6/9/06 - 3rd Letter

3rd letter
wed. 6/7/06
so i forgot to tell you all that a couple days or so after we got here i finally recognized the baby kicking! and bryan felt it too, it was pretty cool. exciting. although sometimes the kicking creates very odd feelings in my belly. there's something alive in there!!! anyways, pregnancy going good, still need to make an OB-GYN appt.
bryan is at work right now. or most likely is actually being driven around by a co-worker trying to get more stuff done. he has to pick up a bunch of different things and clothing (uniform) for a deployment bag that he always has to have ready. like a chemical suit and helmet and stuff.
we went to our driver's license class last wednesday - it was an easy 36-question test. although they're kind of retarded and include questions about not swimming in the ocean by misawa because of fatal riptides. not exactly sure what that has to do with DRIVING. their stop signs are triangle and the wording on the signs are japanese, even on base. the highest speed limit on base is 50 kilometers per hour, which is what, like 30 mph. (you multiply the km by .6 to get mph). but usual speeds are 30 and 40kph (so-18 and 24 mph). very slow. lanes are smaller, even on base.
we finally bought our car today. ('91 surf/4runner) for the $1500. about time seeing as we've been here 2 wks today. we get a temporary pass for on base and then we go to an insurance agency off base and they do a title transfer and 2 days later we pick up our title from them and take it back on base to get a base decal. liability insurance for the year is something like 55,860 yen, which currently is uh probably about $530. i have my japanese driver's license but bryan has to go pick his up from his 1st sergeant because that's what they do for peeps 25 and under. i think it's gay. i think they do an additional briefing with them telling them not to drink and drive and shtuff like that. so hopefully he was able to pick that up today. parking when driving in the right side of your car is definitely different.
fri. 6/9/06
ok then. bryan is at work. i need a job. i was going to apply for one at one of the two banks here, and went online to do it on wednesday, and it's no longer there. CRAP. i'm not sure where i'm going to be able to work and the time i have left to work gets shorter and shorter every week!
the sun comes up here at like 3am so when we move into our place i think we'll have to get like 3 layers of curtains for how much light we want dimmed out. sheesh.
as of yesterday we were going to have to move to an off-base hotel on monday cuz they had absolutely no room for us here on base anymore. we were upset because here on base we have a kitchen in our room and movie channels and stuff and off base all we'd have would be a small refrigerator. so that very much limits on what food you can eat. then of course you're a little further from everything and we just have the one vehicle...etc. then i called finance to find out how much money they give us per day and they told me on-base rates and the off-base rates, and then i wasn't mad anymore about having to move off base for 25 nights til we get our place. off base they would have given us $183/day for food, besides being reimbursed for our nightly room cost. holy cow! multiply that by 25 nights and you're looking at about $4500! anyway, then they call us this morning and tell us they've got a place for us here in this same building, that we'll just have to switch rooms on monday. oh well. it will definitely be more convenient and we wouldn't have to go out to eat as much. but they still give us $86/day for food on base - still a ton. over the 44 nights total that we'll be in lodging, they're gonna give us about $4000 (not including the full reimbursement we get for paying the $42/night room cost). we're pretty dang excited about that (too bad it's $2400 less than if we did move off base on monday!). another chunk to put towards paying off the mustang! they gave us $1166 for travel pay for all the driving we did from texas to seattle, when it really only cost us about $450, so we made decent money on that too... besides the $1700 that they just gave us for moving, which is called the dislocation allowance and is intended to help pay for un-reimbursed moving costs and setting up a new household for your family in the next place. wow, which we had none of. so we're liking how this is turning out for us. so the $2500 we lost on getting rid of the civic within a week, isn't TOO bad in light of all that. so all of this is VERY very helpful in our goal of paying off the mustang within a year of buying it.
besides, i was worried that they'd only have japanese-style toilets in the off-base hotel. yeah- it's like a ceramic trough. you seriously squat over the top of it. it's camping all over again. i've never tried it, and not real excited to start. when we went to the mall in Hachinohe (30 min away) on one of the tours we went on, at first all i saw was that kind in the bathroom and i was getting a little worried, but found 2 normal toilets ("western-style") that they have if you have a little baby with you and they had a little seat in the corner right by you to strap your kid in. the hand dryers are different too. it's like a slot that you put your hands between.
bryan has been playing a little softball with one of the MXS (maintenance) teams. of course he has to borrow a glove and doesn't have cleats cuz they're still on their way with the rest of our stuff. the only shoes he'd allow me to bring for him were the new running shoes we bought right before we left. WANTED to bring his older ones too, but NO HE WOULDN'T NEED THEM. pshh. it's still colder too so i wish i would have packed my hoodies instead of only having a few jackets. it's still in the lower 60's. and apparently in some of the summer months it rains like half of the days. we have gotten conflicting reports on the weather here. when we first got here people told us how HOT it's going to be and how bad it is without a/c and to stock up on fans ahead of time because they're always sold out in the hot summer months. and then we heard from others that it's really only bad for 3 wks of the summer. but mostly we've heard it's freakin hot. but yet, it's june, and nowhere near as hot as what we've been used to living anywhere else this time of year. so we'll see.
the mall was just as expensive as malls we're used to i think. we went to a shopping place nearby misawa and had to have our tour guide order for us all in the food court. i got their chicken basket - you know, fried chicken and fries - so you think you know what to expect - no, GROSS. bryan got some noodle thing with a layer of eggs and unknown white stuff on the top. but he liked it. tonight we're going to go to a place off base called the viking. i guess it's like mongolian-style but everyone says it's really good. it's all you can eat but they have a time limit of 90 min. funny. they also have a russian restaurant off base that we'll have to try, and one italian place - but they say it's not really the italian we're used to as americans, that it's as close as the japanese can get to it.
oh yeah, also got signed up for a program called WIC (i think stands for women, infants, and children). where they give you basically 3 blank checks for each month to purchase a specified amount of milk, juice, eggs, cheese, beans/peanut butter...i can't remember what else. but that's cool. when the baby is born they give you separate checks for them too, for like formula if you want it and stuff. it's just a nutritional-type thing, so too bad it doesn't include diapers.
so just a quick way to explain what test cell is (where bryan is working), the people in maintenance in the back shop fix a problem and once they're done give the engine to test cell and they run the engine and make sure all is good. so just a basic explanation. the flight line part of maintenance is what it is - they're on the flight line, so they're most in the action i guess. which i suppose is why they're always gone. i hear like half of the year. but anyway, bryan hears that test cell only gets like 2 engines to run a week, thus all the downtime. which will be great for all of the studying he has to do this year.
oh - JENNI - one of the guys that plays on the softball team - his last name is woody and he knows you from south grand prairie high school (bryan was wearing one of the shirts you gave us) - i guess he graduated 3 yrs before you or so, but was around while you were playing sports there.
um, i guess that's all for now. talk to you all later!
julie and bryan