I Think I'm Turning Japanese

When we were in our temporary lodging, we were grateful to see that we had our very own washer/air dryer right in our room! Other than the load size pictures on the left, I really had no idea what the other buttons did. The instruction manual didn't have any other languages in it, so it wasn't much help. I pretty much just started pushing buttons, and when I opened the lid, water started flowing. I was a little concerned when the first load I did was going for like 4 hours, but hey, nothing overflowed or blew up, and our clothes came out smelling good.

Sometimes it is just weird being in a different country.

Call Me Bond, James Bond

That's right. Now that we've had our licenses for almost a week, we're basically seasoned pros at driving on the left side of the road. Except instead of a tricked out Astin Martin like James Bond might drive, I get to cruise around Okinawa in this sweet ride:

And Spencer gets to drive this beauty (which isn't nearly as ugly as the van, in my opinion):

In actuality, while we haven't made the rookie mistake of diving on the wrong (or normal) side of the road, there are a few other things we've had to get used to. Everything around the steering wheel is opposite too, so we've been accidentally turning on our windshield wipers when we we're trying to make a turn, and turning on our turn signals when we're trying shift into gear. Since I'm still getting used to this whole left side of the road thing, I've been grateful that the fastest speed limit is 60 km (about 37 mph). I wonder how long it will take for that to wear off :)

Decisions, Decisions

I emailed my mom this morning to tell her I could hardly sleep last night. That's not entirely unusual since my belly is getting bigger, but this time that wasn't the only reason. We got our two on-base housing choices yesterday, and I was so torn about choosing where we should live. I was imagining floor plans all night, thinking about where we would put our furniture in each place. We had a little over 24 hours to tell the housing office which house we wanted- if we said "no" to both places, we would have to live off base. Our options were an apartment on the 8th floor of a high rise or a two story unit in a 4 unit multiplex. We didn't see a single other person when we looked at the apartment, and within 10 minutes of going to see the 4-plex, several of the neighbors had come over to introduce themselves and offered any help we might need moving in.

Although we both thought the apartment was nicer, brighter, and bigger, we opted for the 4-plex with friendly neighbors, a small yard, and sidewalks where Sydney will be able to ride her bike. I'm hoping we don't die of asphyxiation from the new paint they put in- it was pretty strong. Plus, there were lots of kids outside. So, here's a quick look at our future home for the next three years:

Entryway. Go straight to go into the living and dining area, or turn left to go into the kitchen. There are also stairs just to the right to go up to the bedrooms.

Laundry/kitchen. We thought it was weird that the washer and dryer were in the kitchen, but hey, at least they were both brand new!

Kitchen- there's a great view of the ocean (or is it the East China Sea?) from that window. That is also the most drawer and cabinet space I have ever had in my life.

Dining and living room.

Spacious back yard (ha!).

First floor half bath.

Upstairs hallway- 2 rooms on the left, and the master on the right.

Bedroom #1

Bedroom #2

Kid's bathroom.

Master bedroom.

Master bathroom.

We are hoping to move in sometime next week, and our first moving shipment is already here. I tried to take a picture of the front of the house and the view (it's set on a hill, so it overlooks the area), but the lens on the camera fogged up as soon as we walked outside :)

"Work" & Hanging Out

Spencer had his first day of pretend work on Monday. His sponsor came to pick him up at 7:45 am, which initially sounded like an early start to the day, but we were all awake at about 5:30 am. Jet lag has been a little crazy; I'm still not adjusted and it's been almost a week now!

Spencer, suited up for his first day.

I say he went to "work" because for now he really has to just go to a bunch of places to do trainings and get signatures from people. It requires a lot of patience as systems are sometimes down, or the people he needs to see aren't in. I think it took us over an hour to get our new military ID cards. Then when he got his new email address, we had to go back to update his card. We were told it would take a few minutes, but because of glitches they had to make him a whole new card... and it took another hour. He probably won't start seeing patients for a few weeks. We found out that his clinic will be moving to a brand new facility at the beginning of July.

When Spencer is off doing stuff without us, we spend lots of time drawing, coloring, and pretending to go to the store.

We've also watched lots of cartoons on the Disney channel, all in Japanese. We do have a few English channels, but none with kid friendly shows. Sydney thought it was pretty cool to sit like this while she watched them.

Our Major Day of Flying

After several weeks of waiting, we finally got notice on Thursday, June 16 that we would be leaving for Japan the following morning. We spent the night in a hotel near the airport since we were told to check in by 7 am. After checking our luggage and such (we had like 8 bags, 3 of them were overweight but we didn't get charged extra for them!), we went down to the USO while we waited for a few hours since our flight wasn't scheduled to leave until 10:30 am.

This was my first experience at a USO, and it was really nice. There was a fridge stocked with drinks and sandwiches, snacks on the table, TV, a Wii, a computer, games, and magazines. I think Sydney had about 200 grams of sugar before 9 am.

After going through security, we sat at our gate and watched planes land and take off. Sydney was mesmerized.

Our first flight was pretty quick and painless, filled with lots of chattering and snacking by my little kiddo. When we got to Chicago, we watched the planes while we ate our lunch.

We got to talking with a man sitting near us (and later found out he was the Dean of marketing or something business related at Baylor University). While we were chatting, Sydney started going through my purse to look for "somesting." Next thing we knew, she had my entire thing of dental floss wrapped around her arm! We thought that was pretty hilarious and had to take a picture.

The second leg of our trip was a 13 hour flight to Tokyo. I was prepared for it to be excruciatingly painful, but it was actually a decent experience. We were able to change Spencer's seat so it was next to us, and we were in the very back of the plane by the bathrooms. I was in the aisle seat, which was perfect since I was told to get up every hour to walk around. We all had a touch screen TV in front of us where we could choose to watch TV shows, movies, or play games like Solitaire or Tetris. Then of course they gave everyone free headphones, and there was a remote for the TV in the armrest of your chair. As Sydney is obsessed with pushing buttons and enjoyed plugging/unplugging the headphones, she was highly entertained for most of the flight. She hardly touched the bag of coloring book, crayons, books, etc. that I had for her. She took a short afternoon nap, then stayed up until around 10:30 pm and went to sleep again. The weirdest part was that our flight path made it so that it never got dark our entire trip. Luckily, pretty much everyone shut their windows so it was fairly dark inside the cabin.

You could also choose to see the flight path on your TV, and it would show you where the airplane was and how much longer we had to go. We flew up through Canada, then over Alaska and back down to Japan. Pretty cool!

Spencer & Sydney in the Narita Airport just outside of Tokyo.

After we went through customs, we had to get all of our luggage and transfer it to domestic flights. When we were checking in at the counter, there were like 8 workers that came and got it all and checked it for us. Their customer service was awesome!

We had a pretty long layover in Narita. This little play area was right outside of the security station. We met another military family there that was on our flight to Okinawa, and Sydney had fun playing with their little boy JJ. The security workers (all women) were pretty funny and kept trying to get Sydney and JJ to come say hi to them. They even came over and made them little origami birds.

We all fell asleep again on the 2.5 hour flight to Okinawa. I didn't get up at all during this flight (mostly because I was either asleep or holding Sydney), and I had serious cankles by the end of it. Even Spencer's were puffy by the end of the day.

We arrived in Naha around 10:15 pm (Okinawa time; it was like 8 am for us), where our sponsor and his wife picked us up. We were grateful they brought 2 cars because we had a ton of stuff! After about a 30 minute drive, we got to our temporary housing in Hamagawa Lodge. It was a lot nicer and bigger than I expected!

Joe and Danni had bought us a bunch of food, and even stocked some drink in our fridge. So nice!

Sydney was showing off her pack of fruit snacks while I took pictures of our place.

All those doors on the bedroom slide so you can close them off to make 2 separate bedrooms.

The master bedroom and toilet. You can't see it very well in the picture, but there's a faucet with a sink built into the tank of the toilet. When you flush, water starts running so you can wash your hands. Weird huh? The shower is in a totally separate area near a washer and a regular sink/vanity.

Our sponsor Joe and his wife Danni. They are both dentists in the Navy and have been here for 1 year.

Our family, happy to finally settle in and get some real sleep!

Hanging Out

Somehow our possibly two day stay at Ginger's turned into two weeks because of snags in paperwork and slow communication of Navy personnel. Thankfully, Ginger was more than accommodating and told us to stay as long as we needed. She even stocked up her candy bowl, and made us lots of yummy treats (strawberry tarts, chocolate lush!) and dinners while we were there.

Over the course of our stay, we found a few things to do to keep us kind of busy besides the usual watching tv, playing games with cousins, and eating junk food.

On our drive down, we made a quick stop to visit my grandparents' grave site.

Another day, we went bowling. Sydney loved it!

We were the only people there, so Spencer and I had one lane and Sydney had one all to herself with the bumpers up.

SK = Syd Kid, as Spencer sometimes calls her. I'd say that's a pretty solid score for her first time.

She thought the ball return thing was pretty cool, but it freaked me out when she would try to shove the balls back down into it.

We were modeling our lovely bowling shoes for the camera, but apparently I didn't specify that clearly enough to the photographer.

We also had to drive up to Cleveland Heights to get our mail and run some local errands, so we took a little trip up to Lake Farm Park. I only took a video, which for some reason Blogger isn't letting me post. Sydney spent a lot of the time plugging her ears because the animals were too loud for her- especially the sheep. It was kind of cracking me up.

So Long, Cleveland

June 1 marked our last day in Cleveland Heights. We had been sleeping on an air mattress for 2 nights, and before that just on sleeping bags. I called my aunt Ginger to see if we could come stay with her for a few days, so after a tearful goodbye to the Barnum's who left for Dallas that morning, we made our way over to Warren.

We already miss having these great friends just down the street!

Addie & Sydney "holding" Spencer

We said a quick goodbye to our house, then got in our packed rental car.

We had this thing filled to the brim.

Good thing we only have one kid! I had to laugh when I got in the car and saw Sydney squished between all of this luggage. On our drive, Spencer would try to point things out to her and she would say, "I can't see!" because her window view was blocked by suitcases.