in a hurry anymore and sometimes it's just nice to take a more scenic route. We made a stop at this local honey shop that I see all the time and have always wanted to go into. We were looking for some honey straws but I guess that's more of an American thing. But we did leave with some yummy local honey.

This sign clearly says, "Honey shop for Tara".

We then randomly decided to go to the Botanical Gardens since it's just around the corner from our house and it actually didn't feel too hot that day. But that's because we were in the air conditioned car and we forgot about the humidity. Silly us.

It really is beautiful here. Last time we were here was Christmas Eve. They cover literally, everything with lights and even have a light, laser, fireworks show every night in December. It was pretty intense. We'd been meaning to see the gardens during the day time for sometime now.

I love this. You can actually rent bikes here to ride around the gardens. We didn't do it because we were starting to realize how hot it actually was and because we didn't wanna spend the money.

This is my first time living somewhere with palm trees and I love it!

Uhhh. I don't even know what to say about this except that I was sweating like crazy and starting to get very cranky.

*sigh* Are you jealous yet? Aside from the heat we were having a lovely time until we discovered this:

Banana spiders. Probably the biggest spiders I have ever seen in my life. They're about the size of a grown man's had. No lie. And once we spotted one, we realized they were literally EVERYWHERE.

Oh my lord. I was at the point of tears when we had trees on both sides of us and I realized that there were spiders hanging from every branch. I was just not OK.

We quickly got outta there and saw that Aslan was keeping us safe. Even though I walked on his face.

How cute. Dustin climbed a coconut tree. Kinda.

See how high up he was?? That's why I didn't do it. I get scared when someone just picks me up.

You could also pay to ride the little tram thingy. We probably should've done that.

This is where they shoot fireworks from in the winter.

Here's where they grow baby lilypads.

I want lilypads! They grow such pretty flowers!

Lilypad jungle.

You can also rent poles and stuff and fish here. I don't know how much it would cost to keep the fish though. You can also buy food and feed them if you prefer that.

We didn't spend that long there because it was way too humid and I was about to punch someone. And then pass out. But then we followed some signs and ended up checking out Kurashiki Dam.

You can go and play in the water and it's very secluded and pretty. We would've never found it if there weren't any signs.

We ended our crazy busy day with a shower and then some southern BBQ at Nap's. We were gunna go out with a friend from my job but we were just too dang tired. Plus, we had early morning plans the next day.

Until then...