Travelog for: Auggie

Today, for the Dutch team, the European Football Championship or Euro 2008 started! Expected to be a difficult game because it was Netherlands vs. Italy and Italy was World Champion Football in 2006... 

I'm getting ready to support the Dutch team together with the Welpies!


And we are singing the Welpies song!
Alle Welpies helpen, we plakken ons wild.
Geluk voor Oranje, heel Holland slaat op tilt.

It's about to begin and I'm so nervous!


This is Marco van Basten, he is the manager of the Dutch national team and previously, he was a football player.


Ooh! The ball is about to enter the goal!


It is a goal for the Dutch team!! 


And another goal! It made me turn a somersault! 


Netherlands won, 3-0 and the goals were scored by Giovanni van Bronckhorst, Wesley Sneijder and Ruud van Nistelrooy.


Congratulations to the Dutch team! Here's the goalkeeper, Edwin van der Sar.


After the game, the whole stadium turned orange and everyone was happy! 

Hello again! Hmm... I have been out quite a few times but due to a broken computer, I lost my photos!  The good thing is, I can see some of the visited places again! 

Here we go, this is close to Jiles' home. Goes has an historical city centre and long time ago Goes was a fortified city. These days, only a few parts of the historical fortifications are left and the places where the city gates used to be are marked with marble stones.

This is me in front of some of the beautiful houses alongside the canal.




This villa is just awesome, it's different from the other houses here.


See the Dutch flag? It is because someone who's living in that house has graduated from secondary school. You can't see on the photo but there is also a schoolbag hanging there!


The canal and in the background the same church as I've visited before! Hmm... there are some people on the other side of the water, I wonder what they are doing! Let's have a closer look......


It seems they are fishing!


The park around here is a popular place for dogs. The dog dirt was a problem, remember the fishing people who were sitting in the grass?
To avoid them getting dirty, people can get free bags here, to clean the dirt their dog left!


Isn't this a beautiful place?


There you can see the geese, too bad they were on the other side of the water and no bridge near!


This building is the secondary school Jiles went to, the name of the school is 'Goese Lyceum'.


This are the same flowers as I've seen at Kinderdijk, water lilies! But I haven't seen so many at one place before!

Hello, it's time to say goodbye!

But before I leave, I show you my new friend here, the garden gnome! He was so hidden that I only met him now!


We have a visitor today, a dog! That means I have seen at least 5 different Earth animals, cats, dinosaurs, geese, sheep, ducks and a dog. A life mission completed!
He helped me in my travelbag.



Bye Auggie, I wish you a safe flight to USA and fun travelling!

I happily arrived to my place and heard giggling outside my package. When it was opened, there were Hugme, Mrs. Beasley, and Shirley Sheep!


They said they'd never seen an alien before! I asked them what state I was in, I didn't know what AP stand for and my host Jayme came in and said I wasn't in the states at all! What?! She said FPO (I THOUGHT that was a funny name for a city!) stands for Fleet Post Office and AP stands for Asian Pacific. It was a US military address!  I'm on a military base in Japan! Wow!

Hugme gave me a hug because he said I looked shocked!


The others told me the first thing we had to do was business related unfortunately. Jayme's little boy was hurt, and we had to go to the hospital so we could make sure he didn't have an infection. Here's Hugme giving him a hug and you can see his poor eye.


Going to the hospital meant going to Camp Lester, location of the military hospital on Okinawa. Here's the sign inside the gate. The flag above means that it's hot outside and to take precautions not to get heat stroke or heat exhaustion.



And here I am outside the hospital!


Good news! Jacob's going to be just fine and all he has to do is take benadryl. Jayme said that's really bad news since it makes him hyper, but I bet we'll have lots of fun over the next few days!

Write more soon,
Auggie

Today we took a walk in the largest park on Okinawa. We of course only got to see a small bit. Its so large it has its own water park inside it!




Near the water park area is a wall with many murals of sea creatures.


There was also a xylophone to play on.


Finally we stopped by the beach during part of our walk for a small break.




After our walk we had to go home to rest for awhile

Auggie

Once we were all done with our rest time we went back out again! The first place we went to was the ferris wheel.



The view is a little nicer from my space ship, but still this is pretty good for humans!


I even got to drive a train around!


After that we went to play this weird game called bowling. I wonder why they didn't just walk down and knock the pins over?


Write more soon,
Auggie

Today we went to Kadena Air Base. Near the first gate they have a park like area where you can see some retired planes. Here we are on an F-100 (can you see us on the wing?)


Here I am in front of a F-104


Here we are on the wing of an F-4


And here's an F-15! Jayme's husband wanted to put us in the engine to take the picture, but these old fashioned engines look rather dangerous to me!


Write more soon!
Auggie

We got to go do something VERY neat today. We went to what's called a "Change of Command" ceremony. We weren't supposed to be there, but Jayme let us peek out of her purse. Its essentially a welcome ceremony for the new General of the Airwing and a goodbye to the old General. Okinawa, Japan is home to the US Marine Corps 1st Marine Airwing (or 1stMAW for short).

They bring out all the vehicles for a backdrop for the actual ceremonies.



The band leads the way with the ceremonies.


Followed by the unit Marine Corps flags


Then the Marines finally show up!


And the Japanese, USA, and Marine Corps flag.


There's my hosts husband representing his unit with their guidon (the smaller flag)


Each unit pays their respects as well.


Then it got kind of boring as each CO gave a speech Everyone filed back out in reverse order and we were dismissed.

Hope to write about more adventures soon!
Auggie

Jayme decided the kids needed something FUN today so we went to the zoo! Here we are at the entrance. It looks like they keep fake animals here...?


They had lots of fun stone animals that you could climb on. The kids especially loved the lion and elephant.



To my surprised I got to see some REAL animals! WOW! I suppose that's what they're supposed to keep at a zoo?!
Can you see the hippo?


Here a chimpanzee


I stayed far away from the ostriches, though the giraffe looked nice..


Lazy lion


Ohh and finally an elephant!


How neat! I got to meet many more earth animals today!

Write more soon,
Auggie

What a fun day we had! We went to a place called Camp Zanpa, which is a Japanese park area with a beach and walk along the coast line. Once we were there we found a small feeding zoo type area. You can feed the chickens and the goats. So I got to meet another earth animal, the goat! It was eating some green leafy things. I hope it doesn't think I'm edible..


Once we were done there we took a walk. Jacob pointed out the sun was playing peekaboo.


After walking for awhile we got to look back and where we'd walked from. Do you see the lighthouse in the distance?


Along our walk were many World War II memorials.


There was also this really big rock. It got blown way high up here on top of the cliff by a typhoon!


We headed home and had to say goodbye to Shirley Sheep. Hope she has fun at her next host!


Write more soon,
Auggie

Jayme's been quite busy cleaning house and doing therapy for the boys the last few days so today she took some time out and we had a language lesson!

Finally I learned a 5th way to say hello!... but wait.. Japan is a very confusing country! You say hello different ways depending on the time of day!

So this is how you say hello in the morning!


And this is how you say hello in the afternoon!


And this is how you say hello in the evening!


And this is how you say goodbye


And this is how you say thank you.


And this is how you say I'm sorry.


And most importantly, this is how you say "Where's the toilet?"


I'll write more soon!
Auggie

Today we went to a beach named Araha Beach.


It was very fun! I didn't know digging in the sand could be that interesting!


And I took a break to lounge and soak up some sun rays.



There was a neat play area for children near the beach that looked like a ship according to Jayme. I don't think that thing would even make it as far as the moon though..


Write more soon,
Auggie

Today we got to go to this place called Katsuren Castle. Jayme said it was a UNESCO World Heritage Site and should help me learn more about earth's heritage.

Hmm...here it is. Its a bit of a walk up...


Jayme said this area here was a cave/shrine.


Oh no! More stairs?! They look like they could use a little repair...


And here's the remains of another shrine.


WOW! After all that walking the view from up top is very beautiful!


And here's the view of the lower part of the castle.


Very neat!

Write more soon,
Auggie

Today we decided to take it easy! We started out with a walk. On our walk we found a Shisa about the same size as me and Hugme.

We also walked by the gate to Shurijo Castle, but unfortunately it was closed for the evening.


Once we were done with the walk we went to a play area for the kids so Jayme could relax some. They had a neat room filled with lots of balloons!


Here's some more of the play area.


Interesting way for humans to exhaust their children..

After that we headed home to rest! I'll update again soon.

Auggie

Jayme told me today is to be my last day here in Okinawa. I've learned so much to teach Hank about though! And more about humans in general. Today we went on one last trip to one of the local shrines. It is called Futenma Shrine. On the New Year many people come here to pray for a better year. Jayme says the lines go down the street. But the morning we went, it was rather empty. Isn't it so very beautiful?






There was another Shisa here as well! They're everywhere here...


Once we were all down I got into my envelope to head on home and to teach Hank all about my travels. What a great trip I had though!

Auggie