I love getting MAIL!

Mail is one of my favorite things. It always has been. I used to race my brother to the mailbox. Did I ever receive mail as a child? Eh- not really, my grandparents were always wonderful about sending me a birthday card, on time, each year! I loved getting the Christmas cards, and since I moved away, I get a lot more mail. Most of them are bills these days, but I still really enjoy seeing something in my mailbox! Today I went to get the mail and I had 3, yes, THREE packages. And I'm excited about it, so you are finding out about it.

1. My friend and ex-roomie has been a wonderful pen-pal since we've moved to Japan and she sent me the GLEE soundtracks! YAY! I was SO happy to get that!!! Thanks Lar!

2. I also got a t-shirt that I ordered for George in the mail as a present. I can't tell you what it says yet, because he hasn't seen it.

3. The third thing I got came from George's mom and sister in WI! They sent us Cholula (a Mexican hot sauce/flavoring) that we couldn't find here and Cavendar's, which is a Greek Seasoning. Well, when I got the box, it was wrapped in a garbage bag and you could see orange liquid had seeped through the whole box, almost at every angle. I got the box open and there was one bottle of Cholula, still in perfect condition and 2 shakers of Cavendar's. But there was one bottle missing and a plastic bag with a note from the Postal Service on it. (Not the band, unfortunately) Here are the pictures.

Anyway, I just wanted to share about my mail obsession because I was so happy to get 3 packages!

I also started a "Survival Japanese" course here on the base today, and learned some new things! It's a 6 week long class and I feel like I'll know a lot more Japanese by the end of the 6 weeks!






And here is a picture for some of the people who are still back in the states that were asking about the curtain system here in the base houses! I hope this explains it a little more!

I spy... weird end-resulting food... and pictures of Cheyenne

Quiz... can you figure out what this is??? I ate something and this is what was leftover. I was SO amused by the end result of thing I ate that I had to take a picture and was hoping someone could guess. Can you figure it out???

Can you find Cheyenne? Hint, she is begging for some of my dinner but knows better than to be at the table... can you find her?

Any suggestions for a caption??? I'm sure most of you are more creative than I.

Cheyenne and her new toy duck! It quacks.

Cheyenne's new haircut!

These are a few of my favorite places...

1. Smyrna, GA, USA


2. Valdosta, GA, USA


3. Panama City, Panama


4. Fripp Island, SC, USA


5. Little Rock, AR, USA


6. Fussa, Japan

• Create your own travel map or travel blog


• Great vacation rentals at TripAdvisor

Ode to my Magical Oven

I'd like to take a second to brag on myself for the wonderful treats I've been baking lately. I'm beginning to think that we have moved into a home that has an oven with magical powers. Seriously. I have made cookies, a cheesecake, a chocolate-chip pecan pie, and now chocolate chip cookie dough brownies. (Is your mouth watering???) And EVERY single one of these dishes has turned out perfectly. I mean... seriously. It cooks everything evenly, and I can't brag enough about my magical oven. My cheesecake didn't even have a crack in it, not ONE! Amazing.

Now, I'd like to take a tiny bit of credit because "Hey", I made the batter, I prepped everything, I put it in the dish, and I put it in the oven, but that oven, whew, it is really doing the dirty work. I guess I'll hand out some other credit to the people who gave me the recipes... my mom, my Aunt Joy, George's mom Kathy, and the one and only Mrs. Betty Crocker (I'm only assuming she's married).

Anyway, maybe I'll take pictures of the things I bake from now on. I also have something delicious smelling in the crock pot. Maybe I'll share the recipe and photos if it turns out well. Stay tuned.

Now... if I could only get that magical oven to magically clean the kitchen...

The Long Awaited Pictures!

Hello! It's been a while since I've posted and since the house is finally in order (for the most part!!!) I thought it was time to take some pictures and post them here for you all to see. :) Enjoy!!!


The view from the front door looking in


Our 'makeshift' foyer/ living room

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Another view of the living room, from the front door


Looking from the dining room


Looking to the right on the balcony (on the other side of that fence is off-base)


The view if you look to the left, on a clear day you can see mountains! (Note: George's new grill)


The view straight out the back door


The Laundry Room, which is in the kitchen. I had George hang curtains so there is a bit of a separation between the two. It's working well.


Kitchen/ Laundry Room


Kitchen


Dining Room


Our itsy-bitsy bathroom. ::sigh::


Guest bedroom/ my crafting area. I can't wait to get our wedding scrapbooks done (I know it's been 2 years but give me a break, my scrapbooking stuff was in storage for 9 months of those 24, and it took me at least 6 to get all the pictures developed!)


Guest bedroom again, a better view. Who will come and visit??? You???


Our bedroom


The built in closet. The guest room has a lot of storage built in too. Neither are walk-ins but everything fits just fine.


Bedroom again. I realize that my dresser top is a disaster, but hey- you saw the bathroom. There is NO counter space, so there all of my things are going to sit!

George's New Toy

I realize I forgot to mention George's new car! For those of you who don't know, George has this... obsession... with Jeeps. That's all he wants. He just wants an old Jeep Wrangler to play around in. He bought one and used it while we lived in Corpus Christi and he could play with it on the beach. He really misses it. Well... we made it here to Japan and he did everything in his power to find a Jeep Wrangler here. All the ones we've seen here are much newer and out of our price range for our cars in Japan, but he searched and searched... and found the next best thing. A Diahatsu Rocky. The top comes off, and there is a sunroof and he just loves it. It's in great condition. It's a 1994 with about 65,000miles on it. It is a little bit cute, I'm just not going to love it because I am a 'negative Nancy' as George likes to say. :)

Here are some pictures.

Moving In, Our 2nd Anniversary, and Trains

Whew! What a busy past week or so! It seems like we have done a ton!

On Monday we went exploring off base to find paint to paint our house. We figured since we'll be here in this house for 3 years (which we can't even grasp what it's like to live anywhere longer than 6 months right now...) we may as well paint the house a pretty color and enjoy it! We got a guide from here on base on how to ask for lead-free interior paint. George asked the guy and we think we bought the right paint! :) We painted the living room a light green and the dining room and 'master' bedroom a pretty gray. That's all we tackled for now but maybe in a year or so I can convince George to paint some more of the house.

On Tuesday we got the keys to our house and started painting right away. It took 2 coats of paint in each room so it took most of the day to finish. We were pretty exhausted by the end of it!

On Wednesday around 9:30 the movers came!!! We were SO excited to see our things!!! The movers were wonderful! We had a team of 3 guys, 2 of which spoke English very well and the third guy who didn't speak a lick of it. He was my favorite. The guys looked like Apolo Ohno, Jon Gosellin and Rufio from the movie Hook. George didn't agree but I'm telling you, we had 3 celebrities moving us in! The first load they brought up the stairs they all took their shoes off at the door but I told them they could leave them on. I forget that is such a common thing here in Japan! We bought them water and doughnuts and they were very grateful to have them. They got the stuff brought in, assembled most of the stuff and unpacked the boxes. That was the first time I've ever had them unpack our stuff, and I gotta tell ya, it sure was nice to not have to break down boxes and deal with all of that trash!!! But that being said there is also a negative to it... I don't feel like I know where anything is!

Thursday we spent the day cleaning and unpacking and then went to a promotion party for some of the people in George's squadron. We had to take the train to get there and it was pretty confusing but we followed a big group and we made it there safely! We had a great time and got to meet a lot of fun people. The party was at an “Irish Pub” and it was a really cute place, I wish I would have taken my camera! I also managed to hit my arm really hard on a table while I was there and it made it swell pretty bad; bad enough that I took it to get x-rayed the next morning!

Friday we went to the urgent care center on base and they looked at my arm, x-rayed it and then sent me home with instructions to rest it and put ice on it... nothing was broken (thankfully!) but it still really hurts, even now and this is almost a week later!

Saturday was a neighborhood barbecue! We had pretty crappy weather but it was a great time and we got to meet a ton of our neighbors. They had corn-hole, horseshoes, and badminton! I brought a cheesecake. It was delicious, if I do say so myself! All of the desserts and food were phenomenal! I tell you we have some wonderful cooks in this little neighborhood of ours! There were kabobs, gumbo, pulled pork sandwiches, sides galore, sangria and a ton of desserts. Yummy! Unfortunately the rain did not hold out and around 4ish we got some rain but they had rented tents so we were covered! But man, a Memorial Day BBQ in the rain and 50ish degree weather, not my idea of the perfect picnic but we still had a lot of fun!

On Sunday we went shopping! We made it to the Joyful Honda, which is NOT an auto-store for Honda's but instead it's kind of like a Home Depot. They have everything there! They have furniture, home repair stuff (hence the Home Depot), kitchen gadgets, home accessories, gardening equipment, crafting stuff (yay!) a pet shop, (double yay!) a liquor section, a food court (with the best Japanese food I've had to date) and even a grocery store. It's huge and it feels like you are walking through an Ikea! We also went to the Seiyu, which we think is owned/ran by Wal-mart. They carry 'Great Value' and 'George' brands, as well as 'Mainstays' and other things like that. The word Wal-mart is nowhere to be found, but we're pretty sure it's all the same thing. We bought ice cream from a vending machine in there and it sure was good. The Japanese people love their vending machines. They even have beer and cigarette vending machines on the street corners. Seriously.

Monday was our 2nd Anniversary! I can't believe how quickly 2 years has flown by! When I really think about it, I can't believe that in 2 years we've moved so many times and done so much! We have definitely not had a dull marriage and I don't think we're going to slow down the 'fun factor' anytime soon. Life is such an adventure with George and I love every minute we can share with each other. He really is a wonderful husband and I feel so lucky to have found him when I did. :)

For our anniversary we decided that we wanted to go exploring! We looked up train times and walked to the train station from the base. We had McDonald's for lunch and it was delicious. ::Side Note:: The American Fast Food here is 100% better in Japan. I don't know what they do to make it so wonderful but everything you order looks just like the menu picture and tastes way better here. My double cheeseburger and fries were excellent. We didn't know how to ask for ketchup in Japanese and we looked around and noticed that no one else had ketchup on their trays so we went without, and the food was still good!:::

After McDonald's we hopped on the train and rode to Tokyo. We went to the Epson Aqua Stadium (aka aquarium) and saw an AWESOME Dolphin show and a cool Sea Lion show too! They also had penguins and lots of fish, but after going to the Atlanta Aquarium, this one didn't even come close to being as cool. But they did have a Dolphin show so they got plenty of cool points with me!!! We had dinner at a cute little cafe called Mama's Food or something along those lines. They had mostly Mexican food. I ordered beef fajitas and George got fish and chips (hey, I said mostly...) My fajitas were SO spicy. I mean, unbearable. I don't like spicy food anyway, so George (poor George) had to trade me. The fish and chips were very good and George made it through the fajitas just fine.





...then we had to get back on the train and head home. HA. This was terribly confusing. We just could not figure out the train lines! I'll see if I can find a link to the train maps here and post it so you can see just how confusing it is. Then take that and pretend you're standing in the train station at rush hour and all the signs are in Japanese. Go. See.... not so easy! We eventually figured out which train to get on and where to change trains, and then which other train to get on, and then at which station you change again etc. I think we changed trains 3 times. Ever seen the video's of the Japanese people pushing to get on the trains??? Well, we chose to avoid that and walk down the platform and get on a less crowded car. We realized that it was probably a business class of some sort... but chose to sit down anyway because the train started moving and we didn't know how to open the doors to move from one car to the next. After we sat down in the nice cushioned, air conditioned, pleasant smelling seats, the train lady (I don't know her official title, I'm sure it's more fancy than train lady, but that's all I got) came to us and started talking in Japanese. Did we know what she was saying? Of course not, but we knew we were in the wrong seats. I tried to show her my train card in case she was collecting money but that didn't satisfy her. George finally got smart and repeated the name of the station we were going to. She understood that we didn't understand and we were then led out of the lovely train car to the crowded train car. George and I could not stop laughing. Maybe you had to be there, but trust me, it was very funny. We finally made it back to the base (whew!)

Train map: (scroll down)
http://www.tokyotopia.com/tokyo-train-map.html

Train video: We didn't quite experience this, but you get the picture.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=STNWc7Rlpfk

On Tuesday I started my new job! I may have forgot to mention this... so here, I'm mentioning it. I got a job! I'm the newest teacher at an English school off base. It's about a 15minute car drive there, but it's all semi-main roads so it's not a bad drive! It's a pretty easy gig, I go in the afternoons, once the children are out of their regular school and they come to our school. I talk English with them, they can be anywhere from three years old to adults. Most of them are happy to be there and are eager to learn English, some of them just need to get outside and play! They work all day and then have to do their 'extracurricular activities', such as English classes, and I think they are just exhausted! They are all really precious and I think I'm going to enjoy working there a lot! It's about 14 hours a week, give or take so it's not very rigorous, but very entertaining and I think it's going to be a blast.

Our house is still a disaster but once it's in order (hopefully in the next few days) I'll get pictures up, I promise!

That's my life in a quick summary, we still love Japan and still miss all of you. Leave comments, they make me smile. :)

Love always,
Chelsea