A Long Awaited Post (this was written a few days ago actually)

Sorry for all of you who have been waiting expectantly to read my first blog entry from Okinawa. Life has been pretty busy lately and we also do not have any internet service yet. We have only been able to get on the internet a few times. The kindergarten teacher and her husband have been letting us use their internet when we come to their house. I am actually typing this right now on a Word document to copy onto my blog once I get on the internet again.

The flight here was looooong. We flew from Atlanta to Dallas to Tokyo to Naha, Okinawa. We knew beforehand that we may run into some trouble in Tokyo because there was a typhoon schedule to hit Okinawa soon. We got to the Tokyo airport and were told that we would know by 5:20 (only 25 minutes before our scheduled departure) whether or not we would be able to fly out that night. So all we had to do was wait. We were in the Tokyo airport for about 4 very long and tiring hours. At the scheduled time they posted a sign in Japanese and English that said that we would be leaving on time but due to the typhoon may have to come back to mainland Japan to Haneda airport. We were a little nervous about that but all worked out ok – and we didn’t even run into too much turbulence. The typhoon actually went further South so all we got was a lot of wind.

That night we stayed with the kindergarten teacher and her family (a plan we had already made due to the typhoon). I surprisingly slept through most of the night – probably due to the fact that I only had about 5 hours total sleep from Atlanta to Okinawa and not much sleep before leaving America.

The next day we went to the school to pick up our apartment keys and initial spending money. We went to the 100 yen shop and a home supply shop (I forget what it is called but it has a monkey on the sign) to pick up a few things for our apartment. We also ate out…I honestly can’t remember everything we did because my days are kind of running together. I think that night we went out to eat with Mr. Elofson and his wife.

We have been settling into Okinawa pretty well. We spent the first day without air conditioning because we didn’t realize that we needed batteries for the remote that went with it. We also went a couple days without hot water because we didn’t realize the little control on the hallway wall was to turn on the hot water J. I am still struggling from jet lag but it is getting much better. Sunday I was up at 5:45 am and couldn’t go back to sleep. Monday I was able to sleep until 7:45 am before my brain woke up! Mike has been doing all the driving but I am proving to be a better navigator than either of us thought I would be. I think I can probably now navigate us from our apartment to the new campus, both old campuses, and the Chapman’s house (don’t quote me though because I’m bound to make some navigation mistakes).

We applied for our Alien registration cards Monday and got a pay-per-use cell phone and our insurance cards. We won’t have internet or a home phone until the 17^th. The cell phone we have now will only be for emergencies because it is 9 yen for every 6 seconds! We will only be using it to call domestic numbers.

Next week we will definitely be working in the school to get things settled for the school year. Until then we will probably visit the school every day to work in our rooms but may not stay for a long amount of time. We’d like to try to get our surroundings during this time period so we won’t have to ask anyone how to get to every single place that we need to go to. We are thinking about doing some exploring within the week with a map and no thought out directions from anyone. It seems to be the easiest way for both of us to memorize where things are.

I haven’t been bringing the camera with us lately because we have been running around so much but I am going to start bringing it. Look forward to more pictures in my posts. Hope everyone is doing well. Send some love through comments here, through Facebook, or e-mail!