Moving: Okinawa!

Okay, so I'm finally managing to sit down and write about our 40 hour trip to the opposite side of the world. First, after having our home goods picked up on September 25th, with expected delivery to the island November 30th, I have learned a severe lesson. Pack lighter! I thought I had put enough in with our home goods and not left too much out to go in our luggage for the trip, but I was wrong. It wasn't awful, and in most cases we had about the same amount of stuff as everyone else, but it was not fun lugging it around the Seattle Airport and Garrett had to be turned into quite the pack mule a few times... But I'm getting ahead of myself now.
We left San Antonio on October 3rd. After getting up early to say goodbye to Mom Bowen, but sadly missing Dad, we went back to sleep for an hour or two, woke up and finished packing. We said our goodbyes to Melanie(and the kids the night before) and headed over to my parents' house. We played a quick game of Skip-Bo and left to go see Dathan at work before heading to the airport. As some of you may know, on the itinerary we received Garrett and I were supposed to the the same flight to Dallas, but not from Dallas to Seattle. Upon checking in, the guy told us he had got us seats together on both flights. We paused, and verified with him that we were on the same flight for both. He confidently told us yes, we were, and upon getting the tickets we looked at the flight number and time, and sure enough it was the same.(Remember for later!)
We ended up getting to the gate about 2 hours before our flight left at 415. We mostly just sat in the terminal, charging various things and lending a charger chord to another man on the flight who's phone was about to die. Upon boarding and getting situated in our seats the flight attendant came by to make sure we were okay with sitting in an EXIT row and the like. He then pointedly looked at me and asked 'Wait, how old are you?' When I responded with my age, he looked a little startled and was like, 'Okay, I just wanted to make sure because you have to be at least 15 to sit in this row.' Not that this is a new inquiry to me, I know I look young for my age, but I just found it quite humorous and had a good chuckle with Garrett about it. The flight to Dallas wasn't very eventful and when we got to the gate, found we were relatively close to our next gate and had about 2 1/2 hours until our next flight boarded. Right across the way was a TGIF, so we went in and had ourselves a pretty good dinner. Finally when our flight was called, I pulled out this set of boarding passes, looked at what should have been Garrett's ticket and did not find his name on it... It was some obscure name that Garrett and I could not even pronounce and kind of looked like the man had just hit a bunch of random letters on a keyboard. So Garrett, being the man he is, went up to the counter and told them that we thought we had been on different flights(his being two hours earlier) but upon check-in being told we were actually on this same flight, but this was not his name. When the lady asked his name, she remembered that yes, they had been paging him earlier, but he had not come... Of course. Luckily, she sorted it out and got him onto this same flight, just now we were no longer sitting anywhere close to each other.
When we finally reached Seattle, we had to track down our luggage which had been sent ahead on the flight that Garrett was originally supposed to be on. If you haven't been to the Seattle airport there are about 16 luggage carousels that go on FOREVER... Or at least it seemed that way to me. Upon walking all the way to the end trying to find the American extra baggage claim, we found out it was at the very first one, right where we had started... On this quest we ran into one of Garrett's classmates from Tech school Heron, and his wife, who are PCSing with us to Okinawa. After finally finding our baggage, we went upstairs to try and find where we needed to check in for port call. We found quite a few military personnel wandering around but finally got directed to a line that we were told was for couples, families, and those traveling with pets. So we hunkered down, introduced ourselves to the lady in front of us who happened to be between the Heron's and us. She was very nice, and an absolutely precious dog, and we found out she had been stationed here before for five years, and now is back with her husband, who is now an E9! She informed us that there was a USO room upstairs for military where we could find free food, bunk beds, etc. We headed up there for some food, and I also discovered a nursery complete with cribs and rocking chairs. I have to admit, it would be a lot easier to travel such a long way with small children with that sort of amenity in the airport. After sitting in the line (not too far from the front) we are instructed that this is only the line for families and pets... Singles and married couples were in another line that was extremely long by now. So we heaved our bags over there, just to be told one more time that we needed to be pretty much back where started in the other line. We waited around for another few hours and finally at 0230 they began check in for our 0850 flight to Yakota AB, followed by Iwakuni Marine Corp Air Station, and finally into Kadena AB in Okinawa Japan. I think by the time we finally got checked in and through security it was about 0515 or so. Garrett and I up to this point had not slept at all since waking up at 0900 on October 3rd. We found a spot at our prospective gate, laid down, pulled out our blanket and slept for 2 blissful hours before being awakened by the announcement that our gate was changing. So we packed up and moved to the correct gate, Garrett again fell asleep(under the chairs) and I went and washed my face and freshened up from before another full day of travel. We finally boarded around 0730 or so and were in the air. Garrett and I were sitting in two side seats with a family of 6 sitting in two of the three-person rows next to us. When I first saw them, I had this feeling that they were members. I'm not sure why, there really was no distinguishing factors and I never heard any mention of anything pertaining to our religion, but I just had a feeling. And throughout the 14 hour flight, Garrett and I talked on and off to the kids. There were 3 boys, probably around 10, 8, and 2 or 3. And a girl probably around 6 or so. At some point Garrett was talking across the aisles to Heron saying something or another about drinking caffeine and I noticed the father of the family give us kind of a strange look, but he didn't comment on anything.
When we finally landed in Yakota we were able to disembark the plane for about 45 minutes. Then we piled back on for another hour flight to Iwakuni, where Garrett purchased our first meal in Japan consisting of KFC and Taco Bell... Go figure. We finally loaded back onto the plane and reached Kadena around 1945 on Friday October 5th.(Okinawan time) by the time we had gotten through the 'check in' and finally gotten our bags it was close to 2030. While waiting for our baggage though, Heron's wife and I were talking some more and she had asked earlier if anyone's ankle's had swollen on the flight; when we landed in Kadena I realized my ankles had actually swollen. I couldn't feel the bone on the outside of my ankle and my calves were swollen up too. I've never had that happen to me on a long flight before, and I still don't know what caused it.
When we got out to the waiting area Garrett's sponsor, who is a Senior Airman in his structures shop here, was there to pick us up along with another guy from the shop who had a larger car. We went and got food at Burger King, and were taken to our off base hotel because on base had been full when Nick Mike had tried to set up our room. It's called the Eagle Lodge, and it's actually quite nice. It's got three bedrooms with five beds total, a kitchen, and living room. Our balcony overlooks downtown basically and you can see the ocean as well. Garrett and I were quite exhausted and after showering, Garrett was great and massaged my ankles and calves to try and get the swelling down. Then he took two cushions off the chairs in the living room to put under the quilt in our bed to prop my legs up.
For now I will end this post about our trip to Okinawa and tell you about our first weekend in Okinawa in my next one! I will try to add pictures later, but I am still adjusting to the time change it seems and find myself rather tired now, just barely at 1945. I know it's not riveting story telling, but I hope you enjoy keeping up with the G D Bowen family! We love you and miss you!