FINALLY!!!!

OK so to explain from the beginning... As I've told you some how I got here without my area clearance, we found this out at the housing office on Camp Courtney. The woman we saw really lacked in customer service skills, and was in my opinion condescending and very disgruntled. We were told that our names couldn't even be put on the housing list because we didn't have my area clearance. So we fought to get that, got it on the 16Th of December and Jason called to get a second meeting with housing. He called every base that was relatively close and at each and every one he was told that because of the holidays they couldn't get him a appointment until after New Years. Jason also forgot to go to the office at the hotel to extend our reservation until Christmas Eve and was told that we couldn't extend it past the 1st of January. So he ended us getting us a new room in the second building that also couldn't keep us past the 13Th. We went to the second housing meeting and while this woman was much nicer and tried to be helpful after we explained how long we've been on the island and in temporary lodging, she still tried saying that there was no fault in the "housing" because they don't issue the area clearances. In the end she told us that there were no two bedroom homes available in any of the bases that were in a 45 minute driving radius, and that it might be a 30 day wait or longer.
Jason ended up having to get a room in the "overflow barracks" because in all the hotels closest to the base that he works at all the rooms were rented out for one reason or another. After he talked to a few Gunny's, I was encouraged by many people to call the unit's Family Readiness Officer (aka FRO) so she could alert the commanding officers. Apparently the XO-Major got involved and called housing and in Jason's words "lit them up" after the FRO and a few Gunny's also. Then when my husband was requesting to extend his temporary living allowance, Housing sent the Chief Warrant Officer 4 (really high enlisted officer) the wrong paper work, saying that we declined a two bedroom place and requested a three bedroom. Jason explained our story, and in the end the CWO4 called housing back and had a nice little chat. The next day we were offered a three bedroom tower house on Foster.
Obviously we have to take it, so we were told to go to a office that has really weird hours on Foster and get the key so we could look at a room on the second floor. And that this was the only room available. Jason found it funny that the housing office on Foster had 7 packages for open homes, AND the home on the second floor that we were "offered" had someone living in it since 2008. The people at foster called the people at Courtney and set them straight, and then offered us a empty home on the sixth floor in the same building that we were originally looking at. The home is beautiful, and I'm excited to move into it. And like I stated in the title: FINALLY!!!!!
Its going to be a bit of a drive for Jason, but we've already decided that he will take the FunCargo and leave me the Liberty to save on Gas. And we will have to budget $100 from every paycheck so that five days a week he can ride the express way home from work to avoid rush-hour traffic.
Today we went to Naha to the Toys R Us shopping center.. (ps there was a babies r us connected to it too) and then went to the Sea wall by Camp Kinser and checked out the China sea with Becky, Charlie and Aubrey Stanley. I took a TON of cool pics, and technically my first family portrait. Because everything went crazy right when I wanted to upload pictures on to Jason's laptop I still haven't done it. But I do promise soon you will be bombarded with LOTS of pictures!!

No Changes....

Sorry I haven't updated anything in a while. I really haven't had anything to post about. I finally have my area clearance but we are still in a hotel. Because military housing is run by the airforce they don't have very good inter-branch customer service. Because we don't have any kids we only rate a two bedroom home. Unfortunately there are NO two bedroom places available on any of the northern bases. Jason is stationed (works) at Hansen which is one of the most northern bases. So we are on a "waiting" list and are being told that even thou we've been on the island since November that it could still be another month before we get into housing. If I explain anymore about our situation it would just be a lot of complaining about how this "situation" is. And well no one wants to read that.
I finally got in to see a Dr, and have been given the OK to go off my birthcontrol. And we both were able to finally pick up two cars that we are financing until the car back in the states is sold. Jason got a Nissan Liberty, and I got a Toyota FunCargo. They are both really nice cars, and I'm relieved to finally have them. NO MORE CRAZY TAXI TRIPS!!!! I'm waiting to post pictures until after I'm able to get pictures of both of the cars, which won't be until this weekend.. sooo until tata for now!!

Japanese Drummers

Soo Jason and I were having a date night, we had dinner at the Four Seasons Steak House,.. really good by the way. And we went walking afterwards. Jason heard some drums in the distance and his curiosity took a hold of him so we had to go find out what the noise was. We discovered this show on the sidewalk in front of one of our favorite mall complexes in the American Village.

Weekend two down..

So we've officially survived two weeks of living in Okinawa. We spent Thanksgiving with Ryan and his family and friends. Then black friday instead of going shopping on base (which I really wish he woulda let me try because they had a sale for 25% off on Doone & Brooke bags..) we went and explored the part of Okinawa that is called "The American Villiage". Which we found about four or five mall complexes. And each mall has a arcade in it. We discovered stores that had sections full of Disney or Stitch items. And a department store that is the closest thing to a Walmart that I've seen so far. The only difference was they sold bigger lumber than walmart and they had more live animals than Walmart does. We found two types of turtles in the aquarium section and then we saw the puppies.. which to be honest they all looked a little sick, but Jason found one he thought was cute and he kinda played with it for about 10 minutes, then we continued our exploring. We rode the Ferris Wheel and took pictures of the surrounding area while we went up!!

We havent' really eaten any Japanese food, mainly because I've been to nervous to do it without having taken the Japanese language course that they offer, to make sure we get what we originally wanted. We did go clothes shopping.. which was a bit interesting. Their sizes for pants is by centimeter!! and Needless to say I ended up getting a pair of 3x capri's. The only type of clothing I have with me is jeans, tshirts and sweaters. Because someone told me it would be really cold over here... and now that we are here we are learning different! haha. We have been told that it will eventually get cold so having all my sweaters and warm clothes is a good thing.

Oh and another thing we did!! Every base has a Phi's Auction house/store in the exchange. This past weekend there was an auction at the Kadena BX, naturally we ended up going just to experience it. Jason told me if there was anything I saw that I wanted to give him a poke cause he got a number. Lets just say he picked out two things, a "small" tiger statue and a pair of wooden cups that can be used as paintbrush or chop stick holders... Me on the other hand... I picked out two color inhansed Jade necklesses, a cherry blossum vase, a "small" horse statue, 3 of their special pictures, a wine bottle chest and two little arches that have a town carved into them.

Sooo our Sponsor "screwed" us...

Happy Thanksgiving everyone! Ok so for the update.... Well we've discovered that our sponsor did absolutely nothing for us. Yes he picked us up at the airport, and yes he got us a mail box address.. however the more we have learned the more we have discovered that he screwed us. Our names never got put on the base housing list, Jason's Staff Sgt. took him over to the housing office and they informed him his name wasn't even on the list. So now we have to wait until next week to have our housing brief and pick out furniture. Our sponsor also didn't sign us up for the Welcome Aboard brief. Which everyone has to go to in order to be able to get their Japanese licence. We also did not know until the welcome aboard brief that we have to take a test (well at least I didn't know because Jason didnt tell me), that we need to re-sign up for tricare our insurance, and that our sponsor was also supposed to assist in picking out housing and picking out our car. Oh and we are not allowed to buy a car until Jason gets his licence, which according to his command he has to do a bunch of community service and stuff, but his Staff Sgt is going to push the command to let Jason get his licence because of the fact that he is here with family and because where we will be living we will have virtually no way to get around. Except by use of taxi's. Add to all this I'm still pretty sick, my sinus's are draining to the point that when I get to talking I cough a lot. And I cough stuff up, which I guess is a good thing but when your meeting new people and trying to sit through briefs its not good. And we can't take me to a Dr to get checked out until Monday after we get signed up for Tricare... Fun wow huh?
On another note things have been going well. I ventured out of our hotel the other day because my glasses decided to unscrew themselves and fall apart in the middle of the night. So I ended up having to get a taxi to take me to Kadena Air Bases BX. (which is like a miniature shopping mall) I was able to get my glasses fixed. However the fun adventure didn't begin until I tried getting back to my hotel. I got a taxi driver that barely spoke any english, and didn't know where my hotel was. He kept saying stuff in Japanese to me, tried to get me to point out where it was on a map that was completely in Japanese and then wanted me to show him where to go which I had NO CLUE!!! I ended up on the "camp" that I needed to be, however I had him drop me off by some barracks and then after stopping someone I ended up walking I'm going to say maybe 3 to 4 miles up hill, making a left and then a series of rights. Luckly I eventually figured out where I was and got back to my hotel room where I immediately drank a bottle of water (cause its still in the 70's over here) and took a bath to wash off all the sweat. I can definitely say that I don't ever want to experience that again! haha.
Today for Thanksgiving we are supposed to be going over to my cousin Ryan's for the day, and I look forward to it. OH i almost forgot, I've noticed that the Japanese are very into Hello Kitty, and Rubber stamping. We got a flyer on a Hello Kitty Bowling ally!! and I saw a store totally dedicated to rubber stamping. I'm thinking I should be able to find something for my mom in that store if I ever manage to get there. Well thats all for now, I need to get back to sleep! My sleeping schedule has been all screwy..

And now the Adventure begins!!!

We started out at 3:30 am on Wednesday morning.. went from Raligh NC to Newark Jersey then to Seattle WA. When it came time to check into our flight for Japan the people kept saying that the family members who were accompaning their spouses to Japan needed to be named in their original orders. When we looked at Jason's my name wasn't seen where it should have been. They tried saying that because we didn't have anything saying that I was supposed to be going with him I couldn't go. Luckly they got their manager to come over, by this time I was in a complete panic almost hyperventaling myself. The manager looked over the orders and in the fine print on the second page he found my name. Leave it to 29 Palms IPAC to mess up. Jason remembers asking "shouldn't my wife's name be on the orders somewhere" and got told "OH no it will be fine." Needless to say it wasn't fine. From there we sat for about three more hours and then got on our plane. There were alot of parents who had children who just kept screaming, and mostly for no reason what so ever. And these parents did everything but spank their children. Needless to say the trip was interesting. We stopped in Anckorage (sp) Alaska and then Yokota Japan. it was three hours to Alaska, 7 and a half hours to Yokota and then another three hours to Kadena okinawa. When we got to Okinawa we were loaded into a little bus and then went through customs. I got my first stamp in my passport!!! It was a lovely 75 degrees when we got to Okinawa, its currently more like 55 or 60 and a little rainy. Then it took forever to get our suitcases. Our sponser did show up and as we were going out the door my cousin Ryan grabbed Jason's Arm. I had sent his wife a message letting her know when we were getting in because we didn't know if our sponser was going to be there or not, so I figured it was better safe than sorry. At the moment we are staying in a hotel suite room in Camp Foster. And Ryan came over and saved us from the bordem of not being able to do anything. Him and Jay just ran and got our new cell phones. Which for the next two years we are completely stuck with them, can't get new ones and we can't upgrade. We are stuck with them. But oh well at least we have phones now!!!

Less than 5 days!!!

So the entire house is packed up. We've got a really good portion of it cleaned. alls we gotta do now is mop the livingroom/dining room area, clean one bedroom and the kitchen, put the trash out by the road, sweep the porch off, clean out the shed, and weed the flower beds. Went and saw my best friend from High school yesterday. Had a really nice visit with Sarah and loved watching her entertain her baby Kayo!! We were thinking today we'd clean then this evening we'd spend time with another set of friends, then we have both Monday and Tuesday figured out of who we are going to spend it with.

I never posted about the home we found Athena.. Thanks to a "family friend" from the church back home, we gave athena to a single woman who has two dogs and two cats, a great big back yard thats all fenced in, (Aker (sp) and a half) and a big pond in the front yard that she let the dogs play in. Apparently Athena is doing great so far. She's claimed the couches, and was made to sleep on the cushion that is on the floor by the bed rather than sleeping up in bed with her new "mommy".. Don't ya just love pack structure! We were told that if and when we come back if we ever want to visit to just let the woman know, and she even said that in three years when we get back if we want Athena back we can have her.. Jason and I are both skeptical about that one. We would love to have her back, but at the same time Athena will have gotten attached to the other person as well as the younger of the two dogs.. so we just said that "we'll see" because we have no idea where we will be sent or what will be going on in our lives so its better to just wait and see.

I haven't been posting when exactly we will be leaving because to me it's always felt like it was a violation of OSPEC. (military policy about giving away dates of deployments, and putting the military members at risk of being gunned down by enemies) I recently had my facebook hacked and I'm glad I didn't have any information about our trip posted there because you never know who can hack into your online accounts and find stuff out about you. I will say that we going to get a hotel in Raleigh Tuesday night, because our flight to Seattle is at 6 am, and we have to turn in our rental car. We have a really long layover in Seattle and we have to check into a AMCC (military) flight. But I'm not going to tell you when that leaves... Just know that we will be in Okinawa by the end of the week.. and I should be able to start posting pictures of the island :)