Contrary to popular belief, we are still here.

Hello everyone! Ben survived the trip to Thailand and Emily managed to find her way back to Japan, so we are back home on Okinawa. The work side of the Thailand trip was very good, and the food was incredible - so long as you like spicy. Sometimes it was just enough, and sometimes it was hot enough to make your fingers burn, so you can imagine what it will do to your mouth. Thailand in general makes Japan seem like a farm in Alabama. Strange, strange place. The people are friendly, overall, and everyone smiles and greets you with a bow and folded hands. You can also buy almost anything it seems with 100 Thai Baht, which is about $3.44. We bought amazingly cool sunglasses for the entire squadron to wear while we were there, so long as you think giant aviator style sunglasses are cool. They did go perfectly with the mustache March facial hair everyone was sporting - think Super Troopers if you've ever seen the movie. We are prohibited from driving while in Thailand, which at first sounded a little ridiculous - then we got to Thailand. Under no circumstances would I ever try to drive there. After being around the world for the last 14 years and seeing some completely ridiculous modes of travel (I swore a taxi cab in South Korea was the most dangerous place on Earth), I have changed my mind as to that bit of wisdom. There are 4 lane roads everywhere you go, which is normal....except there are no less than about 9 lanes of traffic jammed into them. Constantly. 60% of them are mopeds/scooters, and about 3/4 of those have 2 people at a minimum on them. I'd guess about half or so have 3, and many with an entire family. Kid in a basket on the front, or wedges in between the parents or sitting on the little footrest behind the handlebars. It was absolutely insane, and I've never seen anything like it! I saw one traffic cop the entire time, and he knew as well as we did there was no point to his existance - as did everyone driving. You could tell blowing his whistle or stopping someone was the last thing on his mind. And if that wasn't enough, add in elephant taxi's. Yep, elephants walking down the side of the street, with a reflector tied to its tail, that would take you places. (I can't make this stuff up.) My buddy that has the pictures of me feeding the taxi sugarcane is back in the states, so when he gets back I'll have pictures. We did stay at a nice hotel, and got around to everywhere we needed to go by motorcycle-ish taxi's called tuk-tuk's. Its like a 3 wheeled, 2 stroke motorcycle with a covered bench seat behind the dude driving. They are *everywhere*!! They really like to say "I nummer one!" and then drive stupid fast to get you wherever you're going so that you'll give him an extra 20 Baht. In other words, he is very proud of trying to kill you with a motorcycle and then wants an extra 75 cents for his effort. So we paid the man. All in all, it was a good trip but was very glad to make it back home. I think the trip to Alaska will be a bit better, although I'm not sure about that whole driving on the right side of the road thing...

Emily had a wonderful time at home, and got to spend loads of time with Shelby and Olivia and the family down in Mobile, Birmingham and Atlanta. Of course, as with any trip home from far away, the best made plans to see everyone get smashed after about the first day at home. The whole space-A travel for free thing turned out to be a bit more of an adventure than desired - no room the first few attempts then down to Hawaii, California, through Denver and then finally to Birmingham! But it was all worth it, of course, and it was just an all around good trip getting to see everyone again and eat some food from places she missed! She also got to make the trip to Atlanta for Sarah Campbell's birthday party, and saw some friends here and there when it somehow worked out. Emily will be back for round two sometime in June after she leaves Alaska, so keep an eye out!!!

And finally, today we went with our friends here and their daughter to a nice place on the water with a couple of parks and just a generally nice place to get outside, walk barefoot in the grass and see more cool stuff. I would tell you what it was called if I could remember, but you wouldn't be able to pronounce it anyway.

See ya next time!

On the runway, ready to go to Thailand!

Over Naha International Airport on the way out

Time to get gas

Our turn (I was lucky enough to ride in a backseat on the way. Ugh. Real fighters only have 1 seat.)

One of the bro's getting gas (Yep, just attach your airplane to the one full of gas at 350 mph...)

Thailand at a blur. Standard.

Have you heard about Buddha? Neither have I. It's in Thai.

The hotel was nice. The view of the rest of the place was not.

A tuk-tuk in action

Two bro's in a tuk-tuk. They're more frightened than they look.

All the rest are from the park we found today!

Interim update

Well, Ben is in Thailand and Emily is in Alabama - so we haven't dropped off the face of the earth. We're just on opposite sides. Should have some interesting updates when we get back from our trips late March! Katie - that picture of the chest is at our house, just to answer the question. And yes Olivia, I will take a picture of the elephant taxi for you.

See everyone soon!

Part 2.... (nearly) Uninhabited islands

And then was Valentine's Day weekend. We were all ready to take a trip for the weekend and they called us on Friday to tell us they were delivering our furniture and all of the rest of our stuff! Luckily it was a 3 day weekend, so we spent Valentine's Day in household shipment inventory madness and starting to unpack. But the next day we got to take our trip! We drove down to Naha City to the port, finally figured out how to get into the parking garage (which would turn out is much easier then actually getting OUT of the parking garage) and wandered into the terminal to purchase ferry tickets. Sidebar - we have also figured out that when you exchange money for something, you hold it with both hands and bow slightly. Its very tacky to jsut hand someone a 1000 Yen bill with one hand. Anyway, we got our ferry tickets and hopped on the boat, waited for evryone else and then we were on our way! The island chain is called the Keramas, and we went to Tokashiki Island, down to Tokashiku Beach. The straights around the islands are where humpback whales migrate every spring, and of course we couldn't get the camera fast enough but one of the boat crewmen made some really funny noises and motioned for us to get to the front of the boat. We saw a whale about 150 yards from us! Unexpected, and very cool. Added bonus for taking the ferry to the island! A gentleman met us at the port with the hotel bus and drove us there, very steep mountain roads winding though to the other side of the island down to the hotel. The views are absolutely amazing, the pictures really don't do justice to the place. The population of the whole island is about 370, and we saw maybe 10 people counting the hotel staff the entire weekend. Its obviously not high tourism season, but still - everyone that comes to visit HAS to see this place! We went snorkeling for a couple of hours, didn't see anything really big (which was good) but lots of cool looking little fish. Several that were neon blue, others that were black and white striped, puffer fish, scorpion fish and all sorts of colorful other things that I have no idea what they are! Then we rented a kayak for an hour or so, saw a giant sea turtle and then tried to find another one but he outsmarted us. (Our primary concern was staying upright in the kayak - the water was *really* cold and we turned in the wet suits after snorkeling.) And then, there was the food. The biggest adventure of the weekend. Breakfast and dinner were included in the price of the hotel - but it was chef's surprise as to what you might eat. No menu, no choice other than drink - and we're still not sure what most of it was. Ben tried pretty much everything, even after asking the waitress who's English was about as good as our Japanese. Thank you, okay, yes/no was about it. Ben asked what one of the sashimi dishes they brought out was because it was solid white. (We knew what the Ahi Tuna was.) She told us in Japanese, which didn't help, then was extremely proud of her next idea in which she ran away, then ran back with a piece of paper on which she had drawn a nice little squid. She was very happy. So were we, at least we knew what it was. So Ben tried it, but it had the consistency of a pencil eraser (no kidding) so he just couldn't manage that one. No real taste, just like chewing rubber. We also had some mostly raw bacon, some kind of seafood stir fry, some boiled pork dumpling things, soup and well, you'll see the picture. Breakfast was the same but we forgot the camera - soup, yogurt and fruit, a salad, french fries, scrambled eggs, some weird kind of sausage (we think) and then we managed to find the toaster and waffles/pancakes on the side. No syrup, but we had butter and jelly so all wasn't completely lost. Basically, this is an amazing place to go, but unless you're like Ben and will eat pretty much anything, you might want to plan for some snacks. We went to the little store inside the hotel after dinner and bought two cokes, two bags of chips and a bag of oreo cookies.

The next day was pretty bad weather, so we kind of stayed in until time to go get on the ferry home. We walked around through the little port village and then spend an hour on the boat looking at sky/water/sky/water in 12 foot seas on the way home. Good thing it was a big boat.

The food was interesting, the place was beautiful, the water was fun, and the trip was great. And again, impressed with the genuinely nice people here - they are simply amazing. It is part of their culture that if their job is to work in the hotel lobby, they will look good doing it and it makes them so very happy to answer a question and have you smile when you figure out what they are talking about. They also refuse to let you carry your own bags, and stopped what they were doing when we left to come to the front door, wave goodbye and bow as we drove away. We love these people!

Okay, time to go buy Japanese rugs. We'll keep you posted on how this one goes!

Our boat to the island

Bye bye Naha!

Into port on Tokashiki

Bus ride to the hotel

The road winding down to our beach!

Snorkeling self portrait

Japan's newest (and best looking) snorkeler

Our beach. No, really - we didn't see another person.

No comment

Dinner!

Sake makes you wear funny hats.

After dinner snack

Port village wandering around

Everywhere. No matter if no one lives there, there WILL be vending machines. Random cane fields, middle of nowhere, how-in-the-world-do-they-get-power-to-them vending machines.

End of the trip, heading back out to Naha!

I know, we're in trouble...

Two weeks without an update - we're terrible humans. BUT..... this one will be a real doozie! Well, this one and the next one together.

A couple of days after the last update, we took a trip to the zoo - because you can't just sit around and do nothing for a whole weekend here. (Unless its this weekend and you feel like day 1 of 1,000 unpacking your household goods shipment...) Anyway, the zoo here was, um, okay. The zoo part certainly isn't spectacular, though the layout and the way they do things is pretty cool in some respects. They do have a neat little petting zoo for the little ones, and there's another "park" inside the zoo for kids that actually is supposed to be really nice. When someone comes to visit with said kids, you get to be the guinea pigs. (We'll go with you though.) Probably the oddest thing we saw was the hippo "cage." We had the discussion that hippo's are fairly large animals, kinda like a house with legs, and wouldn't take much effort to maul someone. We were reminded of this looking at them over the 3 feet high "fence" separating us from these big fellas. Somehow we made it out of the zoo unscathed. Emily was also feeding the carp in a HUGE pond (small lake) in the center of the zoo grounds when a little Japanese girl walked right up, patted her on the leg, smiled and waved like her life depended on it, then went about her business. Kids love us - or think we're "really" funny looking. And tall. We also *had* to take a picture of another little one - we couldn't resist. She was maybe 2, and wearing out a bowl of noodles with chop sticks. I don't know how they do it!

The kangaroos that refused to hop.

Not so hungry hippos. See the cage? Yeah, neither did we.

These guys were cool.

Malaysian croc. Didn't look friendly.

Japanese chopstick champion. Toddler division.

The fish "pond" - and this isn't all of it.

Your average Japanese kid hauler.

A 100 year old Chinese chest. The furniture store it came from is rumored to be the leading cause of divorce in Japan....


Overall, we're both getting more and more comfortable in our new home (and hemisphere), Ben has been extremely busy with work, flying or having a sim every day since Feb 5th, but finishes MQT Monday the 23rd, just in time to go on the Thailand trip! Emily is staying just as busy, making good friends and the spouses *always* have something going on. Book club, coffees, welcome dinners, going away dinners, Bat Passing parties (explain that one later), or "I'm bored and want to go eat lunch" gatherings. Emily and another spouse came out to the flight line one day and took some pictures and watched their respective husbands taxi out and takeoff. The other guy knew but I got the surprise when I pulled out of parking an there was Emily with a camera!

Emily and the girls with the famous Chef of Sushi Zen

Emily watching Ben

Brittany watching "Spear"

There goes Ben!

We'll post a separate story with our trip last weekend to the Kerama islands, funny stories and cool pictures and a place those who visit us MUST see while you're here!

We also got the last shipment of our stuff and now we finally feel like we have a home and don't have to live out of a bag anymore! Just in time to pack up for different 3 week trips - to live out of a bag. That's how we roll.

We have a house! And soon...our stuff!

We finally got our house! Like, we live here now. Although it will be another couple of weeks (at the most) before we get the rest of our things, it was very nice to move off base and get out of a hotel room. Even though the loaner furniture we got from the government isn't the best, its better than sleeping in a hotel room or on the floor. We also have about a half mile of windows to buy curtains for, which has been an adventure like everything else. Not so much the curtains, just the stuff you see along the way.

To catch up, last weekend Emily had her first "at the squadron" event - a Bat Babe naming - where the wives take over the squadron on Saturday night, and when its your turn, you get "named." In other words, that's when the wives tell stories about funny or flat out dumb things that have happened and they get a callsign - the same way the fighter pilots get named. She was still getting over the sickness but had a good time and got to meet a few more people she hadn't ran into yet. Ben went with the guys to quite possibly the best sushi place on Earth. They have something for everybody too - one guy had a teriyaki fried chicken roll. Yep, fried chicken sushi. And since the Superbowl was on Monday morning at 8:00 here, we had a no fly pseudo-off day so we went looking for the curtains and found that and a TON more! The Jusco store here is amazing - like Super WalMart on crack. Two stories of amazing goodies, gadgets, clothes, home furnishings, a grocery store, food court and other random things. Like some kind of horse-saddle exercise contraption. And ten thousand electric razors. And we still aren't completely sure if its real or just floor models - but the couches and tables are miniature.

What, you don't have these exercise machines in the States?

Miniature couch or big American?

Excuse me, where is your random acre of Hello Kitty? Ahhhh, thank you!

"Wendy's, Open 24 Hours" doesn't translate *exactly*...

And finally the house! We got two loaner chairs, a couple of end tables, and a double bed to use until our stuff gets here - and a fridge and washing machine to keep. Excuse the mess, we're moving. Lots of neat things to discover when you actually move into a house in Japan. Like, each room has its own small air conditioner, with a remote control for 440 different functions. In....Japanese. Same for the dishwasher. And dryer. And the gas control which you need to take a shower with *warm* water. But everything is also very well thought out, and seems to be very well built. We'll get some better photos when we get our stuff and the move-in clutter out of here - but we are officially ready for visitors!!!

Inside the front door to the living room

Living room...

Kitchen!

Living room (one of the 12 foot windows)

Master bedroom

Guest bathroom

Front balcony

Anyone want to tell me how to turn on the A/C?

Lets see... double it and add 30 is farenheit, right? Could be an interesting shower...

Welcome to a foreign land - you're sick

Ugh. Well, it finally happened! Nothing much happened this week, we were both sick. The stange new germs and jet-lag and stress I suppose caught up with us last Sunday so we spent the week trying to get over the crud. Emily's was the worst with full blown flu, and Ben got a *really* nice sinus infection that set in a couple of days after Emily's. We're on the upswing though, we went to dinner at another new place tonight with friends which turned out to be really good! Tomorrow's the day though, we get to move into the new place! We're both pretty happy to be getting out of this terrible hotel room! It's not that bad, its just the 4th week solid of being in one and living out of the suitcases in the closet. But no more! We move in tomorrow (Monday the 2nd), and are getting a ood bit of our own stuff delivered. Most of our kitchen stuff, some clothes, and the temporary furniture the Air Force gives us is coming as well. So the camera will be active again this week, Ben starts flying, and its almost time for Emily to start getting ready for a trip back to the States. Busy week!