Like Box Seats for the Red Sox-Yankees World Series (Wednesday)

Today I did three totally different a totally wonderful things (but my camera broke so I have no images to send with….I’m working on fixing it, I am hoping it is just the battery).

1) Toured the Blue Ridge which is 7^th fleet command central and it is a small mobile city. You name it, it is on it! I received two very different tours (due to a small miscommunication, but nothing tragic) and got to meet another Jewish officer who works in the bridge and showed me all the cool bridge stuff.

2) 7^th fleet command chaplain, Captain Lea, drove me to Atsugi Naval Air Base so I could meet up with Chaplain Doug Rosander, my teacher from Newport training this past summer. I got to see him and his wife. I also got to meet other chaplains, one of the RPs, a Jewish chief who worked in weather and one of the Jewish wives, who I had already met at services in Yokosuka, at a lovely lunch at the Atsugi Officer’s Club. After lunch, Chief Katz brought us up to the roof of the weather building to watch the planes land.

It is not just watching planes land, but the 7^th fleet air wing returning from a six month deployment aboard the USS Kitty Hawk which is returning to port at Yokosuka on Friday. The planes fly off the ship first and return home. They fly back in formation and land in this incredible sequence. We had the best seats in the house from atop that building. It was a once-in-a-lifetime moment.

After, I went with Chaplain Rosander and his wife for a tour of the chapel and we just got to spend some time catching up. Being so far from home, just knowing that this person that I know from home was here has been great-getting to actually see the two of themand be together for a bit was really a gift from Chaplain Lea and I am grateful.

3) Dinner with the questioning; And then I met up for dinner with a young man with questions about Judaism. I do not know how to recap the experience. I felt like I had an evening of being a Rabbi, of really being there for this man. I walked away feeling grateful for all the moments in my life prior to now-good and bad-which have shaped me into who I am which allowed me to be someone in someone else’s life at an important moment in a seemingly important way.

Today was a blessing.

I am beat-exhausted and the tiredest girl ever!