Adventures in Time Travel

We made it to Okinawa.

It was a long ride. To be honest, I don't know how long it was. Here's a short rundown. We left out of Seattle at 1 a.m. Seattle time. We landed in Anchorage, Alaska at 3 a.m. Anchorage time. After a 2 hour layover we left for Yokota Air Force Base and arrived there at 6:30 a.m. Yokota time. Then after another 2 hour layover we landed in Okinawa at about 12:30 p.m. Okinawa time. You figure out how long that is.

[Hint: Seattle is 2 hours behind Central time. Anchorage is 3 hours behind Central time. Yokota and Okinawa are 14 hours ahead of Central time...you can see how this gets pretty complicated.]

Oh, and by the way, we landed at 12:30 on Friday afternoon...so I guess we just skipped Thursday all together.

We've had a fabulous time here already, though our bodies are worn out (and thoroughly confused about when to sleep and wake up). Our first night (last night) here, we were exhausted by 7:00 pm and were in bed by 8:30. Our sponsor warned us that we would probably wake up, ready to go, at about four in the morning. Even though I felt like I could sleep days, 3:54 a.m. rolled around, and both Zac and I were wide awake. Tonight we are trying to fight the jet lag...It's almost 10 pm and we're still up...on our way to an almost normal night's sleep.

Our first full day in Okinawa was great. It's already feeling like it's going to be okay to live here for a few years. (Yesterday was a little overwhelming...I mean a lot overwhelming. I think I have material for a year's worth of blogging explaining all of cultural differences that we've noticed in our first 36 hours.)

We got good news this morning: our express shipment has arrived, which means we will have some necessities (and some Halloween decorations...of course...) as soon as we move into permanent housing. Can't wait to have my good ole coffee pot back. For some reason, having just a little portion of our stuff made me feel much more at ease in being here, and one step closer to making this home.

Our sponsors have been incredible and took us all around the island today. We started with a local lunch of (super cheap) soba/okinawa noodles at Dragon. Then, we went to another base to check out cell phones. (Umm, I think they're a little behind on the cell phone plans...for a normal US priced plan, you get about 45 min. a month, no mobile to mobile and no free nights and weekends. It's like a flashback to the early-90's-with-the-Zack-Morris-huge-mobile-phone plan.) Then we made a stop at another base to look at the "lemon lot" - basically a car lot on base where people are trying to sell cars. We then went to base number 4 of the day (or maybe back to a previous base...they all look the same to me) for FosterFest, a little festival with some entertainment, food, carnival games, etc. We wrapped up the day with dinner, frozen yogurt, and a tour of a base apartment.

We've only been here one day, but it already feels like a while. I don't think we really feel like we live here yet, but it's amazing how fast we are getting there.

Well, I made it to my 10:00 pm goal, so now I'm going to rest my poor tired body.