1 month!!

I have officially been here for over 1 month! I can't believe how fast time has gone by! I still haven't been too homesick, but there are definitely a few things that I miss:
1. family, friends, and church
2. Mindy (my dog)
3. being able to communicate with people
4. college (I really, realllly miss U of I)
5. good pizza
6. not seeing cockroaches everywhere I go at night!
7. working at the country club (I miss my LFCC family so much!)
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While there are quite a few things that I miss, there are many new aspects of my life out here that help fill the void, such as:
1. making new friends, being with Ben, and hopefully finding a church soon
2. seeing stray cats everywhere I go at night
3. learning a new way to communicate with people
4. the stability of having a real job
5. good sushi (still experimenting!)
6. feeling safe everywhere I go at night (there is little, to no crime in Okinawa)
7. loving all of the employees at F.E.S.
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On Saturday night, I went out on Kokusai street with the teachers, Ben and his friends, and one of my students, Mayo! She is 25 or 26 and really, really sweet!
Here is a picture of me, Sarah, and Mayo:
On Sunday, we all went to a festival that was about 20 minutes away. It was a lot of fun! We didn't stay for the fireworks because it was so hot out and they were late at night, but we played a few games and walked around.
On Sunday, Sarah, Stephen, and I spent the day up north in Ginoza (where Ben lives). We ate taco rice for dinner (yum!) and relaxed all day. Monday night, Ben took me to see the new X-Men movie, which was the only movie playing that day....so we didn't have much of an option. The movie was, ehhh, okay. But it was still fun to be able to go see a movie since I haven't done that in a while!
Then on Tuesday morning, there was a solar eclipse! According to Wikipedia, this was the longest total solar eclipse of the 21st century, lasting 6 minutes, 39 seconds...and from Okinawa, we were able to see nearly 100% of it! It was pretty cool, I watched it with these 3 old men (in their 70-80s) that live in my building that were also out on the patio of our building...they fed me tempura and let me use their goggles.
Currently, I just finished teaching at my Houikien, and yes, the students are still tackling each other to say 'Bye' to me...I am thinking that I need to come up with a solution for this, because many of the students get trampled and start crying, but the teachers seem to be o.k. with it. We'll see.....
Time to start getting ready for work! Keep me updated on life in the States!

Nikki Sensei (What the students call me, "Nikki Teacher")

P.S. I recently posted an album on Facebook of most of my pictures from Okinawa thus far, but if you do not have facebook, I think you can still look at the album here:
http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2616691&id=1933097&l=32325d5738