Home Sweet Home

After a long long day (or two? not sure cuz of the time change) of flying from Dallas to Seattle, from Seattle to Anchorage, from Anchorage to Tokyo, and then from Tokyo to Okinawa, we made it!  We are finally in Okinawa, our new home for the next three years!  It feels SO good to finally be here! I am a bit jet-lagged and messed up from the time change, so don't blame me if this post is not fully sensible.  We arrived yesterday afternoon around 12:30pm.  Flying in was a great experience!  The weather was clear and we could see the islands and beautiful, clear, blue ocean below.  We spotted a few beautiful golf courses on the island.  The island is very populated, but also has a lot of lush green scenery.  Our sponsor, Sergeant Wingfield was at the airport to pick us up when we arrived.  He offered to give us a tour of the base, and although we were tired, we were also so excited to be here that we agreed a tour would be great.  We were able to get a lot of our questions answered right away while he was driving around.  (We WIlLL be able to use our iPhones!)  It felt like most of the base is housing!  I don't know if that's true or if that is just what he primarily showed us.  All of the buildings look the same--tan cement brick buildings with flat roofs.  Not too interesting I must say, but the vegetation makes up for it!  The trees are so cool.  We passed one that is really big and the branches are all twisty.  I thought it would be fun to climb.  Sergeant Wingfield showed us where he lived (he said it was the ghetto, but it looked the same as everywhere else to me.)  He brought us to the fire station he works out of and introduced us to a few of the guys.  It seemed to me already that this place will be so much better for Aaron than Goodfellow was.  He also brought us to the post office, showed us our mailbox and showed us a few other things on base.  He is a good tour guide! :)  Then he brought us to the TLF (temporary lodging facility or extended stay hotel), where we'll be staying until we get our house, about two weeks.  He let us have a couple of hours to get settled and take showers and then he and his wife brought us out to dinner.  I wasn't expecting to go off base the first day we got here, but we went to a little pizza joint.  It was a buffet style, offering super thin crust pizza of many various flavors (hamburger pizza, hawaiian, pepperoni, etc.), Mexican rice, Curry and rice, oriental noodles, and a salad bar.  Hehe, it was a fun place.  Sergeant Wingfield (Jay) and his wife Susan are really easy to get along with and they have two ADORABLE little girls, six and four years old.  They are incredibly helpful people and are already inviting us to do all kinds of extracurricular activities (paint ball, movie nights, Bunko nights, exercise classes, etc.)  It sounds like there is a pretty tight knit group among the fire fighter's wives, so I shouldn't have a problem making friends!  Susan also said that there are a lot of flea markets and craft markets where I could probably sell my handmade items, which was exciting for me to hear.

Aaron is a little nervous about starting at the fire department.  It sounds like he'll start in-processing on Monday.  Sergeant Wingfield said that he heard good things about Aaron though, so that was very encouraging!!  He should be getting his driver's license next week and then we can go buy a car.  We will have to depend on others to get us around until then.

We went to sleep early last night, about 7:30pm and woke up around 5 am, but considering that that would have been like sleeping from 5:30 am to 3pm in Dallas, that's not too bad!  Hopefully that will help us to adjust to the time difference.  Today Sergeant Wingfield is going to take us to get some groceries.  We are both so tired that I doubt we'll feel like doing much else, although I'd kind of like to see the BX.  Supposedly it's a huge one and is as close to a Walmart as we'll get around here! :)

We're doing well and we're feeling really good about everything.  Anxious to be in our new place, but that will happen in time.  We appreciate so much all of the prayers from so many friends and family as we traveled.  God answered them and took really good care of us.  Praise Him!

Maybe Aaron and I will walk around and take some pictures today if we feel up to it.

We miss you all and would love to hear from you!

XOXOXO