Cars and Houses... We're growing up!

So this week was pretty great. We were able to get our car on Tuesday October 16th. Let me tell you, Garrett and I both were so relieved to be able to have our own transportation. Garrett got a ride home from work on Tuesday, picked up the cash to pay for the rest of the car, and rushed off to go pick it up. We love this car. It is definitely different than my little Kia Rio, but it runs great. It's smooth, has full AC, a built in TV/GPS that scree is in Japanese so we basically can only use it for radio and cds... We haven't managed to even turn on the GPS yet. It's got a lot of space, which is what we wanted.

That's right, a pull up seat for a total of 7 seats!

We could have bought a smaller car, but we wanted to have enough trunk space for camping gear, snorkeling gear, etc. As well as have the back easily accessible for car seat/s when the time comes. (NO, I am not pregnant!) I've now gotten used to driving in Japan, though driving off base is still a little scary. The roads are narrower and the people are unpredictable. Examples: it's illegal to talk on the phone and drive, so they either stop in the middle of the road to talk or pull to the side and stop. They can be overly polite by sitting at green lights to allow oncoming traffic to turn right. It's not awful, and I'm sure it will just take some time to get used to it. Garrett and I made a special trip to the BX just for the test drive(and I needed band-aids).





We ended up looking at soccer cleats because the Branch president we met gets a group to play every Saturday morning. And any of you who know us, know that Garrett and I are big soccer players. We passed up last week because it was kind of wet and combined with tennis shoes, that doesn't work so well. They have exactly one option for soccer cleats in men's, girls, and boys, no women's; and all the same style, just different colors. Luckily I have small feet and managed to fit into a girls pair, and Garrett liked the one offered to men. Even with our tight finances, we couldn't pass up the opportunity to be able to meet new people, play the sport we love, and in the process release the stress we have been feeling.

Our awesome new cleats!

Garrett drove us to the BX Tuesday to get a few things and then to work on Wednesday, with me in the car to drive back to the hotel. He asked me like three times what side of the road I was to drive on, what side the turn signal was on, and where the gas tank was. Gas on base was $3.95 when I got gas on Wednesday morning after dropping Garrett off to work. Man oh man. It's a good thing we don't have to drive too much.
Wednesday morning I spent loading our car with all of our things from the hotel and checking out because we were getting our house keys that afternoon. But when I went to leave, the office was empty and the lady was no where in sight. So I figured I would take our cold stuff over to store at Daniel's house for the day and come back to check out. My first real driving(both in Okinawa and the new car) where it wasn't all left turns was in narrow ally-like streets on the way to Daniel's in the rain. You could definitely tell I wasn't used to the car's length because turning around was a nightmare. I finally made it back to the hotel and searched the building for the manager. She was really nice, but I sometimes couldn't understand what she was saying and had to guess. She ended up charging us for only 8 nights in the hotel, instead of the actual 12, and couldn't cancel the card because of international something or other. So she told me to come back in a few days to pay the rest of the amount. The total amount paid for the hotel was 151,200 yen. An intimidating amount that equals about $2000. We luckily get to file a TLA claim and get reimbursed for it because the on base lodging was all full for the time we needed it. After going through that, I had to go to one of the other bases, Camp Foster, to pick up our road tax sticker that basically allows us to get on base easily. That was a misadventure... I accidentally turned too soon and ended up at a different gate into the base. So I thought I would be able to get to where I needed to, but after a few turn arounds I headed back to the gate I came through and went the way the crudely drawn map told me (not a single street name on it). When I went through the gate I was supposed to I realized I was pretty much exactly where I had turned around before. Go figure. Through the rest of the day I ran various errands. Dropping of Garrett's blues to be dry cleaned so he can wear them next week. Picking up mail from the post office. Getting essentials for the house from the BX (dish towels, shower curtain, pillows, baking sheet). Picking up a set of dishes from the loan locker to borrow until our home goods get on island, this includes four place settings, cutting board, a single knife, spatula, large spoon, slatted spoon, can opener, peeler, three sauce pans, frying pan, and a strainer. I also went to the internet/cable company that services on base and got our modem to hook up internet into our house. Through all of this I was running in and out of places through a pouring rain. I was soaked. I'm sure I was quite the sight going into Garrett's shop to pick him up to go get our keys. We had no problem picking up our SEVEN keys to our house. Don't misinterpret that as seven different keys, it's merely seven copies of the SAME key. We reached our house to find the government furniture already in place. It's all in pretty good condition and definitely suits our needs. We truly love our house.

Front of our house, we're on bottom.

Living room

Large utility room

Office!

Our back yard

Entry to kitchen from living room

I love my kitchen! It's a great size!

Only downside from the other one is this has one bathroom.

One of the two bedrooms.

 I definitely like the one story better than the two story. I immediately started putting things where they belonged. I had had enough of living out of suitcases and feeling displaced. We soon realized that we had zero service in our house except for in our two front windows with the window open and our phone sitting on the track... It's quite the sight when we answer phone calls. It has to be on speaker and stay in that spot, or else it's lost. We sent Daniel a text to come see our place, but never heard from him. We also then realized that the shower curtain hooks I bought were too small for our rod. So we went to exchange for ones that work and get food. Garrett also treated me to ice cream at Baskin Robbins because the stress or everything was evident. When we got back to the house we had a giant surprise in our bathroom.

Yes, that is the spider. Garrett took a picture and then proceeded to make these videos while I hid in our living room. I was quite high strung that night and thoroughly freaked by that monster.

(Technical Error: I haven't been able to get the videos loaded on here so I will add them to Facebook)

 

Garrett's commentary made it a lighter situation, which helped me. But then after killing it, he came over to give me a hug and acknowledging that it really had freaked me out. However he made the mistake of trying to lighten the mood by lightly tracing his fingers up my back. I broke down, I was that freaked out and stressed. Daniel finally made it over to our house and he informed us that it was an Okinawan Brown spider and they are not dangerous and are quite good at keeping other bugs away. That's not enough incentive for me to feel sorry for the thing or to want another to come around. If he had stayed hidden eating other bugs, I could have remained obliviously happy that there were no bugs in my house. After I had calmed down, and we had all talked for a while we sat down and introduced Daniel to Munchkin. We played two rounds and another round of Zombie Munchkin. I think that was the latest we have stayed up since being on island... We are so grateful to have Daniel here. He's the closest thing I have to family, and I think he and Garrett are getting on well. He even has one of those seven keys to our house now.
We haven't had any other crazy things happen, so I will end this here. I hope you all are doing well and look forward to sharing more with you! Sure love ya!