Starting to Feel Like Home?

Tuesday September 21:  This was a pretty boring day for me.  Brian went to work, and I stayed at the hotel with not a lot to do.  When Brian got back to the hotel, we went to the store to pick up a few things, mainly for the next day because we had an orientation to go to.

Wednesday September 22:  At 6:45 on Wednesday morning, Brian and I boarded a shuttle bus to go to the “Newcomer’s Orientation.”  It only took about 5 minutes to get to the building (which is about how long it takes to get anywhere on base) and when we went inside, we found that we were about the only people in there.  The orientation wasn’t set to start until 7:20 though, so we were plenty early.  Mostly during the orientation, people talked about the services available on base as well as the locations of the bases on the islands.  We found out some cool things to do, like take a ferry out to an island and get an island tour. 

There were many safety regulations that had to be read off as well.  It is pretty strict on Okinawa and some of the rules make no sense at all.  One of which is about driving:  There is a concept called “white lining” which is when a motorcycle, moped, or bicycle drives along the white lines on the road between cars.  If a car driver switches lanes or opens their door and a white liner gets into a wreck because of it, it is the car drivers fault.  Also, if an American gets into an accident with a native, it is always the American’s fault, no matter the circumstances.

Once the orientation was over, we walked down the road to get some lunch, but we had to move quickly because I was going to take my driver’s license test at 2:00.  It is a bit weird because I was able to take my test before Brian (who still hasn’t been able to take his yet).  Brian says the logic in that is that his higher up’s are putting pressure on him to drive safely and that it is a big deal to have his license, therefore, he puts that pressure on me so I will be a safer driver too.  Anyways, I took my test after not studying much at all, and thankfully passed (barely!).  We had to walk to another building so I could actually get my license though.  After receiving my license, we walked yet again to another building to see about getting our first shipment of belongings delivered since we were moving into our apartment on Friday.  We were a bit frustrated with the lady helping us and her attitude towards her job.  We were both dripping sweat from walking in 90 degree heat and were not looking for comedy or attitude!

After finishing up that business and getting a delivery date of Saturday, we proceeded on with our errands for the day.  Brian had to pick up a few things for his uniform, after which we gave up walking and got a taxi (boy, we couldn’t wait until we had a car).  There were a couple more stops, and then we were thankfully done with our errands for the day.  I had been enquiring about a car with a lady, and was set to buy it on Wednesday evening.  By the time we got back to the hotel though, it was too late to go to the vehicle registration and insurance buildings to make the title changes, so instead she brought the car to the hotel so I could look at it and drive it around.  We set up a time to meet the next day to make the changes.

Thursday September 23: Thursday morning started out pretty boring, Brian was at work and I was dilly-dallying on the computer (since we finally got internet in our hotel room).  A little before lunch time, Brian came home from work because he had to be with me when we got the car.  At 1:00, the lady came to pick me and Brian up to go and make the title changes for the car.  We should have guessed it, but there were unforeseen problems ahead for us.  When we got to the vehicle registration building, we were informed by a very rude and unhelpful lady that since Brian didn’t have his license yet; he had to have a waiver signed by his Commanding Officer stating that we could buy the car without him having his license.  Luckily, this wasn’t too hard a task once we got to his office.  Once this was done, things went very smoothly and about 30 minutes later, we had a car!

Friday was the day we were able to move into our apartment, but we had the option to pick our keys up early.  Right when we got the car, it was within the time frame to get our keys early, so we decided to do that.  I drove (on the opposite side of the road) to get our keys, and then we went to check out our place since we had never seen the inside of it!  The military provided furniture for us and they had moved it in that day.  We were very pleased with the set up and condition of our apartment!  We could tell already that we would have so much more space than we had in our apartment in North Carolina.

Friday September 24:  Today was move in day!!!  We were both up pretty early because of our excitement!  Once we packed everything up into our suitcases and bags (we always accumulate so much stuff) and squeezed it into the car, we were off to our apartment.  Moving in today went very quickly because we didn’t have much stuff at all to actually move in.  Brian had the day off since we were moving in, so we went shopping around a little and checked some things out.   We couldn’t go grocery shopping yet because on Saturday there was a scheduled power outage, so all of our refrigerated items would be ruined; we were just better off not having any food in our place for another day.

While shopping, we went to the Air Force Base, Kadena on the island.  This base has the second largest PX in the world.  A PX is a store that has basically everything, a Wal-Mart for the military.  We were both very fascinated with its enormity.  The coolest part of the store was at the beginning.  When you walk in, there are a few stores and vendors as well as a food court, but the main store is upstairs.  There is an escalator and right beside that, there is a pulley that will bring your shopping cart upstairs!  I had never seen anything like this before and thought it was the coolest thing ever.

Saturday September 25: Yet again on Saturday, I woke up pretty early because of my excitement about seeing some of our things for the first time in a month!  This was the smaller shipment of things out of the two shipments, but it was mainly my stuff because of the kitchen supplies.  There was a large window in which the movers could have come, but luckily they arrived around 8:30.  There were about 5 natives unloading our boxes, and I was quite entertained by them.  I thought they looked like Samurais because of the way they were jumping on and off the truck bed.  They had all of our boxes in the house in 10 minutes and then the fun began.

We started opening boxes and unwrapping all of our things.  The packers in NC wrapped every little thing up in paper so it wouldn’t break; therefore we had mountains of paper left when we finished unpacking our things.  This kept us both busy for probably three hours, with the unpacking and organizing of our things.

Saturday was a planned power outage day for the area we live in because a new Naval Hospital is being built on the island.  The outage began a little after 8 in the morning and unfortunately lasted until 9:30 at night.  The power was supposed to come back on at 6 in the evening, but that sure didn’t happen.  We weren’t sure what to expect with the power being out and it being so hot here in Okinawa.  Much to our surprise, it never got hot in the house.  We opened the windows about 5 in the evening, but that was only because it felt so nice outside.  We had bought a cooler the day before to put our few refrigerated items in so they wouldn’t get ruined and that worked very nicely.  I was glad that we had unpacking to do that day so that we were able to keep busy while the power was out for a while anyways.

Sunday September 26:  Sunday was a boring and restful day.  Nothing too huge happened on Sunday besides a very large grocery shopping trip.  It was time for us to stock up in our pantry and fridge, and stock up we did!!  Our place is really starting to feel like home, especially after I made our first home cooked dinner of baked spaghetti!  Of course, it won’t REALLY be home for Brian until he has his precious TV back in his possession…

Making Progress

Monday September 20: When Brian’s alarm went off on Monday morning, there were nervous feelings in the air.  He had to check in wearing his Alpha uniform this morning and everything had to be just perfect on it.  His Staff Sergeant came to pick him up at 7:30 in the morning.  We were set to have a meeting with housing at 9:00 that morning, and they were just going to come back and pick me up before the meeting so I could be involved.  Time ticked on and finally a little after 9, I got a text message from Brian saying that we would be living on base at Camp Foster.  There had been some question as to whether we could live on base or not because the base Brian will be working on, Camp Kinser, had no vacancies in their housing.  Therefore, we were told we might have to find a place off base to live.  I don’t think anyone was too keen on that idea, it would have been so much more added stress to us that we just didn’t want to deal with.  Saying this, I was very relieved that we would be living on base!

Around lunch time, I was picked up by Brian and his Staff Sgt. to go eat lunch and then we were able to pick between two houses on Camp Foster to live in.

http://www.marines.mil/unit/mcbjapan/Pages/LivingOki/Housing.aspx

That's the website I will refer to (scroll to the very bottom and you will see pictures and floor plans).  The first place we looked at was a duplex.  It didn't look exactly like the picture though, it was only one story.  This one we got the key to, so we could look inside.  It was pretty nice; I was sold at that point.  There were hardwood floors, or fake hardwood.  The living room was a nice size and the kitchen was kind of small, but definitely bigger than our old one!  It had a dishwasher (not named Laura).  There was a washer and dryer already in it, which I thought we were going to have to buy our own, so that's nice.  There was a toilet, only a toilet off the side of the wash room.  Then there was a full bathroom and two bedrooms, as well as quite a few closets.  The rooms were carpeted I think.  Then there was a screened in porch and a semi-nice view.  It was only to the city, not the ocean which I obviously would have loved, and there was a shed out back.  We have to do our own yard work regardless.

The second one was in a multiplex thing.  And it actually looks like the picture, except I think there are about 6 apartments in the building.  We could only look through the windows of this one because they were cleaning today.  And the only window we were able to look through was the front living room window.  From what we could see, it looked much newer than the duplex.  It was carpeted, I could see that there was a window from the kitchen looking into the living room, and I could also see the washer and dryer in there.  In the back there is a porch area, not screened in, but there is a privacy cement divider thing that is encircling the whole area, if that makes sense.  There will still be two bedrooms and the Staff Sgt. said there is one bathroom upstairs and then a half bath probably downstairs near the kitchen.

So, we decided on the multiplex because it was closer than the other one to where Brian will work, it looked newer, and it would have been hit or miss with the duplex neighbor, if they were crappy then it really would have sucked.  It won't suck as bad in the multiplex we don't think.  We should be moving in on Friday.

This Wednesday we have to go to a Newcomers meeting where they will give lots of information about the island.  We should also be getting our licenses soon as well as purchasing cars so that we will have more freedom to explore our new home without the hassle of taxis!!

More Traveling...

Thursday, September 16: At 3:00 in the morning, I made my last American phone call home and we got ready to move down closer to our gate.  There were tons of people standing and sitting around the gate and I found myself wondering how in the world all these people would fit onto one plane?!  When it was our turn to board the plane, I found out how everyone would fit onto the plane.  This was a monster of a plane!  There were 2 seats on each side of the plane and then 3 seats in the middle, and about 40 rows total like this.

Once everyone was seated and ready for take-off, the pilot made an announcement that we would have to wait about 45 minutes before we took off because there were some winds that would make us go faster and we could only get to our first stop so early.  During this waiting period, I fell asleep and didn’t wake up again until we began driving down the runway, and then I fell asleep again for about 4 more hours.  I was very glad that I found sleep easily, which I guess is no surprise after the crazy day I had.  When I woke up, “The Proposal” was playing on the TV’s so I watched that and fell in and out of sleep again.  When there was only an hour and a half left of our nine and a half hour flight, we were served lunch.  I got beef tips, mashed potatoes and gravy, carrots, salad and chocolate cake.  I could say it was pretty good for airplane food! 

Friday September 17: When I knew we were very close to landing, I kept checking out the window to see if there was anything down below besides water.  I was very excited to catch my first glimpse of Japan when I opened my window one time, and luckily I was able to take a picture before the scene left my view.  Our first stop was in Yokota, Japan on a military base.  When we arrived here, the local time was about 6 in the morning.  We had a 3 hour layover which was filled with crazy kids running around and people trying to stretch out their legs.  When we were able to board again, we only had an hour flight before our next stop.  I fell asleep during this flight and woke up to the plane descending.  Apparently I was so out of it that Brian had to lift my seat up when we were descending.  I had terrible ear aches when I did wake up, probably because I wasn’t able to pop my ears when we started going down towards the land.

At this stop in Iwakuni, Japan, we did not get off the plane because it was such a short layover.  Therefore, in about an hour and a half we were off again to our final destination!  This was just slightly over an hour long flight, and when we were landing there were some rain storms in the area.  This made for a quite shaky landing which was very unsettling for me.  I think it is safe to say that I had white knuckles until we were safely on the ground!  Getting off the plane took a little time because we all had to get on shuttles which took us to the building where our baggage was.  Once we got to the building, we had to go through a check-in where they checked Brian’s orders and stamped my passport.

We walked downstairs to wait for our luggage to come around and once that was done, we went to the line of people walking out of the building.  A man was standing in the doorway with a microphone.  He asked for Brian’s name and rank and announced it so that our sponsor would know we were there and ready to be picked up.  Our sponsor came forward and then we took off for his car.  Our first line of duty was to check in at our hotel.  On the ride to the hotel, I was very quiet as I was taking in all of the scenery. 

There are many differences, but at the same time many similarities between Okinawa and America.  One of the most obvious differences would be the driving on the opposite side of the road and sitting on the opposite side of the car to drive.  There are many of the same trees here on the island as well as bushes and flowers.  There are many high rise buildings since there isn’t much space on the island for growth.   As I said to Brian, it is weird being able to see the actual buildings and apartments that I have been looking at pictures of for months now.

A random and interesting fact that the sponsor told us while he was driving is that they make their cement from crushed coral and some other materials.  Because of this, when it rains, the cement can get mushy causing the tires to spend when you try to take off on the road.

After we checked in at the hotel and dropped our luggage in our room, Brian had to go and check in to let people know he made it to Okinawa.  Once this was done, we tried to go and purchase cell phones so his work could reach him if need be and so we would have a way to communicate when we were not with each other.  We were unsuccessful on Friday night, so we went to grab some groceries instead.  I was dead tired at this point, so our sponsor dropped us off at our hotel at this point.  I was in bed by 7 that night and slept for about 12 hours straight!

Saturday September 18: By the time I woke up on Saturday morning, Brian had gone and bought a couple calling cards from a vending machine in the hotel.  Apparently he had been trying to figure out how to get them to work for an hour already.  Once he did get them working, I was able to call home for the first time!  I found this to be challenging right away as no one answered the phone the first three times I called home.  I did eventually find a good time to call home though when everyone is there to talk to!  I already had it in my head that it would be a challenge to communicate with family and friends back home because of the time change, but I think I can say that it isn’t as challenging as I had imagined it to be.  There are still plenty of hours where we are all awake at the same time on different sides of the world.

Later on Saturday, before we went off on our adventures, we stopped by the Macaroni Grill to eat lunch.  This restaurant is located right beside our hotel.  It was only my second time eating there, Brian’s first and we both were quite pleased with the food and especially the service.  We had a local lady as our waitress and she tended to our every need like it was no problem, this was nothing like the service you get in the states!  Once we finished eating and took our leftovers back to our hotel room, it was time for us to try and get our cell phones again.  The hotel we are staying at, Westpac Lodging, has a shuttle that takes its customers around to destinations on base.  The shuttle took us to the mini mall that the cell phone store was at and much to our surprise; our cell phones were ready to be picked up. 

There was an auction going on a couple stores down, so we sat in on that.  There were some interesting pieces that we saw, some vases, pictures, jewelry, and Brian’s personal favorite was the elephant tusks that were engraved for decoration.  He wasn’t able to buy one though because they weren’t auctioned off during the time we were there.  After sitting in the auction room for a bit, we walked around to see what the other stores had to offer.  There was a wine and liquor store in the area, so we looked in there.  In Okinawa, they have Habu Sake which is a dark liquor that has a rattlesnake at the bottom of the bottle, yes, a rattlesnake!  The lady working in the store told us that the poison from the rattlesnake is good for your body.  They let these bottles sit for 15-20 years before they are sold so the venom can come out of the snake into the liquor.  Brian thought this was the coolest thing ever, but I was definitely ready to take off running as far as I could from that snake in a bottle!!  When we were done looking around at all the shops, we grabbed a taxi to drive us back to the hotel.  Since this was only the second day being in Okinawa, I was still really tired from the time change, so I went to bed pretty early again.

Sunday September 19: Sunday was a pretty lazy day for both me and Brian.  We spent time calling our families and watching episodes of “The Office” for a large portion of the day.  Brian has to get his hair cut every week, so in the afternoon we called a taxi and tried communicating to him that we needed to get to a barber shop off base.  In Jacksonville around Camp Lejeune, there are tons of barber shops off base, so we just assumed it would be the same here.  The first barber shop the taxi driver tried taking us to was closed, but the second one was open.  We walked in and Brian tried telling the guy that he needed to get his hair cut.  The guy just held his hands up making an “x” because he didn’t know enough English to tell us that he could not cut Brian’s hair.  Luckily the taxi was still outside the barber shop, so we hopped back in and he drove us to a barber shop on base.  Though there was a forty minute wait, things went much smoother.

After Brian’s hair cut was done, we got in a taxi again and got dropped off at the Macaroni Grill for dinner; it was just so good we wanted it again!!  We had a really nice dinner and then it was time to walk back over to the hotel.  Like the nights before, we were tired pretty early and Brian had to get up for his first day of work the next morning, so we went on to bed.

Traveling

Sunday September 19, 2010

We have been in Okinawa, Japan for 2 days now; things are quite different and interesting to get used to.  I’ll go back a few days to start at the beginning…

Sunday September 12: After spending 26 wonderful days at home with my family, I left Greensboro at 9:22 in the morning.  It was a pretty sad day for everyone, and as I was hugging my mom one last time and trying to hold back the tears (and not succeeding), she said to me “it’s going to be okay.”  I kept repeating that phrase over and over again when I started to feel sad.

I arrived in Ohio at 1 that afternoon, and visited with Brian’s family for the next few days.  I would probably have to say that my favorite part of the visit was taking walks with his family on a trail through part of their town.  It was very peaceful and reminded me of home.

Wednesday September 15:  (HAPPY 25 BIRTHDAY BRIAN!!!)

Our first flight on our long trip started in Dayton, Ohio.  Once we got to the airport, we went to check in.  As things usually go with Brian and me, there was one rather large glitch…the lady only saw our flight going from Dayton to Seattle.  She couldn’t see in the system where there was a plane to take us to Okinawa.  Brian was confident that he could figure things out once we got to Seattle, so there we left, flying by the seat of our pants! 

After saying bye to his mom, we headed for our gate, and our plane left at about 8:45 in the morning.  This was just a short flight over to Chicago, Illinois.  Once we got to Chicago, we had to ride a shuttle bus over to our next terminal.  While on the shuttle, a Navy Officer sat down beside us, turns out he had done a tour in Okinawa and visited for work quite often.  It’s a small world, right?!  He talked to us for a while about Okinawa, things we should do and look out for as well as some of the basic language.

Just as soon as we got to our next gate, our plane started boarding, we barely had time to run to the bathroom and grab a bite to eat!  This was a much larger plane than I had ever been on before.  It seated 3 people on each side of the plane.  I was seated on the very last row, and thankfully in the aisle seat.  Brian and I weren’t assigned seats together, but it was okay for that flight.

We got to Seattle at 12:30 that afternoon (3:30 our hometown time) and were quite overwhelmed with the enormity of the airport.  We grabbed our luggage and were scrambling to find someone to help us figure out our plane tickets.  Brian went to talk to a lady to ask questions and we found out from her that we would be on a military flight and those don’t leave until the middle of the night, and in fact we wouldn’t even check in with the flight until 10 that night!!  Finding out this news meant that we would have a 16 hour layover in Seattle.  After talking things over with each other, we decided (though we were very tired) that we should take advantage of the fact that we were in Seattle, Washington and try to do a little sight-seeing. 

We found the USO in the airport who could store our luggage for free until our plane left.  This was a really nice area for active duty military and their families.  There was a room for luggage to be stored, an area with tables for eating, a couple computers, couches, a bunk room, a kid/baby room, bathrooms and a shower.  After tagging our luggage and leaving it in the room, we left the airport to see what Seattle was all about.

Finding the metro was challenge enough for us that day, after 30 minutes of searching and help from a couple friendly workers, we finally found it.  We bought our tickets for downtown Seattle and decided that we would eat at the Hard Rock Café, as we were quite ravenous!  When we got off the metro at the downtown station, it was raining which we thought was pretty funny.  When Brian called his mom to tell her we made it to Seattle, she asked if it was raining, and at the time it wasn’t, but I guess Seattle had to show us who was boss!  After eating and buying a t-shirt, we decided to do a little bit of walking to see if we could find anything else neat close by. 

As we turned the corner, we found a fresh market with a bay area right behind it.  The fresh market sold things from fish and octopus to paintings and necklaces.  One of Brian’s favorite things at the fresh market was the king crabs.  He talked about them all the time, but I had never seen one before, and boy was I shocked!  These things were definitely over 1 foot long; I can only imagine how tasty one would have been!!  We kept walking a bit more and discovered that Seattle was a bit, as I like to say, “sketchy.”  Maybe it was just the area of town we were in, but I was definitely ready to get back to the airport.  We were given advice to only carry what we needed out in town; which made me feel a little more unsecure.  When we were making our way out of the area and back to the metro, we walked past a table of guys smoking.  All I have to say is that was definitely not cigarettes they were smoking, and all Brian has to say is that he hopes he doesn’t pop on his drug test from inhaling the fumes!!

Once we got back to the airport after another 40 minute metro ride, we headed back up to the USO area where Brian crashed out in the bunkroom and I hung out on one of the chase lounges.  I decided that I didn’t want to fall asleep yet so that I would be more tired on the plane ride.  I talked with some of the other wives in the room and heard some stories about Okinawa and gathered more advice from them.

Finally at about 9:30, we headed down to get our tickets for the plane ride.  Boy, were we surprised when we saw the line for this!!  We found out later though that we were pretty lucky to only have waited for an hour instead of 2 or 3 hours for our tickets.  We were thankfully assigned seats beside each other.  After getting out tickets, we returned to the USO, but found that it was too crowded for us to even fit into, so we grabbed something to eat and headed to our gate.  We were both dead tired, but tried to stay up and watch some TV shows online.  I wasn’t very successful at staying awake, so we each grabbed a bench and attempted to sleep.  I personally kept waking up every 15-30 minutes, but Brian found steady sleep very easily.

Getting Ready...

We are currently 10 days away from leaving America for our 3 year adventure in Okinawa, Japan.  There are plenty of nervous and excited feelings going around right now.  I think the general concensus is that we are ready to go and get this over with...or get it started...or something like that! All of our belongings were shipped almost a month ago, Brian of course is very ready to be reunited with his beloved 55 inch LED TV.  I am just ready to check out our new living space and start setting things up.  We won't have all of our things back until mid-October, but I'm sure we will be so busy that we won't even notice it.