There's Love in the Air [Force]: First Week in Okinawa!

This was on Sat morning walk.

Okay, so the weekend was pretty good. Saturday morning we were able to Skype with our wonderful parents on the Bowen side as well as the two nieces there, Lily and Ivy. After we finished talking to them our sponsor Nicholas Mike, who is a Senior Airman in Garrett's shop, took us to the BX to set get a cell phone, get a few odd things needed (i.e. hand soap, razors, shaving cream, etc) and to the Commissary to get some food to sustain us until we get into a house.

View from a pedestrian bridge.

View from our balcony.

View from our balcony. Yes that's the ocean in the background.

Cell phone providers are very different than the US. There are about three carriers; Soft Bank, AU, and Docomo. We didn't even look into Docomo, we were told that it was very expensive. We were told that AU had more reliable service than Soft Bank though, our sponsor told us that most people in the shop had Soft Bank. The way the service works is that you can pay roughly $12 for the 'White Plan', 0100 to 2100 you get free talk to any other Soft Bank user, but from 2100 to 0100 it's $ .50 a minute during that time or anytime to someone other than Soft Bank. It's free text Soft Bank to Soft Bank, but $.04 per text to anyone else. The 'Double White' is exactly the same, but it's $24 and $ .25 per minute. It's so strange and I don't think I'm a fan. But alas, we got an iPhone to share. If we decide we want to get a second phone, it will probably just be a regular cheap phone. We mostly got the smart phone so that we can more easily talk to people at home. Which, we actually got an app called MagicJack and it allows us to call anyone at home for free. That's been very useful and I'm sure it will continue to do so. Also, the data plan comes with the plan, but there's no set usage. They just basically reserve the right to turn it off if we use it too much. It's a little odd, but oh well. They gave us a free wi-fi router with the purchase that allows us to have wi-fi in our hotel now, and aren't using the data on the phone while hanging around here.

This is the temporary case we got for our phone.

We were able to get some groceries, but I was wincing because I don't have any of my spices, didn't really want to have to purchase new ones that won't be all gone before mine come in. So I had to buy a lot of things from a box... I also bought a frozen pizza and returned to the hotel to discover that our oven is far too small for it to fit into and I can't work the stove because everything is labeled in Japanese kanji. Nevertheless, I know the dinner's not horrible when I have such limited resources as one small pot, one medium frying pan, one sketchy looking knife, a stirring spoon, a spatula, and very few miscellaneous items. I have to get what I can make with those tools. Saturday we also looked at the Lemon Lot for cars, but didn't find anything that really struck our fancy. I think we went to bed about 1900...
Garrett was waking up at about 0430 or 0530 for the first few days, and even now we still are going to bed around 2000. Garrett kind of wants to keep on the schedule so that he can wake up easily for work and PT. (I'll believe that when I see it from him. :P ) Sunday we were picked up by Daniel who is my older brother's best friend from high school, is currently dating my sister Shalynna, and is stationed here with the Navy. He took us around the local area a bit. We went to a scuba shop, Kadena Marina, Camp Foster (which is another base on Okinawa), and American Village. At Kadena Marina, Garrett and I bought our own snorkeling equipment. Daniel is an avid scuba diver and is working on getting his Dive Master certification so that he can teach others and lead dives. We ate at our first Japanese restaurant, which was actually a Mexican place. It was surprisingly good. American Village was a local mall-like place that had a lot of Japanese shops and was a 'tourist trap' as Daniel called it. We got to enjoy our first taste of Japanese ice cream in a shop very similar to Baskin Robbins. It was surprisingly good.

Driving the the first place.

Monday we went out to snorkel with Daniel. We were supposed to go to a certain place, but the water was closed because of a rip tide. It turned out to be okay since Daniel had accidentally forgotten his booties for his fins. We instead went back to a beach that is a few blocks from his house. We ended up swimming for three hours. I had generously applied sunscreen, but three hours back up to the sun, without reapplication does not turn out well. The back of my thighs and shoulders got burnt and Garrett's calves got burnt. It wasn't a terribly awful burn, but it was still there. We had swam out a little, but decided to get out and walk over to another beach to swim out to a reef. The first stint of swimming, my goggles were great. The second one, they fogged up really bad. Because of this, I almost got bit by a sea snake... I couldn't see our of my goggles and I ended up swimming right over it. Daniel says he saw it coming up at me. I didn't see it until I was right over it, I jumped and swam quickly away. Garrett almost didn't see it either. We saw some really cool things. Bright neon blue fish, various urchins, lots of different fish, a puffer fish, and some other things.

When we finally got back to land we went Daniel's to start our equipment rinsing, freshen up, and he took us out to eat at a place called the Four Seasons. It is a teppenyaki steak house. They cook the food right in front of you and it was excellent. Garrett and I agreed that for now, unless we find a better place, that is our birthday-anniversary-possibly Thanksgiving place to go. We had some fried potatoes and onions, creamy chicken and vegetable soup, steak, grilled bean sprouts, and spaghetti. Man oh man. That was some good food. He cooked the food one thing at a time and put it straight onto the plate. Before you could finish that, he'd have the next thing on your plate. Unfortunately Daniel pulled rank on Garrett and he paid for our portion of the meal also. It is so great to have someone I know closely here on island. It makes the transition a little easier and he's been so helpful this whole time. On our way back to Daniel's house to hang out and watch a show he got Garrett hooked on, we wanted dessert. We passed this place called Mister Donut, and it just sounded really good to me. Little was I prepared for the way it actually was... The doughnuts all looked really good, but they make it with pure cane sugar grown on island and it just was not as sweet as I wanted it to be... Not to mention it just had a weird texture. That was a mild disappointment, but that's okay. I should have figured after knowing Yoko, my brother's ex-fiance who is Chinese from Hong Kong, and how she was with sweets. I may be wrong, but I think most Asian cultures don't go for the overly sweet like Americans do.
Tuesday we just got picked up early and taken into base. We ran errands getting everything in order, Garrett has a lot of in-processing stuff he has to do and has been running all over base all week trying to get a ton of signatures. We went to a housing briefing which basically we filled out the application for it and got told that since the occupancy rate on base is over 95% we could live off base if we wanted to. We decided that at least for now, we'll stay on base to get used to the island and everything. A lot of the homes have been renovated, but some have not. Everyone we talked to told us to take a renovated one and not be afraid to turn something down if it's old and gross. Now, remember that family of 6 that sat next to us on the plane? The last name is Burns, and we ran in to the Mr. at our housing briefing. We said hello and chatted a little (15-16 hours next to each other on a plane gets you to be rather friendly) he straight up asked us if we were Mormon. When we said yes, he said that they were too and that he had figured from a comment about caffeine Garrett had made on the plane. So I was right! I totally picked them out to be members from the very beginning. I believe they'll be living on Kadena as well, so we should end up in the same branch as us.
Wednesday we went to a Newcomers briefing that was long and just had powerpoint and introductions from all the organizations(offices) on the base. We also learned water safety for the island and road safety, as well as all the signs and how driving is different. We then took a 20 question test and got our SOFA license. Which is basically just the American license to be able to drive here. It's like a CPR certification card. Just has our information written on it and we signed it. No pictures, no lamination. Though I think I will take ours somewhere to laminate them so they last and don't start falling apart on us after a time. We didn't stay for the whole briefing after that, we just weren't learning anything we didn't know already. So we walked down to the BX, got Garrett a haircut and were picked up by his sponsor from there. I did a lot of puppy-dog trailing this week because there was always at least one thing I needed to be on base to do with Garrett, but the majority of the time I just tagged along or sat in the shop break room and read. But the good thing from this trailing is I am now more familiar with base and can get to the things I need to on my own. I also know the place and people where Garrett will be working. In the afternoon we did get to help with a few things for the Special Olympics that Kadena is hosting. It's a big deal on island and I was glad to be able to do something useful, even if it was wrapping kids artwork in plastic to waterproof them.
Wednesday afternoon was exciting! We called up Daniel and asked if he would take us to an auto dealer so that we could hopefully find a vehicle and not have to constantly need rides everywhere. We were told about this B.C Motors that was out Gate 2. We were looking around, found a Honda CR-V and Mitsubishi Pajerno that we liked and were the same price. We had pretty much said we would probably take the Honda, but wanted to check the place next door first to see if they had anything that we liked better. We wanted something that had a good amount of storage space in the back, wouldn't be too big to park or drive on island, and would last us while we are here. While walking over to Payless(not the shoe store, a car place) we happened across another car that caught my eye. We found that it was on hold, but the car behind it was similar in style and cheaper than either of the SUVs. It was a Toyota Spacio, and I instantly started feeling giddy about it. I wasn't really sold on the SUVs, I just didn't care for them all that much. I felt like we were settling. Garrett and I both liked this almost instantly; we started poking around. Popping the hood, checking for 'trunk' space, liking the inside. Daniel said he thought this was more for us and then Garrett wanted to know where the spare tire was. We opened up the back and pulled up the handle, thinking the tire would just be there, but no! It was a second row back seat that holds two people. That's right, a secret seat! It was just so cool it hooked us like no other; it was GAME OVER. It's not that it would be incredibly comfortable to sit back there, but if the need arises that we have to sit 7 people in the car, we are able to! Turned out the tire was underneath that. But Daniel, Garrett, and I were all totally enthralled with the second row of seats. Daniel joked about buying it instead. Just in case still, we headed next door and were none too impressed. Plus it just looked a bit shady; thought that could have been due to it being closed already... So we headed back to BC to talk to a salesman about it. Daniel immediately stepped into haggling mode and asked 'Now is the price negotiable'. The guy figured some numbers and dropped $1200 off the price. Not too shabby. Now it was about $1500 cheaper than the SUVs. We filled out the paperwork and now just have to take our money back there along with proof of insurance. While filling out the paperwork the guy pulled out this referral sheet and gave it to Daniel, telling him to come in for $50 after the purchase of our car was complete. Yep, even though Daniel just brought us here at our request and didn't even buy his car at this place, he gets $50. It was pretty cool. When we got back to our hotel, a Branch President and his wife stopped by to introduce themselves but when they found out we were offered houses today, it turns out they're in different boundaries for branch. Oh well, they were super nice and turns out President Hernandez plays soccer with some other people on Saturday mornings. So Garrett and I hopped on that immediately and are excited for it. They are also re-broadcasting General Conference this weekend so we get to go watch it!
Thursday I wasn't originally going to go onto base, but then we got the call for housing. Garrett's supervisor let us borrow his car on 'You-break-it-you-buy-it' terms. We picked up the keys to two places and headed straight there. The first one we went to was two stories, had really nice looking fake wood floors, pretty good counter space in the kitchen(much better than our apartment in Gulfport!), lots of closets and storage space all over, two and a half bathrooms, a small 'game room' upstairs. I liked it quite a bit, but we didn't care as much for the hard floor, the living room would make it a little hard to set up easily, the only space for a kitchen table would force you to walk through the living room to get to it, and the utility room door wouldn't open all the way without getting stuck on the washer. It had a ton of space for us, but we had reservations. We headed to the second place. It is one of four apartments in a building, but it's on the first floor. We had a time trying to unlock the FOUR locks on the door, not realizing that it is opposite of the US. This one we immediately liked more because it had carpet. the utility room is large with shelving space and cabinets above. The living room was a lot easier to set up furniture in (based on the cable chord in the wall), the kitchen was much larger floor space wise and gives plenty of space for a kitchen table (though the stove plates are weird. They look like record discs), this place only has one bathroom, but it also has an office room. Every room has a fan, and it has really good lighting. The back door doesn't open onto a kids playground, it's shielded by this big hill. We chose the second house we looked at. It probably is a little smaller, but it still can hold quite a few people and if family or friends come to visit, there's still plenty of space for everyone. I'm so excited for it and as soon as we move in I will get some pictures for you. We immediately started looking for furniture on a site similar to craigslist for Okinawa. The military furnishes it for us for up to 90 days, so it's not a hurry, but we want to snatch up deals and have time to get stuff that we like. We already think we found a couch that we like. Our acceptance briefing is Friday and hopefully we find out we can move in soon!
We miss you all and hope that you are doing fantastically. We are settling in here well and I think this is going to be a great experience. We know that the Lord sent us here for a purpose and we hope to find it and be able to serve Him well. I can't wait to meet the wonderful members here and be able to form the bonds that will fill the gaps that we are missing from having family near by.
Sure love ya!

*I know this should go with the last one, but here are a few pictures from our hotel*