Travelog for: HolgiHH

Dear Mommy,
I have lots of fun Christmas stories to tell you, but first I wanted to show you the decorations here at Jayme's house. She actually has two nativity sets. You see, she bought one the first year, but then realized her kids always wanted to touch it so she found one online that's a childrens nativity set that they can play with. Unfortunately she says this means there's almost always a piece missing, but at least now they don't try to get her set anymore. And it is pretty cute.

Here's the adult nativity set. Its still pretty kid proof, but looks a bit nicer.

Then there were the Christmas cards Jayme received! A few from toyvoyagers, a few from postcard friends, and a few from family. Not too many cards, but she put them out anyway.

Finally there was of course the tree! I won't put up a big picture of the tree yet, you can see that on Christmas Day But I will show you some of the small ornaments on it. Jayme and her family each get one ornament every year for a Christmas present. It may be something from a movie or cartoon they like or something on a trip. Like the Minnie ornament Jayme got at Tokyo Disney. Or it may be something that reminded Jayme of her kids. Like the panda ornament because her oldest son used to carry a panda around non-stop as a lovey for awhile. And then of course, there's a few small ones the children made as well. Here are some pictures of them.



I hope you liked the pictures! I'll be sure to write all about Christmas very soon so you can see what fun we had!
HolgiHH

Dear Mommy,
I'm sorry I didn't get my update up sooner to tell you about Christmas! But here it is now.
On Christmas Eve our first priority was of course making Christmas cookies! The kids had lots of fun making them. We toys mostly stayed out of the way since we didn't want to get all floury or coated in icing.

Here are the ones we left out for Santa.

After getting every ready for Santa we went on out to the Christmas Eve light show! We got there quite early before nightfall. Here we are waiting and watching some shows near the stage. You can't really see the shows from here, but they just had people coming up doing short acts juggling or what not.

They also had a small festival area for the kids with games and rides, so we took the kids over to do some rides while we waited.

The best part of all for the kids though was that we got to see some real snow! Even though it was very warm that night (Jayme was in a tshirt!) they had a snow maker they kept running to build up snowmen, and igloos and other things. It was very, very packed in the snow area. Lots of children checking it out! Many of them will live on Okinawa all of their lives and not really have a chance to play in the snow. Here I am in a brief picture I managed to squeeze in while we were trying to carefully keep an eye on Jayme's children.

Finally the lights came on! Aren't they pretty? They have a few very elaborate light set ups.


Whew! After that we went home and put the children to bed and helped Jayme do some last minute wrapping.


Finally we all got to bed and when we woke in the morning Santa had visited and brought more presents! Here we all are under the tree with the gifts.

We spent Christmas Day at Jayme's house playing with the boys and their new toys. Maybe I can take some pictures of them later. For now, Merry Christmas Mommy! Hope you had a wonderful one!
HolgiHH

Dear Mommy,
Its been quite rainy here recently, but we've been trying to get out whenever the sun is out. The children are quite restless from staying indoors and they need to get some energy out! So we headed to one of the giant slide parks on Okinawa. Jayme's children really love this slide. Here it is from the bottom, you have to walk up quite a few stairs

And here's the view from the top looking down. Its a rollerslide so there are many rollers you slide down. The Japanese children go down standing up, but Jayme's children are a bit young for that so they go down sitting on a piece of cardboard.

They also had a small beach nearby so the children tried to build a sand castle.

More soon,
HolgiHH

Dear Mommy,
Like I said in the last update, its been very rainy! And Jayme's children are even driving us toys a bit up the wall with too much energy, so we also headed to an indoor playground. Its a place called Mona Kids. Here is the entrance, isn't it cute?

We had a snack inside

And here's the play area for the children. There's lots of tubes and ball pits for them to play in.

While the children were playing Jayme got to sit and rest and read a bit. I read some Lord of the Rings with her.

More soon,
HolgiHH

Dear Mommy,
I was quite excited when I woke up and it was actually sunny! Jayme said we were going to go out, but first we would make some lunches to take to eat in the car since it was going to be a bit of a drive. She said we were going to use these things called egg molds. First you boil and peel the eggs, then you put them in molds like this.

Here we are with all the egg molds.

Then you put them in the fridge until the cool, and when you take them out they've been molded and will hold their new shape. Neat huh?

We packed them along with other snacks into a bento box, which is a boxed lunch. Bentos are very popular in Japan. Jayme says she makes "American" bentos because her family doesn't like eating rice when it gets cold, which is a traditional bento food, so instead she makes her own type of boxed lunch. But it does look yummy... you can see the eggs are wrapped in saran wrap and placed in with the other food.

Then we headed off. It was a long carride up the coast until we arrived. Finally we arrived at the Busena resort! If you can see that pier far out in the distance, that's where we're headed.

We took a nice walk along the way, I thought this anchor was kind of neat.

And finally we made it to the pier.

We walked to the end and they had what's called an Underwater Observatory. You go down 2M under the water and you can look out the portholes! The area is really rather small, with only about 25 portholes, but its very neat. We stayed there for a long time watching the fish go by.




Finally it was time to head home, but we did stop at the playground on the way to let the children run a bit more. Can you tell Jayme spends a lot of time at playgrounds? Here's a view of the playground from one of the many things to climb on.

We toys took a rest on the rock wall.

Whew! I'm glad we finally got to go out and have some fun, hopefully I'll have another neat update soon,
HolgiHH

Dear mommy,
Sorry for the late update! We've visited a few places I'll tell you about, but Jayme hasn't had time to sit down it seems lately. First we celebrate Jayme's son Jacob's birthday! He's five years old.

For his birthday he wanted to go visit the aquarium so off we went! Here I am outside the building.

When you walk down to the entrance this is the view of the water there.

We got to see many fish. The Churaumi aquarium has the largest salt water natural light coral tank.



They also have the largest view screen to see whale sharks. Do you see him behind him? He's huge!

We made a new friend at the aquarium. He said he wants to be a toyvoyager too! He still has to pick a name for himself though.

Finally when we got home we decided to have some fun with the legos got for Christmas an his birthday. It took forever to put them all together!

More soon,
HolgiHH

Dear Mommy,
We also got to visit a ferris wheel! Here I am outside the ferris wheel.

And here are all us toys who are visiting on the ferris wheel.

Here's the view out the window. The water there is sunset beach.

More soon,
HolgiHH

Dear Mommy,
We also got to visit the grounds of Shuri-jo castle here in Okinawa. Shuri is the most famous castle on island. It was the main castle for the Ryukyan kings. It has been destroyed 5 times, most recently during WWII and they continue to rebuild it. Now you can visit and even pay a fee and enter the reconstructed castle. We only visited the outside today, but I thought you would like to see these photos of the outside of the castle and grounds.



More soon,
HolgiHH

Dear Mommy,
Jayme told me we were off to do something very special today. We got in the car for a long car ride and finally got out at a castle to quite a surprise. Us toys hadn't realized it was cherry blossom season here in Okinawa! You see, in mainland it comes much later but since Okinawa is warm year round the cherry blossoms tree bloom very early. They're also a much brighter pink than most in the mainland because they're a slightly different variety of tree. One of the most popular spots to visit is here at Nago Castle. You walk up the stairs and just look at the cherry blossoms along the way. Here is our view as we were walking.




On the way home we stopped by a spot called Manzamo Point to stretch, isn't it pretty?

After this adventure it was time for me to get into my envelope to head off to my next host. I hope I'll have more updates for you soon!
HolgiHH

Hi,
I am just updating for my journey map.
HolgiHH

Hello Mum!
I'm writing to let you know that I have arrived safely to my new host in Maine!

I'll tell you it was a relief to finally get out of that envelope. There was a lot of room, but it was starting to get stuffy.


Once I was out I met another ToyVoyager Xrundel=). He's a lovely pig from Russia.


After I looked around my new settings and got comfortable me and my new friend sat and got to know each other.


Well Mum, I think I'm going to like it here. beccasaurus promised to show me around her little town more in the coming days. Her parents and younger brother are coming for a visit this weekend. I believe this should be fun

Hello Mom!

Today was a bit of a gloomy day. There was a light rain most of the day and since where I'm staying is higher above the Valley there was also a light fog. Nevertheless Becca wanted to show us the view from her home.





In the distance you can see the hills of New Brunswick, Canada. She says the picture doesn't really do the view justice and it's also much prettier in the fall with all the different colors.

After we saw the view from the house we were heading to a restaurant called Lake View. There we were going to have chicken wings, since Monday night is all you can eat wing night.

On the way there we had to stop at the bank for one of Becca's friends so as we were waiting I looked out the windows of the car.


Finally we were really on our way and made it to St. Agatha. I found out that around here the locals call it St. Agat Becca is not completely sure why, but we were told it's a French thing.




For dinner me and Xrundel=) had a plate of wings, barely anyone at the table made it through two orders (12 wings).


I think they were all just saving room for dessert, though three of the party did eat well over 20 wings!
For dessert we had a delicious peanut butter pie.


Xrundel=) said that last week before I arrived Becca took him to wing night at a restaurant right in town and they were much better there. Maybe next week I'll get to go and see for myself.

When we got back to Fort Kent we went over to Becca's friend Krystal's house.
We got settled in and I was offered refreshments.
I didn't really care for the wine in a plastic cup


But another friend offered me a beer and I enjoyed it much more than the wine. 


We also met a brand new TV his name is Scrotes and belongs to Krystal. We think he'll begin his traveling soon!


Next we played a game called Apples to Apples.


The green cards have adjectives and red cards have nouns, to be described by the adjective. The point of the game is to get the person who's turn it is to pick your red card, if they do then you get the green card. Collect 7 green cards and you win!

Xrundel=) and I decided to play on a team since neither of us had ever played the game before.



We got how to play the game down during the first round and actually won the second round!
These are the green cards we had collected.


After the game playing it was time to head home. It had been a long night and I was beat.

That's all for now Mom. I'll update again soon.

Hi Mom!
I'm sorry we haven't been able to update you on my travels here in Fort Kent for a while.

Last Monday (March 1st) we went on a trip to Presque Isle, Maine. This place is really the closest thing to a city way up here unless you cross over into Canada!

Here are some pictures of us on the road.

When there isn't snow on the ground most of these fields are used to grow potatoes.


The views even from the road were great


It was a very long road!


Here we were stopped for about 10 minutes while they were doing road construction.


There are solar powered animal crossing signs all over the road! Though I didn't actually see any animals crossing.


Someone had a television on top of their mailbox!


We also saw a house with trees growing in through the porch. Now that's what I call a tree house!