6/21/06 - 5th Letter

5th letter
Wed. 6/21/06
So here we are, another week. While bryan’s family enjoys a week at lake powell we call a hotel room home. Blah. We were notified that our unaccompanied baggage is here – which is the stuff that we could send of under 750 lbs. by plane to get here within 30 days instead of 60, like the rest of our stuff. We weighed everything and thought we put it within 50 lbs. of the limit, but it ended up only being 536 lbs. oh well. We sent all our kitchen stuff and scrapbooks and a lot of the rest of clothes in that shipment. But it doesn’t really do us a lot of good now because we have another 2 and ½ weeks til move in. and our COMPUTER is in that shipment too, which is what I want the most. People told us fast-speed internet here was $60-70, but they just came out with a new service called DSL-light for $40, and your speed is just capped at like 1.5 megabytes. Anyways.
They sell alcohol and cigarettes in vending machines here. Kinda interesting. Legal age here is 20. and that’s it. No 18 vs. 21 for different sorts of products like in the U.S. but you can’t drive here til 18.
6 mos pregnant today!
We celebrated our 3-yr anniversary on Monday, june 19th. Bryan got the day off. Apparently they let you have either your birthday or your anniversary off every year. And seeing as his birthday is already passed… we went out to eat at a place off base called new miyaki. The waitress could speak English so that was really nice. I struggled with the chopsticks and decided I should carry a fork around with me. Bryan’s food was good – he got beef chopsuey. Mine was not – simmered pork over rice. Big ‘ol slabs of pork that tasted weird. What a waste.
We went to a fast food place called sukiya last Saturday, off base, and that was pretty good and decently priced. Not a big fan of “miso soup” – I think there was a lot of seaweed in it. It’s interesting, here when you’re ready to order you have this little bubble thing in front of you and you push the button and it makes a loud ring noise up on an electronic reader-board thing. Bryan likes it.
We were finally able to go to church on Sunday - that was SO nice. (last Sunday we went over to the main base chapel cuz once upon a time that’s where lds.org said it was when we first looked, but they weren’t there, just all the other denominations getting ready for their meetings and stuff). Cuz last week I found out that the branch president is on leave til july and has been pretty much since we’ve been here, so that’s why we haven’t been able to get a hold of him, our only contact. I kept calling the office # for the church at all different times and no one ever picked up. So Saturday we went over to the reception desk in the hotel to have them help us find the address that we had for the church (which was like 1-59-6 Hon machi…. Hmmm). They didn’t know. And one of them was Japanese. Very helpful. So she looks up the church and finds the office # - lo and behold someone picks up! She talks to them in Japanese for awhile and then hands the phone over to us and tells us he is American. So the guy tells us they’re right by the train station in town. With some prodding the desk clerk at the hotel told us how to get to the train station. Anyways, we drove there Saturday and obviously found it. The parking lot is tiny, but it ended up being a good-sized branch! (I’ll have to ask what the numbers actually are) Everyone just sort of has to block each other in when parking. They didn’t hand out any kind of treat or anything for father’s day. Which I thought was interesting. People were very very nice and a lot of them talked to us. Bryan thought it the nicest ward we’ve been to so far. It was really nice though – something constant in our lives. We may be in a totally different country, in a completely different atmosphere with the military; but the church, the gospel, is always the same. It’s awesome to be able to lean on that.
Monday I was a complete klutz. I fell down the stairs at this massage place we were checking out off base. My right ankle has developed more into a “cankle,” and it has swelled and bruised up like it would if I had sprained it – which I didn’t. man does it hurt though. I guess I missed the last stair before the stairs turn and keep going, and landed hard on the edge of the next stair, with the side of my ankle/shin. Ouch. Bryan was in front of me and missed the show. Later that night I was going into our room and it was dark, and I turned the corner and forgot about the closet door that you have to go around as well, and smacked my head right into it. Nice.
Then Tuesday, yesterday, at the boys’ softball game I was chosen to do the book, so I was getting the line-up from the other team and got hit by one of the softballs they were warming up with. Luckily though, I was turned and it hit me in the back – kidney area. Just great.
Our address by the way, which most of you don’t need, is:
PSC 76 BOX 6652
APO, AP 96319-0045
Yes just 2 lines. I guess it’s just like sending a letter within the states, so that’s all the postage you need. Psc stands for postal service center, just in case you were wondering.
2 wks from Friday we get to move in. someone has to be there from 8am-5pm. So that will be a real fun day for me, and we’ll have to check out of the hotel in the early hours. Sometime in that time slot they deliver your temporary furniture and if you miss them you get charged quite a bit. At 1pm an inspector comes and you go thru every little stain and all with him. Cuz I guess when you move out they charge per stain. Eesh.
I was thinking it might be nice to teach English at night if bryan ends up working swing shift. I’ve been talking to this girl at the softball games (wife of the guy bryan works with who runs the team) and last game I caught that she does that. I was gonna talk to her about it yesterday but she had her baby yesterday in the early morning hours. 2 wks early. But her boy was still 7lbs.-something. I’m sure she was excited – just last week she was talking about that it needed to be over and she wanted to be induced. She was pretty big.
It’s getting warmer – a few days it’s gotten into the 70’s.
Jenni was asking about the speed limit – no it’s not always 40mph – on base the fastest you go is like 30mph (and that’s for only one stretch of road between the main base and the north area – usually it’s only like 24mph and 18mph), and off base the fastest roads are only like 42mph – those are like the toll roads, which are like their freeways here I guess. Off base around town they have one speed limit: 40km – a whopping 24mph, but it seems fast cuz the roads are so dang small.
While we were waiting for new miyaki to open for dinner on Monday, we walked around town a bit. We went and bought a snickers at a circle k and the cashier kept saying stuff to us – HELLO WE DON’T UNDERSTAND YOU. The snickers was expensive! – 121 yen, which was like a $1, sheesh.
anyways, i'll stop for now. love you guys
julie, bryan, and the belly pusher