Spiders, and sweat, and food - Oh My!

I'm tired of posting simply by date, so I decided to give a little more creative thought. I am writing to post about Saturday, June 30th.

This morning, I was blessed to get to go on a couple hikes near school. The first one took us through some thick weeds and bamboo forrest. It soon became aparent that the person in front needed a stick or branch of some sort to pull down some of the massive banana spider webs. It isn't fun to get entangled in the webs, but it is even less fun to think of getting the critters themsellves on you. This hinder ed our progress some. That first hike took us to the top of a peak that allows us to see both sides of the island at once. It was beautiful! After finishing there, we drove about five mintues further up the road to complete another smaller hike. This time, time was limited, so we could only get part way before turning around. However, the view was incredible. I know pictures never do it justice, but I thought you needed to see some of what we were seeing today. After hiking up the hill, we hurried back to school to meet up with a crew of people who were signing on for round two of my Yomitan tour today. Our first stop was the pottery villiage.

I am not sure the difference this time, but we were able to see the village really at work today. We saw pieces drying, we saw them taking clay from their resevours, one gentelman pulled aside barriers and gave us a mini tour of his kiln. It was very interesting. Randy and Kathy Fagan have family visiting so I believe they were able to get some wonderfull photos of the villiage in action. Upon the completion of our visit, we went down the hill to Murasake Mura (Purple World) were we had a "traditional Okinawan" buffet for lunch. Other than partaking TOO MUCH it was a nice meal. After lunch 7 of us made our way to Ryukyu Mura. There, we were able to see them grinding the juice from some sugar cane the old fashioned way - with water buffalo - and the hilghlight for me was watching a dance/music show. We even got pulled into the act a couple of times. I got too many nice pictures to share here, unfortunately.

At the end of the day, I returned home sweaty, still full from lunch, and very itchy from my numerous bug bits and rashes. I decided to take my bike (which I managed to fix) down the hill so I could jump in the water to cool off. It was wonderful! I returned home via Max Value to prepare my potluck dish for church the next day. I think I can safely say, "A good time was had by all."