friend.

TOMODACHI.

I have failed to pick up many new Japanese phrases while I was underway. This is a new word for me and one that won't be forgotten.

Tomodachi is "friend" in Japanese. Currently, we are supporting Operation Tomodachi as is much of the Navy and all the forces in this area of this world. How incredible that within only a couple generations we have gone from enemies to friends. Not just allies or neighbors, they are our friends. I am loving this country and the concept. I hope we hold onto this word and ensure that our friends successfully recover from the recent disaster.

job.

This is my job.

I LOVE days when I forget that this wasn’t anywhere in my life plan…

rules.

What about breaking the rules is just so fun?

assimilation.

Dear Friends & Family,

You may not recognize me the next time you see me. Check out my new ride (seen below). I practically am a local now. You can hardly tell the difference between me and my Japanese neighbors.

Sincerely,

The Only Blonde in the Neighborhood

fighter.

"I’m not a fighter. I usually smile and then go into my room and cry my eyes out." - Carol Diahann Johnson

Clearly, Carol was talking about me when she said this.

My mom is awesome and pretty much my hero. My family harasses us that we are too much alike. I would describe us as becoming the same person (rather me becoming her) with the key (rather important) difference being that she is far less emotional (sensitive) than I am. Maybe she was born like this, or maybe she has had 28 more years to practice.... either way, I have not picked up on this trait. I hope that one day I can learn to be more like her in this regard... passionate and driven without letting my emotions get the best of me.

Until I figure this out, I will stick to faking it. Outside I will smile and put up a tough front...save those tears for those who love me anyways, crazy emotions and all.

reminders.

(Back to today.)

Now that I am caught up to posting what I had jotted down while we were gone, I find myself thinking about what I missed, what has meant the most to me so far. I feel like I have been here so long and yet so short a time.... ten weeks have passed in the blink of an eye...

I expected to come and be slightly miserable and in a hurry to get home and through the next four and a half years. What I have gotten could not be further from that. I never expected that I would end up in the middle of a response to one of the worst disasters of our time. The Admiral came to visit our crew today... he talked about how this is history in the making.... not in the good way, but in the way that this disaster will forever shape Japan and much of the world.

He talked to our crew not because he had to but because he wanted to remind them that the work they have been doing is important and truly made a difference. He was on board maybe an hour... such a small thing but such a large gesture. This showed me what a good thing it can be to be reminded that your work is important...that you are helping to accomplish something worthwhile. I spent my whole life thus far chasing a goal to do something where I could make a difference and help others...what a great reminder today was that you can help in all sorts of ways, even when you least expect to...

I may not be doing anything special on my own, but I know that the combined efforts of all of us out here made a difference to at least some people. And THAT makes it all worth the effort. 

Turns out the things I am finding that I most want to hold onto from this experience are not what I am doing, but what I am learning. Lesson today: Remind the people you work with that they and the work they do is important. This goes a long way to make tough days less painful and worth the trouble.

christmas.

Today (Saturday) I got my furniture. It was like having Christmas in April. This is quite the event for me, having made my first major independent purchase and now seeing the fruits of it. Life in my apt is still a bit of a disaster.... pics to come upon organization!!

homecoming.

Home at last. Well at least temporarily. (On Friday.)

I never thought I would be so pumped about just a couple days to spend in my little Japanese apartment alone. After the past few weeks of ups and downs with work and the world, a few hours of peace was just what i needed. 

Alone-time is not something I often look for...this weekend I relished in it.

learning.

The past few weeks have taught me just how much there is that I do not know.... people, life, and especially job.  And, surprisingly, I am completely ok with it. This is like being in school everyday, with all labs, and no final exam periods.  Everyday is a new task and a new goal to accomplish. All of it is hands on; just jump in and learn it. And the best part is that I know that I will not have to sit down for hours to fill out engineering paper and bluebooks.

Maybe I have found the type of learning I should have been doing all along….

prayer.

I have the best Granny out there. Fact. 

I love my grandparents dearly. While at Auburn, I was lucky enough to only be a couple hours away and able to see them pretty frequently. Granny was often my “second parent” at Auburn parent events. From Japan I no longer have that luxury. Luckily, Granny is quite email-savvy.  Last week, while I was just beginning to recover from the previously mentioned plague, she emailed me telling me that she and her friends at church are praying for me. 

Such a little thing can mean so much and come just when you need to hear it the most….

the plague.

Getting sick on a ship is like being sick in the dorms; everyone looks at you like you are carry the plague and might bring the end to life as we know it. Thanks a lot to my defective immune system.

replenish.

It is sometimes hard to explain what all we were doing to help the relief efforts while sitting off the coast. This tells a little of what we were working to accomplish... I am lucky to get to work with such great people who show such an awesome commitment to what they do and helping those in need...

 just another day working off the coast of japan.

education.

They don’t teach you how to deal with this stuff in school….

voluntary evacuations were put into place for family members in Yokosuka who wanted to return to the states after the earthquake hit due to the potential danger from the nuclear disaster. Whether or not there was an immediate danger, the potential and the discussion caused quite a panicky sentiment. People were far more worried about their families (understandably so) than their jobs, and family members just wanted their spouses home to help deal with everything. This is quite a change from being 22 in a college town where the biggest concern is who's planning next week's tailgate...

I am finding that my gradual education in the Navy is so much more than technical knowledge; it's how you help people, knowing where to find the answers you don't know. There are so many things to consider when you start working with all different people: single, married, kids, no kids, spouse who is from another country, young, old, loving life, hating life.... I never considered all the aspects that must be thought about when making decisions and talking with people. Everyone has something different that makes them tick. This sure is far from just a nine to five j.o.b.

precautions.

Apparently when there is a nuclear disaster in your vicinity, people start to freak out a little. This can be the only explanation for me carrying around my own personal gas mask on my hip and a dosimeter on my wrist.... and let me tell you, these were not a cute accessories. This is what I had to carry around as we went through waters that possibly were contaminated. We also had riders who test our air for radiation every hour for a couple weeks following the earthquake.... at least I know the Navy was looking out....no worries....completely safe levels the entire time.

blessings.

I did not quite realize the magnitude of the disaster that struck Japan until the next day. It took seeing the news and word to come our way from big Navy before we really understood what had happened. Since we were out away from land already, we did not feel the tremors when it struck.

I had emails from my family and friends immediately checking on me before I even knew that it was more than just a standard, we have them all the time, Japanese earthquake. Then, when I finally did get to send out an update, I got the most encouraging messages back. I got emails back even from people I hadn’t emailed initially. It never ceases to amaze me how much the people you love can help you to get through long days.  I am so blessed that I have such amazing people in my life.

If you are in this group of people, I will never be able to thank you enough for the encouraging thoughts, messages, and prayers.

generosity.

This restores my faith in mankind. Amongst corruption, cynicism, and anger, there are still truly good and generous people out there…. People will step up and amaze you when you aren’t looking.

devastation.

I have seen so many different disasters on the news. It seems like every year there is at least one major disaster around the world that draws international attention. There are relief funds put in place, people donate, feel like good people, and move on with their day. It usually falls under the attitude that it’s not my country; I did my part; let’s move on.

I don’t know that I will ever watch a disaster news story quite the same again. Off the coast of Japan, I watched debris, trash, and whole trees float past us. What struck me the most, however, were the life rafts and fishing boats that we had to maneuver around. There were tons of life rafts, pieces of wood tied together in an attempt to serve as a raft, and whole fishing boats that were abandoned, aimlessly floating. I couldn’t help but wonder each time we passed one how many people started out in that raft. We ensured there were no people in them as we passed; each time I silently prayed for there to be someone still in them. That would have been just one more person who survived this tragedy.

Sadly, the only person we recovered did not survive the experience. It was demoralizing to recover the remains of someone, but we did find solace in the fact that we could provide closure to at least one Japanese family. We returned the remains to the Japanese government, so they could give them to the family to have a proper burial.  As terrible as it was to think about this, I know that was well worth the search efforts…to have made a difference to at least one family.

The helicopter crew from our ship patrolled the waters closer to land where we could not go and scanned the shoreline. One of them told me he didn’t think he could find a word to describe what they saw on the ground, that devastation didn’t begin to cover it.

This has reminded me just how short life can be…. March 11^th began as a beautiful sunny day in Japan…by noon the day was as dark as they come.

blog backlog.

I have been underway the past few weeks. What was initially scheduled to be a normal underway with planned exercises quickly changed into a day-by-day mission after the earthquake and subsequent tsunami hit Japan. My ship participated in the search & rescue and relief efforts from day one because we were in such close proximity.

I was not able to blog while gone, but I had made sure to take note of some of the things that impacted me the greatest. I will try to share some pieces of what it was like from my perspective.  There were definitely highs and lows to the experience of being around this disaster and just underway in general.  I share this with no claim to be an expert and surely not claiming to have done anything special; I just wanted to keep track of what it was like keeping up with and trying to aid in the disaster relief from this side of the world.