Travelog for: Bobbie

Hello guys!
This is my last entry from Vienna, as I'm going to leave today, I'm really curious about my trip . I hope I'm going to meet lots of interesting people and TVs and -who knows - maybe some nice male insect?
Anyway, I think it's going to be a  great experience, well then, bye bye Austria

Wow!  That sure was a long trip!  Really bumpy and breezy but I'm glad I finally made it!

Rachael told me that she feels really bad about not being able to update my log until now.  Her camera's been broken, and she finally got a new one.  Yay!  That means lots and lots of picture taking.  She's only had a new and working camera for a few days, but she's already taken over 300 hundred pictures! 

And tomorrow she's promised to take even more since we're going to the beach!  Yay!  I can't wait to go the beach.  She said we're going to go snorkeling and maybe even try surfing!  I can't wait!

Those two big dogs I'm pictured with are Rachael's golden retrievers and their names are Loki and Cyndir.  They seem nice.  I hope we can become real good friends!


I made two other friends too and their names are Hedgie and Josh.  They're in the picture with me.

Here are some pictures Rachael took earlier.  She's still figuring out how to do the whole upload thing.  Let's see how well she did!

This is me (of course!) with Josh and Hedgie sitting with Cyndir.  She was so friendly, she didn't want to stop cuddling with us!


Here I am hiding in their (Rachael & her hubby's) white Christmas Tree...


And here I am in the Christmas Tree with Hedgie and Josh.  Can you see me?


And here we all are wishing everyone Happy Holidays! (Even though it's after Christmas, we're all still filled with lots and lots of Holiday spirit!  No one's quite ready to let it go just yet!)


Earlier Rachael made her favorite-ist thing to eat in the whole world!  Can you guess what it is?  I had some too and it was absolutely delicious!


If you said Mac & Cheese, then you were right!  Bobbie, Josh, and I all helped her make it!


After a nice long day of hanging out in the Christmas Tree, playing with Loki and Cyndir, and having some yummy mac & cheese, it's now my bedtime.  I can't wait until tomorrow when we finally get to go to the beach!


Good night everyone!

Dear Mommy,
Its been a long trip, but I've arrived safe and sound! What a surprise, I came out to meet lots of toyvoyagers. There's Argoyle, Resi, Bally, Cerise, and two pandas I found downstairs. They had been left in the free pile and were very lonely so we explained to them about toyvoyaging. They said they'd be very excited to try it!

First we had to give them a bath though.

They came out all nice and clean.

It was also sadly time ot bid farewell to Resi. She was ready to move onto her next host. Maybe we'll meet again one day, you never know!

More soon, I'm sure we'll have lots of fun adventures!
Bobbie

Dear Mommy,
Jayme explained it has been very rainy lately, but its a good thing. The island did not get enough rain last year and they almost went into water rationing! But we were able to go to a playground during a break in the rain. It was very neat. Here's the playground up top.

And then look at this slide! Its huge! Very steep too. Jayme went down it with the children, but I hid in her purse because I was scared!

They also had a neat rope thing to climb on.

And us toyvoyagers played on the teeter totter.

What a nice break out of the house! I hope it doesn't rain so we can do another update soon.
Bobbie

Dear Mommy,
Jayme says she's trying to get in shape and exercise more. She's got up at 4:30am to go swimming and she's been trying to walk on the days she doesn't swim. I think she's a bit nuts. Swimming at 5am? Yikes! Anyway, we got to benefit from her fitness kick. We took a very long walk (45 minutes each way!) to a place called Futenma Shrine. Shrine's are very important in Japanese culture. People come to them to ask for luck for the upcoming year on New Year's and they are VERY crowded! They also come on other special days. We got there very early today (around 8am) and no one was there besides the people who tend to the shrine. Futenma Shrine is one of Okinawa's 7 Sacred Shrines.

Here's the view of it from the street.

There was a very pretty small fountain type area.

And here is the shrine's shisa. Did I tell you about shisa before? They are traditional Okinawan culture (actually taken from Chinese culture).  Shisa protect a place against spirits and are found on almost all homes and businesses on Okinawa. In fact, Jayme's apartment building even has one! She says the thing she'll miss most about Okinawa is probably the Shisa. Some of them are very cute. This one is rather intimidating. You can tell its a female shisa because its mouth is open. Shisa always come in pairs, male and female. A female has its mouth open to allow the good spirits through. A male has its mouth closed to capture the evil spirits.

And here is a closer up view of the shrine

What a lovely walk! I hope we'll have more to update about soon!
Bobbie

Dear Mommy,
The weather has been horrible here! All rainy and icky. Jayme says she's starting to miss the sun, but it is the rainy season and they really need the rain. Last year they didn't get enough rain and almost had to go to water rationing. Since the rain didn't let up we decided to head to an indoor area for the kids to run and play a bit. Jayme said she may go a bit nuts if we didn't get some time out of the house. This area was very neat. It's called the Wonder Museum and has lots of hands on stuff for kids. Here you can see the staircase and the size of the museum. Those ball things go up and down and contract then get big again.

And they had fun little activities like this one where you turn the handle to make the pictures turn so they all become a blur.

Downstairs they had things like these stepping stones where you went from one log to the next and learned to count.

We also got to see a very cool bug exhibit. Jayme said not to worry that they wouldn't pin me, so I enjoyed looking at the butterflies.

There was an area where we got to learn about water and planets and things.

And us TVs got in on the playing fun with this little pin thing. You push on one side and the imprint comes out on the other!

We had lots of fun, hopefully the weather gets better soon!
Bobbie

Mommy,
Today we went to a place called Camp Zanpa.  The weather stopped raining for about an hour so we could go for a walk. We took a long, long walk. There are many memorials here for the people who perished during World War II

And here is the coastline we walked along.

We played some on the rocks here, they're all volcanic rocks as many of the rocks on Okinawa are.

And finally at the end of our walk we walked by the largest Shisa on the island. Can you see us tvs at all by the foot of us?

Here's a close up of me and the shisa.

I hope the rain lets up soon mommy!
Bobbie

The weather finally changed and we were able to really get out and about! We decided to go to the zoo. Jayme says the children really like it and it wears them out. So off we went to the Okinawa Zoo. Apparently lots of people had the same idea we did... see all those children? They were part of preschool groups here to visit the zoo!

Our first stop inside was the reptile building, this snake is called a Habu. There are many of these snakes on Okinawa and you have to be very careful because they are very poisonious.

From there we stopped to ride on some toys, don't they look fun? The children really liked them.

We could also see another sign for the Okinawa Zoo here.

We found some hippos further along. They're out of the water waiting for their lunch.

We also found an anteater which made me a bit nervous.

The lion must've also been waiting for her lunch, she was very restless.

All the trees around the park are labeled, Jayme said this one always makes her smile a bit.

We also got to see the giraffes

And the elephants!

We had quite a day. Hopefully the weather stays nice and we'll go on more adventures soon!
Bobbie

Today we went to Shuri (or Shurijo) Castle. It is the main castle on Okinawa, and the most famous. It is the seat of the king of the Ryukyan Island chain. Of course since the late 1800s the Ryukyan Islands have been owned by Japan and there has been no sitting king. It has been destroyed and rebuilt 5 times in its history, most recently during World War II. First of course we had to drive there.

Here is the first gate we entered to the castle.

This is a view down at where we walked. The city you see is Naha, the capital of Okinawa.

Here is the entrance to the palace grounds.

And this is the palace itself!

Jayme didn't have time for individual pictures, it was very busy, but this is the throne room.

After we left the palace we were able to walk the grounds and found a shrine.

More updates soon I'm sure!
Bobbie

Dear Mommy,
Today it was rainy yet again so we decided to take the kids to an indoor play area.

This one is in a department store. There are many of them around. Its very nice because children are able to play for a half hour or so for only a few dollars. They're perfect for rainy days. Even us tvs got in on the fun a bit. We found a fire truck to drive.

And we also went in the play structure for a bit.

Afterwards we rested with Jayme. Isn't this wonderful? They happen to have these massage chairs in this play area. Its small enough you can see the children while you relax a bit. Perfect!

On the way home we stopped to get some McDonald's. Yum!

More updates soon!
Bobbie

Dear Mommy,
It has been rainy rainy rainy! Today we tried to go for a walk on the beach, but two things went wrong. First, do you see how bad the sky looks? It started sprinkling...then down pouring! Second, there was a festival of some sort going on the beach! They had a band there playing and all. Jayme says she didn't know what it was for, but it sure looked fun.

So we gave up and instead went for some more indoor exercise. We arrived in this parking garage type area. Hmm. Here's the entrance sign. Jayme says we're going to the playground....


We took a ride in the car.

They also had a small area that was netted all around with fans blowing balloons around. Jayme said the kids really love it.



More updates to come soon, I promise!
Bobbie

Dear Mommy,
The weather outside is still rather icky, so today we went to a place that is kind of indoors. Its the Okinawa aquarium. I say kind of indoors because while the aquarium itself is inside, most of it is lit by natural light and it has a large park to walk around outside. Unfortunately we didn't get to do the park today, but we had fun at the aquarium. On the way to the aquarium we stopped for a quick lunch near a bridge. Here's the bridge.

And here's the lunch. Yum! Jayme said these boxes are called bento boxes. Some of them can get very artistic, and usually they have some rice in them but Jayme says she doesn't like cold rice so she improvises.

Finally we arrived at the aquarium. Here I am at the entrance. Jayme says that statue is of a whale shark (full size) and I'll get to see one soon!

We went down into the aquarium entrance hall and could see there was a dolphin show going on. You can see the weather doesn't look nice at all.

Finally we made it inside. We stopped to see the fish. This is the largest live coral reef in the world that's lit only with natural light.

We saw some neat fish!

And even spotted a sea turtle!

Here's another view of the tank, it has about 5 viewing areas.

From there we walked down a long dark hallway to see some other small fish exhibits. Unfortunately its dark enough down here that pictures don't come out But we got to see some neat fish. Then we moved on to the show piece item of the aquarium, the whale sharks! This is the 2nd largest tank in the world, and the largest view-screen in the world. Here is me and the whale sharks.

They weren't behaving very well today for pictures. Jayme says usually they swim pretty serenly around, but today they were sticking to the top. We think it may've been almost feeding time, but we never saw them get fed.

Near the whale sharks is a place to eat and watch the sharks swim. We couldn't get a seat near the windows, but we stopped to have icecream anyway.

We went to the gift store then went on out. A dolphin show was about to start so we decided to stop by and see it. Here I am at the show.

The dolphins did some neat tricks.


After that it was looking really rainy and the kids were getting tired so we decided to head home. But we had lots of fun! Another update soon.
Bobbie

Today was Jayme's birthday! We had a small party. Here I am at the start of it relaxing with a strawberry daquiri.

We helped decorate, does it look nice?

We also put the candles on the cake!


We sang to Jayme and she blew out the candles and we all got to eat cake. We also played some wii and just hung out. It was a nice relaxing party.
Bobbie

Dear Mommy,
We've been very busy! Jayme has been trying to prepare for Easter. We should have lots of pictures of that this weekend! She said we're even dying eggs. hmm, I wonder what that's like? In the mean time we were all dying for some fresh air so we walked to a playground. There are big rocks like this one all over Okinawa, we took a little break on one.

We also found a nice statue.

And finally the playground!

We toys wanted to have fun too so I took a break to ride a whale.

And play on the monkey bars.

I'll have more updates soon I promise!
Bobbie