9th letter
Man it is HOT. We hit 96 degrees last Thursday – with the nasty humidity here need I remind you; talk about feeling like Houston!! *JENNI – I know how you feel about the weather there – you really can feel the sweat dripping down your back and it’s so disgusting and you can’t do anything about it! (Except we could escape it there, with our apartment always set at like 65 degrees!) I can’t believe I didn’t complain more about it than I did, when I was there. Our arms were always glistening – GROSS.* But it is time to complain more about it here. Our bathroom always has a “damp” smell to it. The back of our toilet is always condensating (not really a word) and dripping onto the floor. Our towels have to be replaced almost every day because they never dry!! Everything in the house kind of feels “moist” sometimes. And don’t buy a lot of boxes of cereal at one time because they won’t stay good! Blah blah blah. But I think I always just feel hotter than everyone else. I don’t know – must have something to do with this mysterious huge lump that I have on my front side. Never feel like doing a lot of physical stuff cuz sometimes it’s just so suffocating. Sucks to have to carry a fan with you wherever you go in the house (because in case you all don’t remember – WE DON’T HAVE A/C).
Once September hits it’s gonna feel like this baby thing is so close. I can’t believe it sometimes. Most of the time I just don’t feel ready! The feeling changes every day. Today I feel excited. I guess I’m always excited, just some days more than others, and some days it’s accompanied by other feelings as well! But I’m excited too about getting back to feeling normal. Although people have told me how they feel after having a baby and it doesn’t always sound normal! No, but, like my stomach. I feel sick a lot, but I know it also goes hand in hand with this heat. I am glad that the baby is coming in October (the 12th) after all the heat is gone. You think I’d want to have him now so that I don’t feel as hot, but it seems like it would be so hot if you always had this little warm body that you’re holding! I had a bunch of weird baby dreams last night, but I had a girl. I’ll be 33 wks tomorrow. I have been pretty consistent with the whole gaining a pound a week, for the last 6 weeks! I’ve gained 13 pounds since before I was pregnant, but if you count the 7 that I lost at the beginning of the pregnancy then it’s 20. But yeah, let’s face it; I was pretty chubby before I got pregnant so I was hoping to gain as little as possible because I already had all the baby could need!! So I have a lot to lose after the baby is born! The girl I lived with while Bryan was at tech school, her baby is just over 3 mos old, and she’s already lost 54 pounds!! (Jessica I hope you don’t mind me sharing that!) I have been having some painful “tightenings” of my lower stomach, which yesterday the doctor said were contractions. She said to be careful not to get dehydrated because that will bring them on and I’m just too early to be having the baby quite yet! It is really crazy that I could have the baby in 3 weeks and it really would be ok. Especially in 4 weeks, then it really would be considered ok and not that big of a deal! That’s so soon!!!
I pulled another retardo yesterday. I was opening the door of the pantry to throw something away and put my foot right in the way of the opening door – so when I yanked open the door I ripped off my toenail. Eeesh it hurt. Then I didn’t realize it was bleeding so I had to clean blood off the carpet too. Yuck. What a dummy!
Bryan finished his summer semester last Monday. He got 2 A’s and 2 A-‘s. In one of his classes he needed 385.4 points to get an A, and he got 385. !!!! Sheesh. So now the Fall semester starts tomorrow. His last 4 classes – YAY!! Advanced Aerodynamics, High Altitude Navigation Management, his last English, and his class for his research paper that he has to write for his Bachelor’s. I am also taking 2 classes and I’m not excited. The books are over $100 each, and we didn’t get our usual pell grants this year cuz we made too much money last year! Dang.
We went to dinner on Sunday at Liz and Justin’s house, with a bunch of others. I’m glad those dinners happen often here – it’s really fun. Liz was telling us how after she had the baby she would keep waking up at night and kick Justin with both of her feet telling him that he was on the baby and to get off of him! This is really weird considering not once did they have Sam sleep in bed with them! Funny. On Saturday we went to one of the couples’ baby’s 1-yr-old birthday party at the base beach. We have a while before we hit that mark!! We went and saw “Nacho Libre” – wow that movie is dumb, but funny – but something I think I would only be interested in seeing once.
On Thursday Bryan starts what’s called the Exercise. They have to wear like their chem. suits around and stuff and have to work 12-hr days for a week, and have to work the weekend too. It’s to prepare them for being deployed and stuff I guess. Interesting. I don’t know what he’s going to do for 12 hours! When we got here in May they were just barely finishing one up, so this is Bryan’s first one.
Well, we will be submitting Bryan’s officer packet in December. We hope he will have the officer test taken before the baby comes, and his upgrade-training tests completed by the first of November. And he’ll need to start talking to his Commander to start building a relationship there because he’ll need a letter of recommendation from them. This is a big deal and will be a lot of work, and a lot of paying attention to detail so that this packet is perfect. The packets are accepted from the 6th to the 20th of December and the board meets January 23rd. And around February 23rd we find out who they selected. Crazy. I feel confident in Bryan and his achievements thus far in his life. I think if everything is submitted correctly and it’s all well-done and well-said and everything has been included, then they would be crazy not to take him. Sure he’s lacking experience in the Air Force seeing as he hasn’t been in very long, but if that was really something they looked down on, then they wouldn’t have made a requirement that one has to be in a year enlisted before applying for a commission; they would have made it 2 or 3 yrs if that was the case. Plus, over all others who are coming in from ROTC and just applying for Officer Training School straight from the civilian world, Bryan already knows what the Air Force is like, he has already shown a willingness to be a part of it even though his main goal is to fly, he has already proven himself in that aspect – that he can handle being here. He has already proven that he can handle a lot of things at once without copping out – 3 of his school semesters were while he was in the Air Force-while he was studying and will soon excel on the officer test, while he was completing his training. He has proven that he is motivated – putting himself through school - and not just through any school program, but a flight program that involves extremely high costs. Not only that but he was almost always working at the same time, yet still will end with a 3.7 GPA – starting college for the first time in 2004, and completing it in 2006. They are looking for leaders? – Bryan has always been in student government, always been a leader in school – he served a 2-year mission voluntarily – he was an Honor Graduate in Basic Training - he was a red rope in Tech School, the highest student leadership one can attain there: where you are first selected from many applications to be a green rope student leader, then from among the green ropes several are later selected to be yellow ropes and to take on more responsibility, then just a couple are selected by the Military Training Leader to become a red rope and lead them all. What more could Bryan really show this board? They wouldn’t have to be worried if he could handle the Air Force, they wouldn’t have to worry that he couldn’t handle the program (seeing as he flew 260 hours in just over a year and completed all the training with awesome grades!); they wouldn’t have to worry that he wasn’t well-rounded or not a good leader. It all just makes sense to us; we just hope it makes sense to them. We figure with all that he has going for him, if he’s not selected, then we’ll submit another packet when they take them again end of next May, and we’ll keep submitting and keep submitting, and if he’s not selected, then it must not be meant to be. And that will be disappointing but okay, and we will finish our 4 yrs or so and go into the airlines! But, I feel good about this - things have gone so right for us thus far in the Air Force, so we must be meant to be here, and I think that he will be selected in February if we are well prepared.
So now that I’ve gone on and on about how awesome I think my husband is and how qualified I think he is, I suppose I can move on to other things. Can you tell this is a big deal to us! A goal he’s had all his life – is coming very soon!
He was assigned to AEF (I think it stands for Air Expeditionary Force?) 5, which their time to be on-call to be deployed is January-April. They say everyone is being deployed these days, but his supervisors don’t think they’ll be going anywhere. BUT, the thing is, since we are submitting that officer packet in December, even if his whole shop went, he wouldn’t, because his status will be changed so that he can’t get any assignments while waiting to hear back from the board.
So last week Bryan had Thursday off. They each got to choose a day off because they were so not busy. He’s worked a lot of 4-day weeks! But I guess they also did that because of the exercise starting this week and the long hours they were gonna have.
Okay so I’m gonna send this and then I’ll send off an email with a bunch of pictures – for real this time. I know I said that last week. I forgot to take the camera with me on Sunday to take pictures of off base after church and around the base on our way home, so we’ll have to send that next time. But we have a few pictures of moi and my huge belly (hope they’re not too graphic for you), from a few weeks ago and before. And I just took a bunch of pictures of our place for you to see. You’ll see the front of our place – we are the bottom right unit, and also the view from the building’s front door. Our car is the gray SUV (4-runner/Surf). And then you’ll see what it looks like when you walk into the building and the hallway in between the units – the doors that you see are the doors to our storage units, and the doors to the apartments are on the sides. You’ll see what it looks like when we look out our back sliding doors at our backyard and a little further. And then in the baby’s room we still haven’t put up trim below the stripes that we painted, and our suitcases are in the closet until they finish the other storage units that they’re building for everybody outside. We still need to put up our curtains above our sliding doors and I’m still working on Bryan to get curtains for the 2 kitchen windows, and we have yet to buy some for the baby room. And you can see our hotel-like ones in our bedroom (we just got those last week and they help keep that early-morning light out, and the heat!). We still need to order some pictures to put above our bed so it’s not so empty up there. And as you can see we only sleep with sheets (and Bryan has a little blanket) cuz it’s too hot (in case you didn’t notice the fans everywhere in the pictures). And I just don’t know what to put above our kitchen table on that wall, and can you see the highchair we have set up in there?! (We put it together so that when everyone came to our place for dinner one of the kids could use it. Plus we put our leaf in our table for that and just left it in). And then when I’m in the maroon shirt that’s when we took a walk down to the base beach, although you probably can’t tell since it’s almost dark. And Bryan took some pictures for when we went to the real beach (the ocean) a few weekends ago. And the ones when I’m in the green shirt were when we were still in the hotel. And the ones of us together and of a lot of side shots of me in the tan shirt with stripes, were at the beginning of August, and Bryan pulled the butt of my pants way out and thought it was hilarious cuz they’re HUGE pants. And then the one of my bare belly that really shows you how MASSIVE it is, that maybe I shouldn’t have sent, was just last week. Maybe I’ll send the frontal view as well, but that really is scary. It shows that nasty line you get down the middle of your belly. And by the way, my belly button is pretty much nonexistent now even though I normally have an unusually deep belly button. So those pictures were taken after I had gone on a walk with another pregnant girl near here. Ok, I think I got them all covered. A little glimpse into our life. They’re not the best quality – cuz we don’t have our camera on the highest setting, but after we get these ones developed when it’s full, we’ll switch it!
Hope you enjoyed my journal entry this week (that’s pretty much what it is!) – I know it’s long!
Love, Julie, Bryan, Brock Blumenkrantz
I posted some of the pictures - the rest can be viewed by clicking on this link: http://www.kodakgallery.com/I.jsp?c=2t7pqtrs.7rnxnjag&x=0&y=p3pnq8&localeid=en_US and then clicking on the picture to start the slideshow.
I explained these in the letter, but I added a few others of a Buddhist temple and a Samurai house and cemetary that we saw on tours when we first got here. And of us when Bryan's mom did us a favor and got us an ultrasound before we left the states. And a few of the fireworks (coming out of the water) at the Lake Towada festival we went to in July. And um, when I made waffles for dinner and I was on my last batch and just wanted to use the rest of the batter and made a mess!
Tuesday, August 22, 2006
Pregnant belly pics
+-+Aug+8,+2006.JPG)
8/8 and 8/14/06 (due date was 10/12)
Bare belly shots are scary!...almost...inappropriate?
Don't make fun of the walking outfit! bleh
Our home in Misawa, Japan (on the base)
-What the front of our fourplex looks like. Not anything too exciting eh?!
-Looking out from the front of the 4-plex - that's our old gray 4runner (surf).
-Good 'ol nameplates on the building.
-The hallway in between the units - we're on the right side - the front door's on the right wall.
...more of our home...
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-Walking in the front door.
-Our living room.
-Our living room from the other view. Notice all the fans??!
-View into the backyard from living room.
...and finally, more of our home
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-Master bedroom and the unfinished 2nd bedroom - we weren't going for a mint green!
Monday, August 14, 2006
8/14/06 - 8th Letter
8th letter
Mon. 8/14/06
It’s me again. We are enjoying our new place and all has been put away. We just need to put up some curtains and go to the store to find others for the bedrooms and kitchen. And we just need a few more pictures. We also found a decent baby swing on the curb (once a week people put their big things on the curb for the garbage peeps to pick up in the morning). Up here in the North Area that happens on Tuesday nights and there are a lot of people who make quite a habit out of driving around and checking out the goods on the curbs to see if there’s anything they want. Our friends from the plane picked up quite a nice entertainment center!
Last night we had 4 couples over for dinner. We invited 7 but 3 of them couldn’t come. They all have one kid except for one of the couples. They all kept commenting on how comfortable our couches were and grumbling how cruddy theirs were. --And mom, they thought it pretty amazing the scrapbooks I have that you put together for me as I was growing up. And then I told them how you did that for each of your 6 kids!-- But when everyone around you has their kid you definitely feel like you should have one too! But of course that will be solved in 2 months! I think the other couple who don’t have a kid, nor are they pregnant, definitely feel out of place sometimes.
Bryan spoke in church yesterday too, on the 1st Article of Faith. He did a great job. He is amazing how he handles all the things he needs to do – he makes it seem like he barely has anything to do, and so never seems to be stressed out. He was complaining yesterday how there is one kid in his class who just won’t keep his mouth shut – he was frustrated that he had to stop the class completely to deal with this kid. We talked about ways he could handle it and he’s going to do like a game board where as a group they earn points to work towards the ultimate goal of a party, but along the way can earn treats for some of the Sundays too. So that way there will be some peer pressure on the kid to keep quiet. The mom of one of the kids in his class told me that her kid said he really liked Bryan.
Saturday night we were getting ready to go to bed and I was reading to Bryan and felt fine and the next second I had to stop because I had to go to the bathroom to throw up! Very weird. It’s so disgusting and I thought I was done with that!! I can’t believe how much my feet have hurt during this pregnancy though. Honestly, who could think that feet could hurt so much so often! Bryan has been really nice to rub them for me on the nights where it’s really bad; otherwise they still hurt when I get up in the morning!
2 Saturdays ago we went to the beach in Hachinohe, about 45 min from here, where you’re safer from the riptides. It was cool and really pretty. I’ll attach some pictures of it. We followed Bryan’s supervisor’s family (once again) and they brought with them the new guy in test cell, Nate.
On Friday I went to a luncheon with 6 other girls at Tiffany’s house and that was really fun. Girls are so funny away from their husbands! I made peanut butter candy kiss cookies and dang were they good!! Although I had to substitute a Hershey’s bar for the candy kisses because all we had in the commissary was dark chocolate or peanut butter kisses – no milk chocolate! Sheesh, you just can’t go to the store and get what you need here sometimes! Last night Tiffany told us that Friday night they were in their living room and a black man walked right into their house - - - wearing nothing but a wife beater!!! Tiffany said they all just stared for a second in shock, then she covered her eyes, and finally the silence was broken by Josh (her husband) telling him, “You’re in the wrong house dude.” The guy was obviously very drunk and he stumbled out; apparently another one of their neighbor’s “friends.” They said she has a lot of them. Later Josh walked out of his front door, and stepped in remains the guy had left behind on their front porch, in his bare feet – GROSS.
So I’ll be 32 wks on Wednesday. Our branch president, who is also one of the 2 pediatricians here on base, told me as long as I have the baby after 2 more weeks they won’t have to ship me out of here. They don’t handle those kinds of high-risk deliveries here. I’m humongous and I’ll have to attach some of those pictures too. I’m not exactly looking forward to the next 2 months because those have obviously got to be the worst belly-size-wise. October 12th is rapidly approaching and sometimes I think, I’m just not ready!! But I haven’t been feeling well a lot of the mornings, and I feel very drained a lot of the time. I’ll be excited when the bump is out of my belly and in my hands, and I can bend forward again!
Going back to how awesome Bryan’s job is – he was sent home last Wednesday after only being there a half hour because there was nothing to do! I guess they haven’t had an engine for 2 weeks! Bryan said he overheard his supervisor talking to another guy in test cell about who they would get rid of if asked to shorten the crew in test cell. And the guy said, “Blue (what they call Bryan), because he is the new guy.” And his supervisor said that that would be a mistake. So that’s good! Apparently he thinks highly of Bryan! Good to know.
The ankle/shin that I fell on 2 months ago still has not healed! Hopefully after I have the baby it will go back to normal.
Anyway, I think I’m done now. I’ll attach some pictures, but we keep forgetting to take pictures of the base and of around the base – we keep forgetting to take the camera with us in the car when we’re just running errands. So we’ll do that this week and I’ll attach them in the next letter! But we are very happy and doing well! Just can’t wait for this humidity/heat to leave us – it really wouldn’t be bad at all if we could just escape it once we went in our house!-BECAUSE WE HAVE NO AIR CONDITIONING HERE!! When we say we want winter to come people say we won’t be saying that when we have to shovel every single morning!
Well thanks to those of you who email us updates on yourselves as well – it’s good to hear from you! Hope everyone is good and we’ll talk to you later.
JULIE AND BRYAN AND MAYBE-SOONER-THAN-LATER BROCK BLUMENKRANTZ
Mon. 8/14/06
It’s me again. We are enjoying our new place and all has been put away. We just need to put up some curtains and go to the store to find others for the bedrooms and kitchen. And we just need a few more pictures. We also found a decent baby swing on the curb (once a week people put their big things on the curb for the garbage peeps to pick up in the morning). Up here in the North Area that happens on Tuesday nights and there are a lot of people who make quite a habit out of driving around and checking out the goods on the curbs to see if there’s anything they want. Our friends from the plane picked up quite a nice entertainment center!
Last night we had 4 couples over for dinner. We invited 7 but 3 of them couldn’t come. They all have one kid except for one of the couples. They all kept commenting on how comfortable our couches were and grumbling how cruddy theirs were. --And mom, they thought it pretty amazing the scrapbooks I have that you put together for me as I was growing up. And then I told them how you did that for each of your 6 kids!-- But when everyone around you has their kid you definitely feel like you should have one too! But of course that will be solved in 2 months! I think the other couple who don’t have a kid, nor are they pregnant, definitely feel out of place sometimes.
Bryan spoke in church yesterday too, on the 1st Article of Faith. He did a great job. He is amazing how he handles all the things he needs to do – he makes it seem like he barely has anything to do, and so never seems to be stressed out. He was complaining yesterday how there is one kid in his class who just won’t keep his mouth shut – he was frustrated that he had to stop the class completely to deal with this kid. We talked about ways he could handle it and he’s going to do like a game board where as a group they earn points to work towards the ultimate goal of a party, but along the way can earn treats for some of the Sundays too. So that way there will be some peer pressure on the kid to keep quiet. The mom of one of the kids in his class told me that her kid said he really liked Bryan.
Saturday night we were getting ready to go to bed and I was reading to Bryan and felt fine and the next second I had to stop because I had to go to the bathroom to throw up! Very weird. It’s so disgusting and I thought I was done with that!! I can’t believe how much my feet have hurt during this pregnancy though. Honestly, who could think that feet could hurt so much so often! Bryan has been really nice to rub them for me on the nights where it’s really bad; otherwise they still hurt when I get up in the morning!
2 Saturdays ago we went to the beach in Hachinohe, about 45 min from here, where you’re safer from the riptides. It was cool and really pretty. I’ll attach some pictures of it. We followed Bryan’s supervisor’s family (once again) and they brought with them the new guy in test cell, Nate.
On Friday I went to a luncheon with 6 other girls at Tiffany’s house and that was really fun. Girls are so funny away from their husbands! I made peanut butter candy kiss cookies and dang were they good!! Although I had to substitute a Hershey’s bar for the candy kisses because all we had in the commissary was dark chocolate or peanut butter kisses – no milk chocolate! Sheesh, you just can’t go to the store and get what you need here sometimes! Last night Tiffany told us that Friday night they were in their living room and a black man walked right into their house - - - wearing nothing but a wife beater!!! Tiffany said they all just stared for a second in shock, then she covered her eyes, and finally the silence was broken by Josh (her husband) telling him, “You’re in the wrong house dude.” The guy was obviously very drunk and he stumbled out; apparently another one of their neighbor’s “friends.” They said she has a lot of them. Later Josh walked out of his front door, and stepped in remains the guy had left behind on their front porch, in his bare feet – GROSS.
So I’ll be 32 wks on Wednesday. Our branch president, who is also one of the 2 pediatricians here on base, told me as long as I have the baby after 2 more weeks they won’t have to ship me out of here. They don’t handle those kinds of high-risk deliveries here. I’m humongous and I’ll have to attach some of those pictures too. I’m not exactly looking forward to the next 2 months because those have obviously got to be the worst belly-size-wise. October 12th is rapidly approaching and sometimes I think, I’m just not ready!! But I haven’t been feeling well a lot of the mornings, and I feel very drained a lot of the time. I’ll be excited when the bump is out of my belly and in my hands, and I can bend forward again!
Going back to how awesome Bryan’s job is – he was sent home last Wednesday after only being there a half hour because there was nothing to do! I guess they haven’t had an engine for 2 weeks! Bryan said he overheard his supervisor talking to another guy in test cell about who they would get rid of if asked to shorten the crew in test cell. And the guy said, “Blue (what they call Bryan), because he is the new guy.” And his supervisor said that that would be a mistake. So that’s good! Apparently he thinks highly of Bryan! Good to know.
The ankle/shin that I fell on 2 months ago still has not healed! Hopefully after I have the baby it will go back to normal.
Anyway, I think I’m done now. I’ll attach some pictures, but we keep forgetting to take pictures of the base and of around the base – we keep forgetting to take the camera with us in the car when we’re just running errands. So we’ll do that this week and I’ll attach them in the next letter! But we are very happy and doing well! Just can’t wait for this humidity/heat to leave us – it really wouldn’t be bad at all if we could just escape it once we went in our house!-BECAUSE WE HAVE NO AIR CONDITIONING HERE!! When we say we want winter to come people say we won’t be saying that when we have to shovel every single morning!
Well thanks to those of you who email us updates on yourselves as well – it’s good to hear from you! Hope everyone is good and we’ll talk to you later.
JULIE AND BRYAN AND MAYBE-SOONER-THAN-LATER BROCK BLUMENKRANTZ
Saturday, July 29, 2006
7/29/06 - 7th Letter
7th letter
it's been awhile since i've written, not since july 5th. cuz the week following that letter it was so hot and stifling in the computer rooms that i just couldn't take it. now it was only in the low 80's, with of course humidity, but the hotel rooms heated up to way more than that. you could get no relief. the fans in our room were just blowing warm air so they didn't help at all, and you just felt so sticky that you felt you should be taking at least 4 showers a day. (because there's no a/c!!! even in the hotel rooms!!) blah. and then the week after that we moved, so i was no longer close to a computer room. and we didn't make trips down to the library, and i figured i'd just wait until we got our internet hooked up in our place. well it got hooked up tues. the 25th, and then it was down the day after that, and then blah blah blah, i've been busy. i'm still putting stuff away. i've never taken this much care in unpacking/organizing and it's taking me forever. i just figured here was the place that we'll live at the longest thus far and i want to put more time into it. and then since they'll pack us up when we leave here, when they unpack us elsewhere it will be so easy cuz everything will be where it's supposed to be cuz i'm an organizational FREAK. i swear i've become obsessive-compulsive about such things here. but besides all this -- it's so GREAT to be out of the hotel!!! 8 weeks about killed us. this place feels so big compared to it, that's for sure. it's so nice to have a washer and dryer readily available a few steps away - something we've been missing since december! it's so nice to not have to lug an all-too-heavy-cuz-i-waited-too-long laundry basket all the way down the hall and down a flight of stairs to get it done, so nice to have a dishwasher and to have enough dishes that you don't run out of them after every meal!, so nice to not have to try to lug all your groceries in one haul cuz it's way too long of a walk to make 2 trips - so nice to be on the bottom floor of this fourplex and a few steps away from our parking space! it's so nice to have all our things back (that we haven't had for 7 months!), to have way more comfy couches than those dang hotel ones or the cruddy wichita falls' apartment one - to have a computer with internet HALLELUJAH!!
7/30
sunday night. today was bryan's first day teaching his new class. his new calling as a valiant 9 teacher. 8 and 9 year olds. so i'm on my own for sunday school now. we just got back from eating dinner. it seems we've eaten dinner somewhere almost every sunday since we've been here. the last month or so it's been potlucks with mostly the same people, different couples hosting every time. they all have one kid. i just met another girl today who is also having a boy in october. but her due date is oct 31 so she's about 3 wks behind me. it's fun - we spend about 3 hrs every sunday with the group of them. two of them will be throwing a baby shower for me so that's really nice of them. the girl asked to do it for me before she even really knew my name. her name is melissa but she looks a lot like beth (michael johnson's wife). her husband also wants to be a pilot but is quite a bit behind bryan (who isn't? -- haha just kidding). he has 25 flight hours versus the 260 that bryan has - and they think THEY owe a lot of money!
bryan's job is freakin' awesome. one day he got tons of homework done, another he got tons of studying in doing practice tests on most of the sections for the officer test. another day he got home at 1:30, and that was the day he had physical training at 6am so he didn't even start work til 8 anyway. a few weeks ago they all went golfing one day. (speaking of, bryan said it was a decent course and it was only $10). on friday i was at the BX (base exchange) getting a few things cuz i took the car that day for an OB appt, and bryan was there with the guys he works with! -doing a little shopping after they had eaten at taco bell. nice. and then we talk to all these other people who work 12-hr days and others who have to frequently work 14-16 hrs, others who have to work graveyard shifts and their life consists of going to work and sleeping - out of the group we see on sundays bryan has got to by far have the easiest, or i guess i should say the best hrs, job. very relaxed! yeah they sit around and joke and throw footballs. we feel very blessed!! needless to say he likes work!
a few weeks ago they got another new guy fresh from tech school (nate -- single) that bryan knew from there. he has gotten a lot of his in-processing done way faster than bryan cuz bryan helped him and knew what he was doing! so they're both being trained right now by the same guy, even though bryan has been here way longer! so bryan did find out that he will be on days and the new guy will be the one who works swing shift. it would have been bryan otherwise, so bryan is relieved. he really wanted to work days.
the baby really likes my upper ribs on my right. no not my left, never my left, my right. he loves to get his feet in there. not so comfortable. sometimes you can see my stomach rolling. 30 weeks on wednesday!
oh, and last saturday we painted the baby room with big 10-inch vertical stripes that go down far enough to be level with the bottom of the window sill (dad remember that was your suggestion - to do vertical stripes instead of horizontal?) they are green but not exactly the green we were going for but it's ok. we had to mix acryllic paint that we got at our craft store with the free white paint that they have at self help. yeah we don't exactly have a home depot here where you can get the exact color you want. a little frustrating. now we're working on getting some trim so we can put up a chair rail where the paint ends. bryan is gonna get checked out at the wood shop i guess. so we thought we were unique doing the vertical stripes but today in tara and eric's house i saw they have vertical stripes from floor to ceiling in their baby's room, but their white stripes are bigger than their colored stripes, and then they have a smaller, second colored striped in the middle of the white. it's cool. but this was our first time around painting anything and i know what i want to do next time with the kids' room in our next place. i figured we'd be in the states and i'll have more access to more supplies!
a few weeks ago we also found out they are no longer paying for being proficient in the russian language. as of june 1st they did that. they said it's an abundant language - that they're paying too many people for it. weird. another guy we know said they also took his pay away for knowing german. same reason. bogus.
i will take pictures of our place once it's being done settled into so you guys can see it. we are gonna order some pictures off of ebay to put above our bed so it's not such a huge empty space since we don't have a headboard for our huge massive king bed (we are lovin' having it back!!). finally got to enjoy the present bryan gave me for christmas - a down/feather bed that you put on top of your mattress - it's nice!! although with that and with a larger than normal mattress cuz it's pillowtop, the sheet corners don't stay under.
we have 5 fans that are usually always all running, plus there's ceiling fans in both bedrooms and the dining room. but it feels much better in this place than the hotel - doesn't retain the heat like the room did. it's nice to have the new carpet and newly-painted walls. and i like things well lit so we have 5 lamps in our previously unlit living room. bryan thinks i went overboard there, (especially since one of them is a really big one with 5 heads on it!) but it's so nice. i hate feeling like the room is dark.
we bought a highchair from our neighbor for $15 - it's a nice one. and tara (the girl's house we ate at today) is going to give us her stroller/carrier combo - her girl is 12 mos now and they got a running stroller instead. i don't know what it looks like but i know it has the base for your car which we wanted. besides, it's free!
a few weekends ago we went to a festival at lake towada - a huge lake about 2 hrs away (a BEAUTIFUL but extremely small, winding roaded drive) - where they shot fireworks from the middle of the lake. it was cool, but not digital, so there were delays in between. but they had some where they threw the fireworks into the water from the back of a speeding boat and it exploded out of the water so that was really cool - something we haven't seen before. we brought the couple we met on the plane with us, and followed bryan's supervisor and the other guy he works with (who is now his trainer). when we got there we got joined by another couple - a guy who was in bryan's class from tech school - melson (that's right griffin). bryan got some nasty thing on a stick that looked like a fried piece of dough shaped like a small flattened ball, that he seemed to think tasted ok. then we made the rounds looking for soft-serve chocolate ice cream for moi - but since no one spoke english to be able to ask them if they had "chocolate," it wasn't until the 3rd place and the 3rd cone that we got it...and then it wasn't that great. the one i had in the mall here was great! better than the states. so we'll have to go back there (but it's 15 min away). sometimes you just want soft-serve, sheesh.
so the japanese movers had all our stuff unpacked in just over 2 hrs. well - not quite all unpacked - i didn't have them unpack our boxes cuz i had nowhere for them to put it - for the same reason why it's taking me so long to get it all done - cuz all our stuff got so dirty while being in storage, that i had to wash it all first. what a pain. most our stuff got here in good shape. our computer desk wasn't so lucky though. the right side has quite a crack in it. we kinda put it back straight and since our computer is on the left side there's not a lot of weight on it, so it will work. but it won't survive another move. plus our coffee table got a good-sized, wide, deep scratch on the top of it, and our end table got a long scratch in it as well. we picked up some wood-colored crayon things from a japanese store off base (homac) to make them not as noticeable. but we will see what we can get from a claim. but all our living room furniture fits better in this place than any other apartment we've had before. i really like this place. (just dumb that they put the heaters on the floor on your wall so it limits furniture placing in all the rooms). guess you all will just have to come visit to see it!
i have felt several earthquakes since the last time i've written. it's cool. 2 of them were while i was working at the tanning salon and it shook the table i was sitting at. bryan was there at the time so he got to enjoy it as well. i ended up working 35.5 hours there - but that's only $177.50 with the cruddy pay. oh well.
bryan is excited to finally have his own glove and cleats to play softball with. about a month ago they had a weekend tournament and played 3 games on friday and at least 10 i think on saturday. they ended up taking 2nd place once the last game ended at about midnight. bryan says he loves the game, but not THAT much.
i had more to say but can't remember it now, but i figured this is long enough already, so, another time. oh yeah, bryan has the day off again tomorrow!
love you all,
bryan, julie, and rib-kicker brock taylor blumenkrantz
it's been awhile since i've written, not since july 5th. cuz the week following that letter it was so hot and stifling in the computer rooms that i just couldn't take it. now it was only in the low 80's, with of course humidity, but the hotel rooms heated up to way more than that. you could get no relief. the fans in our room were just blowing warm air so they didn't help at all, and you just felt so sticky that you felt you should be taking at least 4 showers a day. (because there's no a/c!!! even in the hotel rooms!!) blah. and then the week after that we moved, so i was no longer close to a computer room. and we didn't make trips down to the library, and i figured i'd just wait until we got our internet hooked up in our place. well it got hooked up tues. the 25th, and then it was down the day after that, and then blah blah blah, i've been busy. i'm still putting stuff away. i've never taken this much care in unpacking/organizing and it's taking me forever. i just figured here was the place that we'll live at the longest thus far and i want to put more time into it. and then since they'll pack us up when we leave here, when they unpack us elsewhere it will be so easy cuz everything will be where it's supposed to be cuz i'm an organizational FREAK. i swear i've become obsessive-compulsive about such things here. but besides all this -- it's so GREAT to be out of the hotel!!! 8 weeks about killed us. this place feels so big compared to it, that's for sure. it's so nice to have a washer and dryer readily available a few steps away - something we've been missing since december! it's so nice to not have to lug an all-too-heavy-cuz-i-waited-too-long laundry basket all the way down the hall and down a flight of stairs to get it done, so nice to have a dishwasher and to have enough dishes that you don't run out of them after every meal!, so nice to not have to try to lug all your groceries in one haul cuz it's way too long of a walk to make 2 trips - so nice to be on the bottom floor of this fourplex and a few steps away from our parking space! it's so nice to have all our things back (that we haven't had for 7 months!), to have way more comfy couches than those dang hotel ones or the cruddy wichita falls' apartment one - to have a computer with internet HALLELUJAH!!
7/30
sunday night. today was bryan's first day teaching his new class. his new calling as a valiant 9 teacher. 8 and 9 year olds. so i'm on my own for sunday school now. we just got back from eating dinner. it seems we've eaten dinner somewhere almost every sunday since we've been here. the last month or so it's been potlucks with mostly the same people, different couples hosting every time. they all have one kid. i just met another girl today who is also having a boy in october. but her due date is oct 31 so she's about 3 wks behind me. it's fun - we spend about 3 hrs every sunday with the group of them. two of them will be throwing a baby shower for me so that's really nice of them. the girl asked to do it for me before she even really knew my name. her name is melissa but she looks a lot like beth (michael johnson's wife). her husband also wants to be a pilot but is quite a bit behind bryan (who isn't? -- haha just kidding). he has 25 flight hours versus the 260 that bryan has - and they think THEY owe a lot of money!
bryan's job is freakin' awesome. one day he got tons of homework done, another he got tons of studying in doing practice tests on most of the sections for the officer test. another day he got home at 1:30, and that was the day he had physical training at 6am so he didn't even start work til 8 anyway. a few weeks ago they all went golfing one day. (speaking of, bryan said it was a decent course and it was only $10). on friday i was at the BX (base exchange) getting a few things cuz i took the car that day for an OB appt, and bryan was there with the guys he works with! -doing a little shopping after they had eaten at taco bell. nice. and then we talk to all these other people who work 12-hr days and others who have to frequently work 14-16 hrs, others who have to work graveyard shifts and their life consists of going to work and sleeping - out of the group we see on sundays bryan has got to by far have the easiest, or i guess i should say the best hrs, job. very relaxed! yeah they sit around and joke and throw footballs. we feel very blessed!! needless to say he likes work!
a few weeks ago they got another new guy fresh from tech school (nate -- single) that bryan knew from there. he has gotten a lot of his in-processing done way faster than bryan cuz bryan helped him and knew what he was doing! so they're both being trained right now by the same guy, even though bryan has been here way longer! so bryan did find out that he will be on days and the new guy will be the one who works swing shift. it would have been bryan otherwise, so bryan is relieved. he really wanted to work days.
the baby really likes my upper ribs on my right. no not my left, never my left, my right. he loves to get his feet in there. not so comfortable. sometimes you can see my stomach rolling. 30 weeks on wednesday!
oh, and last saturday we painted the baby room with big 10-inch vertical stripes that go down far enough to be level with the bottom of the window sill (dad remember that was your suggestion - to do vertical stripes instead of horizontal?) they are green but not exactly the green we were going for but it's ok. we had to mix acryllic paint that we got at our craft store with the free white paint that they have at self help. yeah we don't exactly have a home depot here where you can get the exact color you want. a little frustrating. now we're working on getting some trim so we can put up a chair rail where the paint ends. bryan is gonna get checked out at the wood shop i guess. so we thought we were unique doing the vertical stripes but today in tara and eric's house i saw they have vertical stripes from floor to ceiling in their baby's room, but their white stripes are bigger than their colored stripes, and then they have a smaller, second colored striped in the middle of the white. it's cool. but this was our first time around painting anything and i know what i want to do next time with the kids' room in our next place. i figured we'd be in the states and i'll have more access to more supplies!
a few weeks ago we also found out they are no longer paying for being proficient in the russian language. as of june 1st they did that. they said it's an abundant language - that they're paying too many people for it. weird. another guy we know said they also took his pay away for knowing german. same reason. bogus.
i will take pictures of our place once it's being done settled into so you guys can see it. we are gonna order some pictures off of ebay to put above our bed so it's not such a huge empty space since we don't have a headboard for our huge massive king bed (we are lovin' having it back!!). finally got to enjoy the present bryan gave me for christmas - a down/feather bed that you put on top of your mattress - it's nice!! although with that and with a larger than normal mattress cuz it's pillowtop, the sheet corners don't stay under.
we have 5 fans that are usually always all running, plus there's ceiling fans in both bedrooms and the dining room. but it feels much better in this place than the hotel - doesn't retain the heat like the room did. it's nice to have the new carpet and newly-painted walls. and i like things well lit so we have 5 lamps in our previously unlit living room. bryan thinks i went overboard there, (especially since one of them is a really big one with 5 heads on it!) but it's so nice. i hate feeling like the room is dark.
we bought a highchair from our neighbor for $15 - it's a nice one. and tara (the girl's house we ate at today) is going to give us her stroller/carrier combo - her girl is 12 mos now and they got a running stroller instead. i don't know what it looks like but i know it has the base for your car which we wanted. besides, it's free!
a few weekends ago we went to a festival at lake towada - a huge lake about 2 hrs away (a BEAUTIFUL but extremely small, winding roaded drive) - where they shot fireworks from the middle of the lake. it was cool, but not digital, so there were delays in between. but they had some where they threw the fireworks into the water from the back of a speeding boat and it exploded out of the water so that was really cool - something we haven't seen before. we brought the couple we met on the plane with us, and followed bryan's supervisor and the other guy he works with (who is now his trainer). when we got there we got joined by another couple - a guy who was in bryan's class from tech school - melson (that's right griffin). bryan got some nasty thing on a stick that looked like a fried piece of dough shaped like a small flattened ball, that he seemed to think tasted ok. then we made the rounds looking for soft-serve chocolate ice cream for moi - but since no one spoke english to be able to ask them if they had "chocolate," it wasn't until the 3rd place and the 3rd cone that we got it...and then it wasn't that great. the one i had in the mall here was great! better than the states. so we'll have to go back there (but it's 15 min away). sometimes you just want soft-serve, sheesh.
so the japanese movers had all our stuff unpacked in just over 2 hrs. well - not quite all unpacked - i didn't have them unpack our boxes cuz i had nowhere for them to put it - for the same reason why it's taking me so long to get it all done - cuz all our stuff got so dirty while being in storage, that i had to wash it all first. what a pain. most our stuff got here in good shape. our computer desk wasn't so lucky though. the right side has quite a crack in it. we kinda put it back straight and since our computer is on the left side there's not a lot of weight on it, so it will work. but it won't survive another move. plus our coffee table got a good-sized, wide, deep scratch on the top of it, and our end table got a long scratch in it as well. we picked up some wood-colored crayon things from a japanese store off base (homac) to make them not as noticeable. but we will see what we can get from a claim. but all our living room furniture fits better in this place than any other apartment we've had before. i really like this place. (just dumb that they put the heaters on the floor on your wall so it limits furniture placing in all the rooms). guess you all will just have to come visit to see it!
i have felt several earthquakes since the last time i've written. it's cool. 2 of them were while i was working at the tanning salon and it shook the table i was sitting at. bryan was there at the time so he got to enjoy it as well. i ended up working 35.5 hours there - but that's only $177.50 with the cruddy pay. oh well.
bryan is excited to finally have his own glove and cleats to play softball with. about a month ago they had a weekend tournament and played 3 games on friday and at least 10 i think on saturday. they ended up taking 2nd place once the last game ended at about midnight. bryan says he loves the game, but not THAT much.
i had more to say but can't remember it now, but i figured this is long enough already, so, another time. oh yeah, bryan has the day off again tomorrow!
love you all,
bryan, julie, and rib-kicker brock taylor blumenkrantz
Wednesday, July 5, 2006
7/5/06 - 6th Letter
6th letter
I skipped writing last week. I’m sure you were all just devastated.
I wish I could say we were moving in, in 2 days, but I can’t. our move-in date was pushed back to tues., july 18th, because they want to replace the carpet. Sheesh they must be busy if it takes THAT long. We figured it was worth waiting for, for new carpet. And I know it’s been repainted too, so that’ll be nice. But DANG, 55 days / 8 WEEKS, is a LONG time to live in a hotel room. I’m getting pretty sick of it. I could be painting walls and doing all sorts of stuff if we were in our dang place. I really needed the maternity clothes that are coming too. My belly is popping out and I don’t really have any pants to wear. But by the time we can finally get our stuff I won’t need them because it will probably finally be hot. Ploka. (for those of you who don’t know, that’s Russian for bad). But it’s pretty cramped living space right now and I can’t wait to get out of here! Just today we were approved to extend our stay in the hotel room from the 7th to the 18th. Always at the last minute.
I got another ultrasound done last Friday. Yes, apparently it’s different in the states cuz they told me I only got 1, and I got that done at my first appt at 10 wks. I was just over 25 wks when the ultrasound was done but the baby is currently measuring more like a 27-week-er. The radiology tech said based on that my due date would be oct. 5 (currently it’s oct. 12), plus or minus 13 days. The baby was 2 lbs. 2 ounces, +/- 5 ounces. The tech said it was clear as day that it’s a boy. So it’s been confirmed. Last Wednesday they did a 3-hr orientation with about 10 other pregnant girls and the OB nurse. That was kinda cool. This Friday is my actual first OB appt here. Finally. I should be 26 wks today. Brock has been busy playing in my belly. We think we’ve decided on a middle name, too. Brock Taylor. Bryan suggested it.
We finally got to see X-Men 3 last weekend – it was awesome. Superman comes here on base in about 2-3 wks.
For the 4th of july people got off work Monday and Tuesday. They have a lot of days off here it seems. We went to the major mall about 15 min from the base and I was finally able to get some decent soft-serve ice cream I was so excited. And, JACQUIE, I checked out the movies at their theater there, and “Deathnote” isn’t playing. We also went to a store called “Homac” off base, and I guess it’s like a smaller home depot – with a lot less stuff. We went to a place called Cheese Roll last Friday and the food was so-so, but their cheese rolls awesome. It’s like a fried spring roll, but sweeter, with just cheese inside. I got yakisoba and it was those sweet noodles – gross. Before that we had tried to find a thai restaurant that was on the map, but instead walked into some place that looked like a menu of expensive seafood. When bryan told them we wanted to be seated they informed us only reservations – good thing – I didn’t want to eat there after seeing the pictures and prices on the menu.
Sunday we went and ate dinner at josh & tiffany’s house in north area. They are the ones that just had a baby girl – she’s almost 4 wks now I guess (Arlie). He has been in the navy for 7 yrs – joined right out of high school. We like them and hope to hang out w/them more. The ward (or I guess I should say branch) campout Monday night got cancelled because of the rain, but they still held a patriotic FHE (family home evening)/fireside at the church house. What was kinda funny is one of the speakers was Shelagh, a bishopric member’s wife, who is from ENGLAND. she’s cool, we actually went to her house last Monday for dinner and FHE.
So there’s this single guy, Jerome, in our branch. Last Sunday he asked bryan about us coming to dinner and bryan accepted. Then Jerome leaned over and proceeded to ask the guy next to him (bro. stamm) if me and bryan could go to bro. stamm’s house for dinner!! Bryan had never talked to this guy Stamm before and as Priesthood was ending just barely had enough time to ask the guy where he lived, who just rattled off the house # and that was it. When bryan tells me this on our way home I was horrified! We couldn’t figure out if Jerome had been invited to their house for dinner, and then he just took it upon himself to invite us as well, or what. We just felt dumb, and decided not to show up, figuring the stamms had no idea anyway. Well the next day when we were at shelagh’s house for dinner, another guy, mike, who was there, said he had gone to dinner at the stamm’s the previous night and they had been waiting for us! But that Jerome had done the same thing to mike as he did to us – but another shock was that he picked mike up and then dropped him off at the stamm’s cuz he was eating at someone else’s house!! Ahh sheesh. Well we talked to the stamms and apologized and all is well. Apparently Jerome does that to them all the time. --Jerome: you are crazy! lol
I signed up for this New Parent Support thing and I guess they give you a bunch of stuff and have “baby” classes on all sorts of things. It’s cool, they have a lot of programs here.
Also, apparently I was given wrong information from Finance and the money they give us for food per diem is half of what we were expecting. Crappy, because we were excited about that. Oh well, it’s still a lot, just not as much as we were originally told it was gonna be.
I also felt another earthquake, last Saturday morning I think it was, at 2:25am. Bryan was asleep and the slight rocking/squeaking of the bed didn’t wake him. It was cool.
So I just got back from work. That’s right, work. At a tanning salon off base. A girl I know from going to the boys’ softball games, the wife of a guy bryan works with (the ones that just had a little boy), called me Sunday cuz the tanning salon she goes to needed a person to fill in for a week. I’ll work about 30 hrs between today and next Wednesday, and I don’t have to work Sunday. But most of the customers speak Japanese, so it’s quite awkward! The owner, kumi, usually has another American work there but she’s on leave/vacation and they weren’t sure when she’d be back so that’s where I come in. but she (the American) called while I was working tonight and she’s flying in tomorrow night I think she said, so that might be it for me. I don’t really mind if it is though, cuz the pay is only $5/hour!! Blah.
So it’s hard to find a parking spot when you go off base, yet if you’re parked in a non-parking area, it’s a $500 ticket! So you have to look for a big “P,” since the rest of the signs are in freakin’ Japanese. AND, bryan said he heard a guy in his squadron was caught speeding off base and they gave him an $800 ticket! – OUCH
Last week I went to a commissioning briefing for bryan, where they discussed all the different programs they have in place to become an officer. Without going on and on about it all, he said they’re barely taking anyone into OTS (officer training school – which is the way bryan needs to go), except pilots and navigators – so it looks like we’ll be ok there. He said last year they had such a need for them that they held 3 boards for selection. He said they always need more pilots and navigators. So that’s encouraging. But it doesn’t mean it’s easy. They don’t even really want to start helping you put your packet together until you’ve take the officer test (AFOQT) because if you can’t do well on that… well, then there’s not much they can do for you. And apparently it’s a killer test, w/16 timed sections.
Bryan’s summer semester for his online UVSC classes ends aug. 11. soon he’ll probably get his CDC’s (upgrade training – 5 different major tests), and he’ll have to get those done quicker than the month/each time-period they give you. Then he’ll start studying for the AFOQT while finishing his last semester of school online. Plus I’ve been trying to get a hold of the foreign language proficiency lady (for the last MONTH!!) so bryan can take the Russian test and get paid more every month. I’m pretty irritated with her. Ridiculous that I can’t ever seem to get a hold of her, no matter if I email, leave messages, or call at all different times of the day. At the officer briefing they said she had been gone but that now she was back, yet still I can’t get a hold of her and it’s making me pretty mad. We’re talking MONEY here!! Amongst bryan’s busy schedule this year, he’s got to get into volunteering – not just to be any volunteer, but to lead the volunteers. Besides having to excel at work. All the things that need to be done so he can hit his ultimate goal of being an officer so that he can fly. He’s a hard worker!
Well I think this thing is plenty long so I’m done for today/this week.
Love you all, hope all is well.
Julie and Bryan
I skipped writing last week. I’m sure you were all just devastated.
I wish I could say we were moving in, in 2 days, but I can’t. our move-in date was pushed back to tues., july 18th, because they want to replace the carpet. Sheesh they must be busy if it takes THAT long. We figured it was worth waiting for, for new carpet. And I know it’s been repainted too, so that’ll be nice. But DANG, 55 days / 8 WEEKS, is a LONG time to live in a hotel room. I’m getting pretty sick of it. I could be painting walls and doing all sorts of stuff if we were in our dang place. I really needed the maternity clothes that are coming too. My belly is popping out and I don’t really have any pants to wear. But by the time we can finally get our stuff I won’t need them because it will probably finally be hot. Ploka. (for those of you who don’t know, that’s Russian for bad). But it’s pretty cramped living space right now and I can’t wait to get out of here! Just today we were approved to extend our stay in the hotel room from the 7th to the 18th. Always at the last minute.
I got another ultrasound done last Friday. Yes, apparently it’s different in the states cuz they told me I only got 1, and I got that done at my first appt at 10 wks. I was just over 25 wks when the ultrasound was done but the baby is currently measuring more like a 27-week-er. The radiology tech said based on that my due date would be oct. 5 (currently it’s oct. 12), plus or minus 13 days. The baby was 2 lbs. 2 ounces, +/- 5 ounces. The tech said it was clear as day that it’s a boy. So it’s been confirmed. Last Wednesday they did a 3-hr orientation with about 10 other pregnant girls and the OB nurse. That was kinda cool. This Friday is my actual first OB appt here. Finally. I should be 26 wks today. Brock has been busy playing in my belly. We think we’ve decided on a middle name, too. Brock Taylor. Bryan suggested it.
We finally got to see X-Men 3 last weekend – it was awesome. Superman comes here on base in about 2-3 wks.
For the 4th of july people got off work Monday and Tuesday. They have a lot of days off here it seems. We went to the major mall about 15 min from the base and I was finally able to get some decent soft-serve ice cream I was so excited. And, JACQUIE, I checked out the movies at their theater there, and “Deathnote” isn’t playing. We also went to a store called “Homac” off base, and I guess it’s like a smaller home depot – with a lot less stuff. We went to a place called Cheese Roll last Friday and the food was so-so, but their cheese rolls awesome. It’s like a fried spring roll, but sweeter, with just cheese inside. I got yakisoba and it was those sweet noodles – gross. Before that we had tried to find a thai restaurant that was on the map, but instead walked into some place that looked like a menu of expensive seafood. When bryan told them we wanted to be seated they informed us only reservations – good thing – I didn’t want to eat there after seeing the pictures and prices on the menu.
Sunday we went and ate dinner at josh & tiffany’s house in north area. They are the ones that just had a baby girl – she’s almost 4 wks now I guess (Arlie). He has been in the navy for 7 yrs – joined right out of high school. We like them and hope to hang out w/them more. The ward (or I guess I should say branch) campout Monday night got cancelled because of the rain, but they still held a patriotic FHE (family home evening)/fireside at the church house. What was kinda funny is one of the speakers was Shelagh, a bishopric member’s wife, who is from ENGLAND. she’s cool, we actually went to her house last Monday for dinner and FHE.
So there’s this single guy, Jerome, in our branch. Last Sunday he asked bryan about us coming to dinner and bryan accepted. Then Jerome leaned over and proceeded to ask the guy next to him (bro. stamm) if me and bryan could go to bro. stamm’s house for dinner!! Bryan had never talked to this guy Stamm before and as Priesthood was ending just barely had enough time to ask the guy where he lived, who just rattled off the house # and that was it. When bryan tells me this on our way home I was horrified! We couldn’t figure out if Jerome had been invited to their house for dinner, and then he just took it upon himself to invite us as well, or what. We just felt dumb, and decided not to show up, figuring the stamms had no idea anyway. Well the next day when we were at shelagh’s house for dinner, another guy, mike, who was there, said he had gone to dinner at the stamm’s the previous night and they had been waiting for us! But that Jerome had done the same thing to mike as he did to us – but another shock was that he picked mike up and then dropped him off at the stamm’s cuz he was eating at someone else’s house!! Ahh sheesh. Well we talked to the stamms and apologized and all is well. Apparently Jerome does that to them all the time. --Jerome: you are crazy! lol
I signed up for this New Parent Support thing and I guess they give you a bunch of stuff and have “baby” classes on all sorts of things. It’s cool, they have a lot of programs here.
Also, apparently I was given wrong information from Finance and the money they give us for food per diem is half of what we were expecting. Crappy, because we were excited about that. Oh well, it’s still a lot, just not as much as we were originally told it was gonna be.
I also felt another earthquake, last Saturday morning I think it was, at 2:25am. Bryan was asleep and the slight rocking/squeaking of the bed didn’t wake him. It was cool.
So I just got back from work. That’s right, work. At a tanning salon off base. A girl I know from going to the boys’ softball games, the wife of a guy bryan works with (the ones that just had a little boy), called me Sunday cuz the tanning salon she goes to needed a person to fill in for a week. I’ll work about 30 hrs between today and next Wednesday, and I don’t have to work Sunday. But most of the customers speak Japanese, so it’s quite awkward! The owner, kumi, usually has another American work there but she’s on leave/vacation and they weren’t sure when she’d be back so that’s where I come in. but she (the American) called while I was working tonight and she’s flying in tomorrow night I think she said, so that might be it for me. I don’t really mind if it is though, cuz the pay is only $5/hour!! Blah.
So it’s hard to find a parking spot when you go off base, yet if you’re parked in a non-parking area, it’s a $500 ticket! So you have to look for a big “P,” since the rest of the signs are in freakin’ Japanese. AND, bryan said he heard a guy in his squadron was caught speeding off base and they gave him an $800 ticket! – OUCH
Last week I went to a commissioning briefing for bryan, where they discussed all the different programs they have in place to become an officer. Without going on and on about it all, he said they’re barely taking anyone into OTS (officer training school – which is the way bryan needs to go), except pilots and navigators – so it looks like we’ll be ok there. He said last year they had such a need for them that they held 3 boards for selection. He said they always need more pilots and navigators. So that’s encouraging. But it doesn’t mean it’s easy. They don’t even really want to start helping you put your packet together until you’ve take the officer test (AFOQT) because if you can’t do well on that… well, then there’s not much they can do for you. And apparently it’s a killer test, w/16 timed sections.
Bryan’s summer semester for his online UVSC classes ends aug. 11. soon he’ll probably get his CDC’s (upgrade training – 5 different major tests), and he’ll have to get those done quicker than the month/each time-period they give you. Then he’ll start studying for the AFOQT while finishing his last semester of school online. Plus I’ve been trying to get a hold of the foreign language proficiency lady (for the last MONTH!!) so bryan can take the Russian test and get paid more every month. I’m pretty irritated with her. Ridiculous that I can’t ever seem to get a hold of her, no matter if I email, leave messages, or call at all different times of the day. At the officer briefing they said she had been gone but that now she was back, yet still I can’t get a hold of her and it’s making me pretty mad. We’re talking MONEY here!! Amongst bryan’s busy schedule this year, he’s got to get into volunteering – not just to be any volunteer, but to lead the volunteers. Besides having to excel at work. All the things that need to be done so he can hit his ultimate goal of being an officer so that he can fly. He’s a hard worker!
Well I think this thing is plenty long so I’m done for today/this week.
Love you all, hope all is well.
Julie and Bryan
Wednesday, June 21, 2006
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
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
Sunday, June 18, 2006
6/18/06 - Bryan's email
hey there. so i guess i need to sit down and write an email since everyone thinks that julie is the only one that is doing any work around here. sheesh. i go to work for like 8 hours a day then i still have to come home and write all my peeps about what i did. I figure if i keep julie informed then she'll keep everone else informed. its a pretty good system.
i liked the picture of auden under the stroller. gotta start her out right. i'm excited to have my own, but mine's a boy so he'll like that kinda stuff. plus i won't have to worry about hair and dresses and jewelry. all in all its a better deal to have a boy. Sorry cody.
the jobs cool. we had a tour come through about 2 weeks ago. it was a bunch of cadets from the academy. bunch of punk kids. i think they were all seniors but they all looked way young. its weird to think that these kids will be the leaders of tomorrow. makes me think that i could do that job. the one girl came into the shop the next day because she is going to be a maintenance officer in good ol' wichita falls. but they came through and we ran the engine for them. then they let them go inside the actual cell when the engine was running with full after burner. well i tagged along so i could see. we had ear plugs in and ear muffs and it was still loud. its amazing the power that these put out. with the after burner these engines put out about 25,000 lbs of thrust. the amount of air they move is nuts!. when i was in the cell it rumbled all of my guts. it was litterally sucking the air out of my nose. thats the closest anybody can get to that experience without actually jumpimg in the cockpit. I can't even imagine what it would be like to fly one of those. awesome.
i'm sure julie told you all about our moving experince. it wasn't fun but i guess its par for us when we have to move. i expect that when the 7th of july rolls around it will be raining then.
i found out the other day that all of the training that i did in tech school i have to go over again here. its part of my upgrade training. i'm not too happy about it but it'll be nice to review a bunch of things so that i feel more comfortable with them. but i love what i'm doing and it gives me a lot of time to get the things done that need to be done.
so i'm ready for the kid to get here. I'm bored with julie already. i need to someone else to play with. just jokin' but i guess it'll be awhile before i can wrestle with him. oh well. julie gave me my "father's" day present. key word is father. it was some onsies, some burp rags, some bibs and a video game. she made me breakfast in bed too. its hard to enjoy a nice morning in bed when church is at 9 and it takes 10 minutes to get there. but it was good. tomorrow i have off and i think we'll just relax or maybe go get a massage. it'll be good.
I tried to get a hold of dad today too but no go. it went straight to voicemail. i guess by the time you get this it will be a week later. i hope you guys had fun and the drama wasn't too much to handle. i wish we could have been there. julie figured out the other day that it would cost us about $3000 to come back to the states. so we need to plan our time wisely. I'm sure we'll make it back some time we just don't know when right now.
well that about does it for this letter. I should be able to write some more next 'preparation day' :) i hope all is well and i'll write later.
peace out
Bryan
i liked the picture of auden under the stroller. gotta start her out right. i'm excited to have my own, but mine's a boy so he'll like that kinda stuff. plus i won't have to worry about hair and dresses and jewelry. all in all its a better deal to have a boy. Sorry cody.
the jobs cool. we had a tour come through about 2 weeks ago. it was a bunch of cadets from the academy. bunch of punk kids. i think they were all seniors but they all looked way young. its weird to think that these kids will be the leaders of tomorrow. makes me think that i could do that job. the one girl came into the shop the next day because she is going to be a maintenance officer in good ol' wichita falls. but they came through and we ran the engine for them. then they let them go inside the actual cell when the engine was running with full after burner. well i tagged along so i could see. we had ear plugs in and ear muffs and it was still loud. its amazing the power that these put out. with the after burner these engines put out about 25,000 lbs of thrust. the amount of air they move is nuts!. when i was in the cell it rumbled all of my guts. it was litterally sucking the air out of my nose. thats the closest anybody can get to that experience without actually jumpimg in the cockpit. I can't even imagine what it would be like to fly one of those. awesome.
i'm sure julie told you all about our moving experince. it wasn't fun but i guess its par for us when we have to move. i expect that when the 7th of july rolls around it will be raining then.
i found out the other day that all of the training that i did in tech school i have to go over again here. its part of my upgrade training. i'm not too happy about it but it'll be nice to review a bunch of things so that i feel more comfortable with them. but i love what i'm doing and it gives me a lot of time to get the things done that need to be done.
so i'm ready for the kid to get here. I'm bored with julie already. i need to someone else to play with. just jokin' but i guess it'll be awhile before i can wrestle with him. oh well. julie gave me my "father's" day present. key word is father. it was some onsies, some burp rags, some bibs and a video game. she made me breakfast in bed too. its hard to enjoy a nice morning in bed when church is at 9 and it takes 10 minutes to get there. but it was good. tomorrow i have off and i think we'll just relax or maybe go get a massage. it'll be good.
I tried to get a hold of dad today too but no go. it went straight to voicemail. i guess by the time you get this it will be a week later. i hope you guys had fun and the drama wasn't too much to handle. i wish we could have been there. julie figured out the other day that it would cost us about $3000 to come back to the states. so we need to plan our time wisely. I'm sure we'll make it back some time we just don't know when right now.
well that about does it for this letter. I should be able to write some more next 'preparation day' :) i hope all is well and i'll write later.
peace out
Bryan
Wednesday, June 14, 2006
6/14/06 - 4th Letter
4th letter
Wed. 6/14/06 - 11:10am Japan time
There are 10-20 earthquakes here every year. I felt my first one ever in my life Monday morning at 8:05am. Woke me up ‘cuz my bed starting rocking back and forth (we’re on the 4th floor of the hotel). It was crazy! Apparently they have their building on rollers here now. People feel them all the time and it’s not a big deal at all. I guess we’re on a huge fault line. I think this one was a 6-something on the Richter scale but it was in southern japan and then there was an aftershock nearby us in the ocean. I don’t know, I think that’s what bryan said his peeps said at work.
I found out last week that the total weight of all our stuff was about 4700 lbs. Our limit was just under 5700. so we were good there.
so monday we had to switch hotel rooms. but not only rooms, we had to switch buildings. now checkout is noon and checkin 2pm. but we had stuff in fridge and freezer. what the heck am i supposed to do with all our stuff in between, by myself, cuz bryan is at work. we had 5 suitcases, 6 bags of food, 2 backpacks, all his uniforms on hangers, etc. not only did we have a lot of stuff, but we were on the 4th floor and the elevator was broken. of course - it's us, and we're moving. that's how things go on our moving days. so we couldn't bring up the luggage carrier. bryan went and talked to the front desk during his lunch and they changed our checkout to 1pm and said they'd get housekeeping in the room we were waiting on as soon as the people checked out. then he went back to work at 12:30. at quarter-to 1pm i found out about the room being in another building. i called bryan at work cuz there's no way i could do this on my own, and they let him come home for the day. after bryan made several trips down the stairs with all our stuff and i could help him on the last load (our room keys were already deactivated so i stayed in the room with all our stuff) we went to the other bldg and our room was on the 2nd floor and no elevator in the bldg. needless to say by this time i was very frustrated with the hotel. we wondered why we couldn't have stayed in our room and whoever was scheduled to be in it, to be put in the room we were moving to...?!?! whatever. this other room is smaller, but the setup slightly smarter. i could only see the top half of my face in the bathroom mirror in our first room. honestly who puts mirrors that high!! there was nowhere to put your food and the bathroom was cramped. the view was kind of cool, but i forgot to take a picture of it, sorry. the room we're in now is $14 less a night (even though that makes no difference to us cuz it's reimbursed), the bed is smaller (full-size instead of queen -- we can't wait to get our bed!), there's no disposal!, and NO DISHWASHER!!!!!!!! ahhh i thought we'd had the last of that when we moved away from wichita falls! i told bryan we were going to go buy paper products for our dishes. cuz besides that, in the cupboards they only have 2 bowls and like 3 plates, etc. the bedroom was pretty cramped but with a little bit of furniture movement by me, it's do-able. we will be in this room almost 4 wks. yay.
bryan's typical work schedule right now is 6am to 3pm. on mondays, wednesdays, and fridays, he has physical training (PT) where they all run and whatever and he comes back home about 10 min to 7am or so and then has to be back at work at 8. then an hour lunch. so i thought that was kind of interesting - that they don't add hrs onto your day to accomodate for it, you just have less work hrs. how much "work" he's actually been doing though... i guess they can't do much with him yet cuz he has to attend a few safety trainings and stuff first. today he's at the maintenance safety training i think. but like i said before, they have a lot of down time, so they've been fixing mowers and weed eating and stuff. nice huh. starting the 26th he has FTAC (first term airman something) which all new peeps have to go to when it's your first base. it's 2 wks long. after that i think he might actually "go to work." he has 5 or 6 tests he has to do for his "upgrade" training that he has a month for each to do. (of course if he wants to study for his officer test he's got to do them in about 2 mos probably). but they've said he will most likely be on swing shift, which is 3-11pm mon-fri. maybe they stay til midnight i'm not sure. they have the same thing with PT days, where from 3-5pm they're exercising and then going home to shower. also, i've seen some of the swing shift guys at the softball games at night, so i think they let them go for that too! and then they go back to work afterwards. i think. but that's cool.
the "mongolian" restaurant that we went to last saturday (the viking), is NOT mongolian. it was very interesting. you have like this small circular grill built into the middle of the table and you go to an interesting-ly set-up buffet bar. where they had the raw meats for you to cook. they had like pork tongue and pork intestines...almost accidentally grabbed those before i read the label. they had other stuff that was cooked - like mini corn dogs and cinnamon noodles-(yeah what the heck i don't know). but they definitely had some good stuff - the regular noodles were gross, so it was mainly a rice thing. i'm not good with chopsticks so luckily they had some forks otherwise i would have starved to death. bryan resorted to a fork as well. so it was decent but not worth $15 each we decided.
bryan wants to drive somewhere this weekend, i guess his supervisor's been talking about some lighthouses or something, so we will see.
this whole baby thing is already making me physically uncomfortable, so i'm scared to find out how bad it's going to be the last 2 months. i guess i'm 23 weeks today. i need to get back into the gym cuz at night when i'm trying to sleep my lower back kills me and it's hard to find a comfortable position. my body takes forever to wind down and usually after laying in bed 2 hrs i can fall asleep. but there is a definite difference in the belly shape since we've been here in japan.
i think that's all for now. if you have questions let me know and i'll throw them in here - though i know it doesn't get much more detailed than this!
love you all!
julie and bryan and 17-weeks-left brock
Wed. 6/14/06 - 11:10am Japan time
There are 10-20 earthquakes here every year. I felt my first one ever in my life Monday morning at 8:05am. Woke me up ‘cuz my bed starting rocking back and forth (we’re on the 4th floor of the hotel). It was crazy! Apparently they have their building on rollers here now. People feel them all the time and it’s not a big deal at all. I guess we’re on a huge fault line. I think this one was a 6-something on the Richter scale but it was in southern japan and then there was an aftershock nearby us in the ocean. I don’t know, I think that’s what bryan said his peeps said at work.
I found out last week that the total weight of all our stuff was about 4700 lbs. Our limit was just under 5700. so we were good there.
so monday we had to switch hotel rooms. but not only rooms, we had to switch buildings. now checkout is noon and checkin 2pm. but we had stuff in fridge and freezer. what the heck am i supposed to do with all our stuff in between, by myself, cuz bryan is at work. we had 5 suitcases, 6 bags of food, 2 backpacks, all his uniforms on hangers, etc. not only did we have a lot of stuff, but we were on the 4th floor and the elevator was broken. of course - it's us, and we're moving. that's how things go on our moving days. so we couldn't bring up the luggage carrier. bryan went and talked to the front desk during his lunch and they changed our checkout to 1pm and said they'd get housekeeping in the room we were waiting on as soon as the people checked out. then he went back to work at 12:30. at quarter-to 1pm i found out about the room being in another building. i called bryan at work cuz there's no way i could do this on my own, and they let him come home for the day. after bryan made several trips down the stairs with all our stuff and i could help him on the last load (our room keys were already deactivated so i stayed in the room with all our stuff) we went to the other bldg and our room was on the 2nd floor and no elevator in the bldg. needless to say by this time i was very frustrated with the hotel. we wondered why we couldn't have stayed in our room and whoever was scheduled to be in it, to be put in the room we were moving to...?!?! whatever. this other room is smaller, but the setup slightly smarter. i could only see the top half of my face in the bathroom mirror in our first room. honestly who puts mirrors that high!! there was nowhere to put your food and the bathroom was cramped. the view was kind of cool, but i forgot to take a picture of it, sorry. the room we're in now is $14 less a night (even though that makes no difference to us cuz it's reimbursed), the bed is smaller (full-size instead of queen -- we can't wait to get our bed!), there's no disposal!, and NO DISHWASHER!!!!!!!! ahhh i thought we'd had the last of that when we moved away from wichita falls! i told bryan we were going to go buy paper products for our dishes. cuz besides that, in the cupboards they only have 2 bowls and like 3 plates, etc. the bedroom was pretty cramped but with a little bit of furniture movement by me, it's do-able. we will be in this room almost 4 wks. yay.
bryan's typical work schedule right now is 6am to 3pm. on mondays, wednesdays, and fridays, he has physical training (PT) where they all run and whatever and he comes back home about 10 min to 7am or so and then has to be back at work at 8. then an hour lunch. so i thought that was kind of interesting - that they don't add hrs onto your day to accomodate for it, you just have less work hrs. how much "work" he's actually been doing though... i guess they can't do much with him yet cuz he has to attend a few safety trainings and stuff first. today he's at the maintenance safety training i think. but like i said before, they have a lot of down time, so they've been fixing mowers and weed eating and stuff. nice huh. starting the 26th he has FTAC (first term airman something) which all new peeps have to go to when it's your first base. it's 2 wks long. after that i think he might actually "go to work." he has 5 or 6 tests he has to do for his "upgrade" training that he has a month for each to do. (of course if he wants to study for his officer test he's got to do them in about 2 mos probably). but they've said he will most likely be on swing shift, which is 3-11pm mon-fri. maybe they stay til midnight i'm not sure. they have the same thing with PT days, where from 3-5pm they're exercising and then going home to shower. also, i've seen some of the swing shift guys at the softball games at night, so i think they let them go for that too! and then they go back to work afterwards. i think. but that's cool.
the "mongolian" restaurant that we went to last saturday (the viking), is NOT mongolian. it was very interesting. you have like this small circular grill built into the middle of the table and you go to an interesting-ly set-up buffet bar. where they had the raw meats for you to cook. they had like pork tongue and pork intestines...almost accidentally grabbed those before i read the label. they had other stuff that was cooked - like mini corn dogs and cinnamon noodles-(yeah what the heck i don't know). but they definitely had some good stuff - the regular noodles were gross, so it was mainly a rice thing. i'm not good with chopsticks so luckily they had some forks otherwise i would have starved to death. bryan resorted to a fork as well. so it was decent but not worth $15 each we decided.
bryan wants to drive somewhere this weekend, i guess his supervisor's been talking about some lighthouses or something, so we will see.
this whole baby thing is already making me physically uncomfortable, so i'm scared to find out how bad it's going to be the last 2 months. i guess i'm 23 weeks today. i need to get back into the gym cuz at night when i'm trying to sleep my lower back kills me and it's hard to find a comfortable position. my body takes forever to wind down and usually after laying in bed 2 hrs i can fall asleep. but there is a definite difference in the belly shape since we've been here in japan.
i think that's all for now. if you have questions let me know and i'll throw them in here - though i know it doesn't get much more detailed than this!
love you all!
julie and bryan and 17-weeks-left brock
Friday, June 9, 2006
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
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
Our 2001 Honda Civic!
Our civic! (civ-dawg) We had to let her go before coming to Japan since we could only store ONE car in government storage (Bryan's Mustang). Had to sell her in just a week's time...thus the $$ loss. (This is Bryan's parents' driveway in West Jordan, UT - in case you were wondering of course).
In case you're wondering why this car looks so much better than most of the other civics you've seen....it's the wheels. It's all about the wheels.Thursday, June 1, 2006
6/1/06 - 2nd Letter
2nd letter
ok it's us again. thought i'd write everyone a book again. i guess that it has been about a week since the last one. i'm trying to be good. besides this is kind of like a journal for us, so i thought about just printing them out and putting them with scrapbook stuff too. so let's see- we went to one of bryan's supervisors' house saturday night and got fed a nice meal. they live in one of the new townhomes on the main base and i thought they were very nice. compared to what we were getting at least. but they were cool. anyway, i was pretty jealous of his place after seeing what we were getting. they have a separate room for the washer/dryer and 3 bedrooms upstairs and not only a regular closet in the master but also quite a large walk-in closet as well (which we won't have). but i guess that's what you get when you're an E-6 and we're a lowly E-3.
yesterday (wed.) we went on a tour of the base and to the misawa international center on 2 buses with other new people from 8-12. at the center they went over all of japan and the major cities and attractions. it was cool. there's a lot of cool stuff - buddhist temples and shintu shrines (the 2 religions here), huge ice festivals and stuff, but all not very close to here. traveling is not cheap, and usually driving is not a logical choice (when you think that would be the cheapest) cuz of pricey toll roads. if you have to buy gas off base it's by the liter, and so translates to over $4 per gallon! on base the gas is about $2.50/gal or so. we found out that japan is smaller than california and only about 28% of it is habitable because of all the mountains, yet the population here is half of the united states! sheesh. doesn't feel that crowded here though, misawa's pop. is only about 45,000. the military pop. is 10,000.
the lexus' (or as bryan puts it - lexii - for plural lexus) here have the toyota symbol, just as all acuras just have the honda symbol. many regular cars are 4wd - like most civics we've seen. civics are called civic ferios. a nissan sentra is a nissan primera. anyway, all different names. although we have seen one toyota corolla-all wheel drive.
on the pajero we were looking at the guy came back and told us the naval officer would not accept our offer of $2300 and would only drop to $2700. we put forth our offer later that night for that amount and told him we would get our funds together. this was sunday. then we decided you know what, we don't want to spend that much money. so we retracted our offer wednesday night, and now we're gonna buy a '91 toyota 4runner (surf) for only $1500 (she was asking $1800), so we're pretty excited about saving $1200. plus car ins will be about $75 cheaper for the year and the annual road tax is just $75 instead of $190. it's gray with a perfect gray interior (except for behind the back seat in the trunk space area). pretty nice considering how old it is! but it's got its cd deck (since there's only one halfway decent radio station here), and a/c. it's actually an automatic diesel - there's quite a few of the diesels here but they're not as loud as probably what you're thinking. we were almost gonna get a suzuki escudo (already had a nickname of "scooter" for it) which kinda looks like a honda CRV but one didn't have a/c and the other had no stereo whatsoever. plus we got a better deal on the surf. so now we just gotta think of a new nickname. we are open to suggestions (no "- - dawgs" since that has already been used). i suggested "the smurf" even though it isn't blue.
today the housing lady took us to see the exact unit we'll be living in. so we met the people that are living there currently and saw how their furniture all fit in it and stuff and it looks good. it will all fit. the place looks good and i'm excited. it has a decent backyard (not a postage stamp) and there's a park right by us and we are at the end of a circle (like a cul-de-sac i guess). not sure if i told you but we will be in the north area, which is about 10 min from main base, but bryan's work is in between. living in a hotel isn't horrible, no - we like that we don't have to make our bed - haha.
for jacquie's questions - - if we move in before our stuff gets here they have loaner furniture we're set up with. and we mingle with the japanese a little yes - a lot of them have jobs on base. bryan is frustrated cuz in alterations they don't speak english and he thinks he is being overcharged but he can't talk to them about it. we have tv, just not all your regular options.
ok last thing. bryan will be working in the test cell is what it's called. there are 3 different areas he could have possibly been assigned to: that, backshop, and flight line. in tech school when he found that out and what each did, he wanted test cell.
anyway coming here someone else thought we'd be in backshop (cuz that's where his sponsor - the guy who picked us up) is. we also found out that if you're flight line you are always gone. always being deployed and sent to temporary duty locations and working 12-hr days 6 days a week. we were very afraid when we heard that cuz we didn't know for sure where he'd be at that point. anyway - test cell is apparently the cream of the crop and where everyone in backshop and flight line try to get to. so many people were very very surprised bryan was assigned there, and all told him he was very lucky. so we were pretty excited about that. they also said they're pretty laid back there and have a lot of downtime so that's cool too.
we went to a "beach bash" last saturday at the lake and that was cool. i think we'll feel more adjusted once we actually live somewhere with our stuff. and when we can find where the lds church exactly meets and have a car to drive there too - we really really want to do that. somewhere where it's always the same.
anyway, love you guys
julie and bryan
thurs. 6/1/06 8pm
ok it's us again. thought i'd write everyone a book again. i guess that it has been about a week since the last one. i'm trying to be good. besides this is kind of like a journal for us, so i thought about just printing them out and putting them with scrapbook stuff too. so let's see- we went to one of bryan's supervisors' house saturday night and got fed a nice meal. they live in one of the new townhomes on the main base and i thought they were very nice. compared to what we were getting at least. but they were cool. anyway, i was pretty jealous of his place after seeing what we were getting. they have a separate room for the washer/dryer and 3 bedrooms upstairs and not only a regular closet in the master but also quite a large walk-in closet as well (which we won't have). but i guess that's what you get when you're an E-6 and we're a lowly E-3.
yesterday (wed.) we went on a tour of the base and to the misawa international center on 2 buses with other new people from 8-12. at the center they went over all of japan and the major cities and attractions. it was cool. there's a lot of cool stuff - buddhist temples and shintu shrines (the 2 religions here), huge ice festivals and stuff, but all not very close to here. traveling is not cheap, and usually driving is not a logical choice (when you think that would be the cheapest) cuz of pricey toll roads. if you have to buy gas off base it's by the liter, and so translates to over $4 per gallon! on base the gas is about $2.50/gal or so. we found out that japan is smaller than california and only about 28% of it is habitable because of all the mountains, yet the population here is half of the united states! sheesh. doesn't feel that crowded here though, misawa's pop. is only about 45,000. the military pop. is 10,000.
the lexus' (or as bryan puts it - lexii - for plural lexus) here have the toyota symbol, just as all acuras just have the honda symbol. many regular cars are 4wd - like most civics we've seen. civics are called civic ferios. a nissan sentra is a nissan primera. anyway, all different names. although we have seen one toyota corolla-all wheel drive.
on the pajero we were looking at the guy came back and told us the naval officer would not accept our offer of $2300 and would only drop to $2700. we put forth our offer later that night for that amount and told him we would get our funds together. this was sunday. then we decided you know what, we don't want to spend that much money. so we retracted our offer wednesday night, and now we're gonna buy a '91 toyota 4runner (surf) for only $1500 (she was asking $1800), so we're pretty excited about saving $1200. plus car ins will be about $75 cheaper for the year and the annual road tax is just $75 instead of $190. it's gray with a perfect gray interior (except for behind the back seat in the trunk space area). pretty nice considering how old it is! but it's got its cd deck (since there's only one halfway decent radio station here), and a/c. it's actually an automatic diesel - there's quite a few of the diesels here but they're not as loud as probably what you're thinking. we were almost gonna get a suzuki escudo (already had a nickname of "scooter" for it) which kinda looks like a honda CRV but one didn't have a/c and the other had no stereo whatsoever. plus we got a better deal on the surf. so now we just gotta think of a new nickname. we are open to suggestions (no "- - dawgs" since that has already been used). i suggested "the smurf" even though it isn't blue.
today the housing lady took us to see the exact unit we'll be living in. so we met the people that are living there currently and saw how their furniture all fit in it and stuff and it looks good. it will all fit. the place looks good and i'm excited. it has a decent backyard (not a postage stamp) and there's a park right by us and we are at the end of a circle (like a cul-de-sac i guess). not sure if i told you but we will be in the north area, which is about 10 min from main base, but bryan's work is in between. living in a hotel isn't horrible, no - we like that we don't have to make our bed - haha.
for jacquie's questions - - if we move in before our stuff gets here they have loaner furniture we're set up with. and we mingle with the japanese a little yes - a lot of them have jobs on base. bryan is frustrated cuz in alterations they don't speak english and he thinks he is being overcharged but he can't talk to them about it. we have tv, just not all your regular options.
ok last thing. bryan will be working in the test cell is what it's called. there are 3 different areas he could have possibly been assigned to: that, backshop, and flight line. in tech school when he found that out and what each did, he wanted test cell.
anyway coming here someone else thought we'd be in backshop (cuz that's where his sponsor - the guy who picked us up) is. we also found out that if you're flight line you are always gone. always being deployed and sent to temporary duty locations and working 12-hr days 6 days a week. we were very afraid when we heard that cuz we didn't know for sure where he'd be at that point. anyway - test cell is apparently the cream of the crop and where everyone in backshop and flight line try to get to. so many people were very very surprised bryan was assigned there, and all told him he was very lucky. so we were pretty excited about that. they also said they're pretty laid back there and have a lot of downtime so that's cool too.
we went to a "beach bash" last saturday at the lake and that was cool. i think we'll feel more adjusted once we actually live somewhere with our stuff. and when we can find where the lds church exactly meets and have a car to drive there too - we really really want to do that. somewhere where it's always the same.
anyway, love you guys
julie and bryan
thurs. 6/1/06 8pm
Thursday, May 25, 2006
5/25/06 - 1st Letter
we made it! (1st letter)
ok so sorry we didn't write yesterday when we got here but the timeframe didn't work out. we got picked up from the base airport and then they got us a room at the misawa inn and then we went and took our time and took a shower and stuff and then we got picked back up and we went to dinner at a mexican restaurant on base right on the beach of lake ogiwara or whatever it's called, and right past the lake is the ocean i think. crazy. anyway don't get cheese quesadillas there. but they took us to the commissary (grocery store) and we picked up some food for us to eat while staying in the hotel and they showed us around the base a bit, and then after dinner dropped us back off and bryan had to iron his bdu's (fatigues/camo's) and shine his boots cuz he had to do stuff the next morning (this morning). anyway, there's what happened last night, not necessarily in the order written. we dropped into bed at 10:30pm, which is like us staying awake til 7:30 in the morning. bryan went this morning at 8:45 to the shop (workshop) to meet the the other shop members and his bosses and stuff. you know, i was gonna get up and get ready after he left, but fell back asleep. he showed back up at the hotel at 10 to wake me up and i had to hurry and get ready and i went with him to do some in-processing stuff. at 11 we went to lunch with his fellow shop members and i met them and his bosses - crappily we ate at the same restaurant we had just eaten at the night before. oh well - it was paid for this time by one of the sup's and we shared fajitas which were much better than the quesadillas and chimichangas we had gotten the night before. we got chauffered around after that by another one of the shop members from about 1-3:30 to get some other stuff done and he took us to one of the car dealerships right off base (we won't buy one from there-too expensive) and he drove around the town off base and it was very interesting. looks like everyone is selling junk and it's very very cramped....especially road-wise. sheesh. i think we'll park our car right inside the main gate on base and just walk over there. the base is pretty, the view from our hotel window is kind of cool with big tall trees and stuff. the flight we were on to get here was military. you wouldn't really know it except that our flight wasn't listed on any of the computer terminals for departures at the seattle airport and it was all military on the plane and we landed in just base airports. so we flew first to yokota air base in tokyo which is an air force base and that took about 10 hrs to get there. they played 3 popular movies on the plane but we couldn't stay awake through any of them after keeping ourselves awake til 4:30am to get on the plane. they fed us our breakfast (nasty french toast) and we were pretty much out (they fed us a lunch before we got off the plane too - also not good). we took games and sudoku's with us to do and everything and never got any of it out. we were layed over for about and hour and a half in tokyo – yokota air base - i say that because we never really saw tokyo flying in or elsewise cuz the base is far enough away from it. they drive up the stairs to the plane w/the little truck and that's how you get off planes at base airports even though the plane we were in was huge w/3 engines (L1011), cuz it's not like they have a big terminal or anything. then we flew an hour to iwakuni ab, japan, which is a marine corp base, and was layed over there for 3 hrs which felt like forever. we were all stuffed into their "terminal." but we talked to another couple there the whole time - a 24-yr old E-5 and his 20-yr old wife, that we actually first talked to while we were behind them in line waiting to check in in seattle, and they ended up having a seat right behind us in the plane. cuz we stayed on the same plane and same seats thru all legs of the flight, we just dropped off and picked up people along the way. anyway then we finally made the last hour or so flight to misawa ab (iwakuni ab was kinda just straight across the country from yokota ab), and we got here at 2:30pm japan time. and his sponsor picked us up. today after we got dropped back off at the hotel from everything we looked at cars on base. they have what they call "lemon lots" where people on base are selling their cars, which is just the 2 parking lots next to the buildings of the misawa inn. we have pretty much decided on a car already. one of the last ones we looked at had pretty much everything we were looking for. i have to tell you when i got there my expectations on car quality dropped quite a bit. we looked at a lot of toyota 4-runners which are called "surfs" here, but we're talking years '89-'92 on all the cars you're looking at. mileage is never very high though - i mean we're talking a 1990 car with 50,000 miles on it. the big concern over here is jci (japanese compulsory insurance) which you pay every 2 yrs and it stays with the car, and is like the safety and emission inspection we do every year but pricey, and more strict. plus you have a road tax you pay every year, plus your regular insurance that you have to buy from a japanese carrier. jci is probably $5-800 if there's nothing wrong with your car. anyway we wanted a 4wd 4dr that was decent i guess and i was leaning definitely more towards an automatic. i think it's gonna take me awhile to get used to this driving on the left side of the road thing. we have pretty much decided on a black (w/a little bit of a silverish/tannish lining) '90 Mitsubishi Pajero. yes i know you've never heard of a pajero. i'm not sure what the comparable model would be over there - maybe a montero. hands down the nicest suv we've seen so far for the price. asking $2800 but i already know he'll go down to at least $2500. and that jci crap isn't due until dec. of '07 so that's very good. and the $190 road tax has already been paid for this year as well. it has a freakin nice stereo complete with amp and sub and all. tires in good condition, tinted windows, a/c (something that will be nice to have since we won't have it in our apartment!), a rack for our snowboards on top - even though it wouldn't have been necessary - this is a bigger suv - a good size bigger than the older 4-runners. it has a tan interior which isn't my favorite but the outside looks good which is more than you can say for what we've seen. everything here is still in dang good condition when you consider how old they are though. i think this suv has only 25,000 miles on it. BUT we can't buy a car until we get our japanese driver's licenses, which they usually hold the class on mondays but with the holiday everything's closed on monday so that's another week we'll have to wait before we have transportation. sucks. cars are not as cheap here as the sponsor's wife made it out to be. from the get go we could see we were looking at around at least $2000 for something that really was actually decent. after seeing the dealer's prices i thought we'd be paying that for something on base that we didn't even really like how it looked, so i'm really surprised we've found this one. the guy selling it is actually selling it for his friend who left last week (a naval officer). we saw one of bryan's bosses at the bx tonight and when we told him we found a black 4-dr pajero for $2800 right away he said take it. body damage is minimal with the only paint problems on the hood, no rust. bryan looked under the car and there was no rust or cracks and all looked good w/no leaks. we test drove it around the parking lot and that was good too. tomorrow that same boss is going to take us to the ins agent off base and we'll get a quote (it's based off your rank!), and we will test drive the car again at higher speeds in an out-of-the-way place. i'm afraid to drive a car that's not mine on these roads quite yet. but the highest speed you'll get off base even is 40mph, and that's even on the toll roads. we went to the housing office today and talked to the lady that i've emailed a couple of times already and only 2 h-style housing units (fourplex) are coming available even somewhat soon. last night i was scared because bryan's sponsor aaron told us that they just give you 2 choices of 2 apartments and you just have to choose one whether you like them or not and that they're jerks here about it. but this lady was nice. she said the one coming avail. first was the upstairs unit which we don't want but that's the one she would have to offer us but she's going to have us come back in and try to fill that one so then we can get the other downstairs unit, which is actually the one she lives in. so she must like us because she told us that the people in her building told us she better fill their friend's spot with someone good. no one smokes in the building - that makes me very happy. the thing is, it's not available til july 7th!!! so we'll be living in a hotel for a month and a half. a lot of good that 30-day shipment did us. oh well, i guess we'll get to move in with all of our own stuff. plus everyone told us to stay in billeting (hotel) as long as we could cuz you make a lot of money that way getting reimbursed for food and the cost of the nights, and you still are making a housing allowance. only problem is the hotel told us they only had room for us until june 9th. so we'll have to see how that goes. we looked at an empty housing unit today and holy cow it looks very small. the counters are metal. interesting. anyway, bryan's bugging me to do something else now. we're in this mukoteki community center thing that's open 24/7 and there's pool and ping pong and stuff. plus i think this is detailed and long enough. you're probably bored to death right now. oh by the way, the way this base works is tomorrow is also a holiday for everyone cuz they give a lot of "family days" in conjunction with holidays. i'll write more another time so bryan doesn't shoot me in the head - cuz i haven't even written about his job yet. love you guys. i'll add some email addresses to this besides you parents in case anyone else wants to read this book, but cathy and dennis can you forward this to grandma cuz we don't have her address. thanks. love you guys. we're in japan- CRAZY. it's 9:03pm right now. the end of thursday and you haven't even got up for it yet. k bye
julie and bryan
ok so sorry we didn't write yesterday when we got here but the timeframe didn't work out. we got picked up from the base airport and then they got us a room at the misawa inn and then we went and took our time and took a shower and stuff and then we got picked back up and we went to dinner at a mexican restaurant on base right on the beach of lake ogiwara or whatever it's called, and right past the lake is the ocean i think. crazy. anyway don't get cheese quesadillas there. but they took us to the commissary (grocery store) and we picked up some food for us to eat while staying in the hotel and they showed us around the base a bit, and then after dinner dropped us back off and bryan had to iron his bdu's (fatigues/camo's) and shine his boots cuz he had to do stuff the next morning (this morning). anyway, there's what happened last night, not necessarily in the order written. we dropped into bed at 10:30pm, which is like us staying awake til 7:30 in the morning. bryan went this morning at 8:45 to the shop (workshop) to meet the the other shop members and his bosses and stuff. you know, i was gonna get up and get ready after he left, but fell back asleep. he showed back up at the hotel at 10 to wake me up and i had to hurry and get ready and i went with him to do some in-processing stuff. at 11 we went to lunch with his fellow shop members and i met them and his bosses - crappily we ate at the same restaurant we had just eaten at the night before. oh well - it was paid for this time by one of the sup's and we shared fajitas which were much better than the quesadillas and chimichangas we had gotten the night before. we got chauffered around after that by another one of the shop members from about 1-3:30 to get some other stuff done and he took us to one of the car dealerships right off base (we won't buy one from there-too expensive) and he drove around the town off base and it was very interesting. looks like everyone is selling junk and it's very very cramped....especially road-wise. sheesh. i think we'll park our car right inside the main gate on base and just walk over there. the base is pretty, the view from our hotel window is kind of cool with big tall trees and stuff. the flight we were on to get here was military. you wouldn't really know it except that our flight wasn't listed on any of the computer terminals for departures at the seattle airport and it was all military on the plane and we landed in just base airports. so we flew first to yokota air base in tokyo which is an air force base and that took about 10 hrs to get there. they played 3 popular movies on the plane but we couldn't stay awake through any of them after keeping ourselves awake til 4:30am to get on the plane. they fed us our breakfast (nasty french toast) and we were pretty much out (they fed us a lunch before we got off the plane too - also not good). we took games and sudoku's with us to do and everything and never got any of it out. we were layed over for about and hour and a half in tokyo – yokota air base - i say that because we never really saw tokyo flying in or elsewise cuz the base is far enough away from it. they drive up the stairs to the plane w/the little truck and that's how you get off planes at base airports even though the plane we were in was huge w/3 engines (L1011), cuz it's not like they have a big terminal or anything. then we flew an hour to iwakuni ab, japan, which is a marine corp base, and was layed over there for 3 hrs which felt like forever. we were all stuffed into their "terminal." but we talked to another couple there the whole time - a 24-yr old E-5 and his 20-yr old wife, that we actually first talked to while we were behind them in line waiting to check in in seattle, and they ended up having a seat right behind us in the plane. cuz we stayed on the same plane and same seats thru all legs of the flight, we just dropped off and picked up people along the way. anyway then we finally made the last hour or so flight to misawa ab (iwakuni ab was kinda just straight across the country from yokota ab), and we got here at 2:30pm japan time. and his sponsor picked us up. today after we got dropped back off at the hotel from everything we looked at cars on base. they have what they call "lemon lots" where people on base are selling their cars, which is just the 2 parking lots next to the buildings of the misawa inn. we have pretty much decided on a car already. one of the last ones we looked at had pretty much everything we were looking for. i have to tell you when i got there my expectations on car quality dropped quite a bit. we looked at a lot of toyota 4-runners which are called "surfs" here, but we're talking years '89-'92 on all the cars you're looking at. mileage is never very high though - i mean we're talking a 1990 car with 50,000 miles on it. the big concern over here is jci (japanese compulsory insurance) which you pay every 2 yrs and it stays with the car, and is like the safety and emission inspection we do every year but pricey, and more strict. plus you have a road tax you pay every year, plus your regular insurance that you have to buy from a japanese carrier. jci is probably $5-800 if there's nothing wrong with your car. anyway we wanted a 4wd 4dr that was decent i guess and i was leaning definitely more towards an automatic. i think it's gonna take me awhile to get used to this driving on the left side of the road thing. we have pretty much decided on a black (w/a little bit of a silverish/tannish lining) '90 Mitsubishi Pajero. yes i know you've never heard of a pajero. i'm not sure what the comparable model would be over there - maybe a montero. hands down the nicest suv we've seen so far for the price. asking $2800 but i already know he'll go down to at least $2500. and that jci crap isn't due until dec. of '07 so that's very good. and the $190 road tax has already been paid for this year as well. it has a freakin nice stereo complete with amp and sub and all. tires in good condition, tinted windows, a/c (something that will be nice to have since we won't have it in our apartment!), a rack for our snowboards on top - even though it wouldn't have been necessary - this is a bigger suv - a good size bigger than the older 4-runners. it has a tan interior which isn't my favorite but the outside looks good which is more than you can say for what we've seen. everything here is still in dang good condition when you consider how old they are though. i think this suv has only 25,000 miles on it. BUT we can't buy a car until we get our japanese driver's licenses, which they usually hold the class on mondays but with the holiday everything's closed on monday so that's another week we'll have to wait before we have transportation. sucks. cars are not as cheap here as the sponsor's wife made it out to be. from the get go we could see we were looking at around at least $2000 for something that really was actually decent. after seeing the dealer's prices i thought we'd be paying that for something on base that we didn't even really like how it looked, so i'm really surprised we've found this one. the guy selling it is actually selling it for his friend who left last week (a naval officer). we saw one of bryan's bosses at the bx tonight and when we told him we found a black 4-dr pajero for $2800 right away he said take it. body damage is minimal with the only paint problems on the hood, no rust. bryan looked under the car and there was no rust or cracks and all looked good w/no leaks. we test drove it around the parking lot and that was good too. tomorrow that same boss is going to take us to the ins agent off base and we'll get a quote (it's based off your rank!), and we will test drive the car again at higher speeds in an out-of-the-way place. i'm afraid to drive a car that's not mine on these roads quite yet. but the highest speed you'll get off base even is 40mph, and that's even on the toll roads. we went to the housing office today and talked to the lady that i've emailed a couple of times already and only 2 h-style housing units (fourplex) are coming available even somewhat soon. last night i was scared because bryan's sponsor aaron told us that they just give you 2 choices of 2 apartments and you just have to choose one whether you like them or not and that they're jerks here about it. but this lady was nice. she said the one coming avail. first was the upstairs unit which we don't want but that's the one she would have to offer us but she's going to have us come back in and try to fill that one so then we can get the other downstairs unit, which is actually the one she lives in. so she must like us because she told us that the people in her building told us she better fill their friend's spot with someone good. no one smokes in the building - that makes me very happy. the thing is, it's not available til july 7th!!! so we'll be living in a hotel for a month and a half. a lot of good that 30-day shipment did us. oh well, i guess we'll get to move in with all of our own stuff. plus everyone told us to stay in billeting (hotel) as long as we could cuz you make a lot of money that way getting reimbursed for food and the cost of the nights, and you still are making a housing allowance. only problem is the hotel told us they only had room for us until june 9th. so we'll have to see how that goes. we looked at an empty housing unit today and holy cow it looks very small. the counters are metal. interesting. anyway, bryan's bugging me to do something else now. we're in this mukoteki community center thing that's open 24/7 and there's pool and ping pong and stuff. plus i think this is detailed and long enough. you're probably bored to death right now. oh by the way, the way this base works is tomorrow is also a holiday for everyone cuz they give a lot of "family days" in conjunction with holidays. i'll write more another time so bryan doesn't shoot me in the head - cuz i haven't even written about his job yet. love you guys. i'll add some email addresses to this besides you parents in case anyone else wants to read this book, but cathy and dennis can you forward this to grandma cuz we don't have her address. thanks. love you guys. we're in japan- CRAZY. it's 9:03pm right now. the end of thursday and you haven't even got up for it yet. k bye
julie and bryan
Saturday, May 20, 2006
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