Day 1 to day 9 in Okinawa

Hi all. I have been keeping a log of everyday of what we have been doing. Sorry couldn't post earlier.

Well after our extremely long plane rides, we are finally here. Our sponsor picked us up at the airport and brought us to our hotel. He was nice and had food waiting for us in our room. We couldn’t wait to get in a bed and actually lie down, instead of trying to sleep upright for the last 27 hours. We had no problem sleeping, though we woke up at 4 a.m. wide awake.

The next day Mike did work stuff all day, while I and the kids stayed in the hotel trying to recover from the long trip, pretty exciting huh?! Mike got back and we went for a walk by our hotel, doing a little exploring. There are areas of thick trees and plants with all kinds of bugs, butterflies, birds, and HUGE wasps (at least that’s what they look like), and the kids found these big shells that had slugs in them, Dallin picked one up and the slug moved out of his shell and touched Dallin’s hand, and he ScREAMeD and threw it down, that was pretty funny! We all got tired pretty fast and went to bed early.

2^nd day- Our sponsor picked us up in the morning and his daughter stayed with the kids.We had orientation to go to all day. We took a driver’s test, which wasn’t hard at all, since they give you all the answers. But I have to say, I am scared to death to drive on the other side. We stopped at the lemon lot to look at vehicles, the cars here are pretty cheap. We found a 2000 white Mazda MPV that we like, for $3,300. Our sponsor took us off base to look at cars at the car lots, and we found some Mazda MPV for about $5,500. There are some very strange looking cars here. We will have to post some pictures later.

It has not rained at all; it has been pretty nice, though it is quite humid. Our sponsor said we brought the good weather with us. He said that last week it rained hard every day. I am definitely enjoying the weather, but they keep warning us that it is going to get really hot soon, heat that we have never felt before. At least the buildings are air-conditioned.

3^rd Day- Mike went with Victor (our sponsor) to the housing meeting off-base. There are 200 vacant homes and apartments’ off-base that we can look at, but there are very few 4 bedrooms, so our pick will be limited. The kids and I stayed in the hotel room relaxing and still trying to recover from jet lag, and I am thinking to myself “will I ever feel normal again?” ha ha!! Later when we couldn’t handle the boredom anymore, we decided to walk to the library, and see if we couldn’t find the main lobby to rent some games, movies and toys. Well while looking for that we found a park, so we stopped there and played, but the kids didn’t last long because it was so humid. We did not bring any water with us, and we still had to walk back to the hotel. Later that night Victor came and picked us up to go meet the owner of the van. The van was really clean inside. Mike did a test drive on it, and we decided we would buy it.

4^th day- Today was our first day to start looking at homes. Good thing we got the van when we did, so we could follow the housing people around, or the kids would have not been able to see any of the houses. The first house we saw was a traditional Japanese home, called the Samurai. The outside of it was really awesome, the kids loved it. The front area was decorated in a Japanese style with bonsai trees and such. The inside was pretty cool too. It did have a funky smell, like a wet dewy smell. (I have come to realize this is the Okinawa smell. There are lots of buildings and homes that have that same smell). But the home did not have an oven or a dishwasher. The bathrooms were different, and it had a Japanese dryer, which was very small (come to find out most of the homes we looked at had these same Japanese dryers). It did have a backyard, but it was all garden, covered with fruits and vegetables. Though, it wouldn’t be for us to use, just the owner of the Samurai house, but maybe he would have been kind to share with us?? The second house we looked at was HUGE!!!!! It was creepy, haunted house huge. It had like 12 bedrooms?, 2 kitchens, a gigantic front room. All our furniture would have fit into that one big room. Even the kids said that was a creepy house.

5^th day- Today is Saturday, and we went first thing in the morning to look at more homes. The first one was more American looking and had American appliances. We liked it a lot and it was in a housing community, called Happy Town, with mostly Americans and lots of kids. The next home we looked at was also in a mostly American community called Peaceful Village. That home was the nicest one we had seen so far, and it was the newest. We liked it a lot and decided that would be the one for us. We ended up putting money down on it to hold it.

6^th day- It is Sunday. We wanted to go to our LDS church, but were not sure where it is, but Mike found it. It was in a Japanese building with 3 floors. They were very welcoming to us. The primary president came up to the kids and the Relief Society president came up to me before Sacrament started. We weren’t the only new ones; there were a handful of new people, which you can expect, being mostly military families. . It is great to know the church is the same no matter where you go, even in Japan. Later that day, we headed out to see if we could find the beach. We didn’t realize how close we were to the beach. We were only 10 minutes away. We weren’t dressed for the beach, so we just let the kids get their feet wet, and search for seashells. It is nice by the beach with the breeze, but we tired out quick because of the humidity. That night Victor (our sponsor) stopped by our hotel. He wanted us to show him the house we wanted. He couldn’t believe how nice it was; he said we were lucky to live off-base, compared to the homes on-base. He said he would trade us in a heartbeat. He knew I wanted to go the Farmer’s market, so he drove us there, but it was closed. I can’t wait to try all the different fruits and vegetables here.

7^th & 8^th day- We looked at more homes Monday & Tuesday. Mike is sick of looking at houses, but I like it and think it is fun. Come to find out, the house in Peaceful Village, if we lived there the kids would have to go to different bases for school, and the school bus stop would not be close to us. Well I did not like that at all and told Mike I would not like living there, so we decided we would keep looking at houses. We looked at 2 houses in Sunabe area, which is right next to the ocean wall. I really liked that area, though it is pretty crowded with homes and buildings everywhere and tiny narrow streets, but it has a beach town feel to it. Most of homes are apartments or 3 to 5 story homes, not good for electricity. The best home we liked had almost no driveway, well it didn’t, just tiny spaces to park your car. It also had a Japanese dryer, no dishwasher, and odd bathrooms. At this point, Mike is done with looking at houses, and we are frustrated because we really really liked that home in Peaceful Village. I told Mike I would continue to look at homes by myself; he was thrilled with that idea. He left it up to me to make the decision.

9^th day- I went with our housing lady to go back to the home in Happy Town. After going in it again, I remembered how much we liked it. It had everything we wanted, American appliances, dishwasher, and kids in the neighborhood, and still close to everything, like the base and the beach. I was pretty sure this home was the one for us. She took me to look at a few more homes to make sure, but none compared to the happy town home. So I told her we would take the Happy Town home. We later went and signed papers for it, and were told we could move in on June 21^st. What a relief, to know we have a home now. And that our living in hotel and going out to eat for almost every meal is almost over, I am so sick of fast food!!! My stomach hasn’t been the same since we moved out of our home in Clinton, over a month ago.

More to come…….