movin' out!

So we are down to our last day here in Corpus Christi. Tomorrow starts our move to Japan, with a trip to Seattle, WA. Right now Dereck's parents are in town and they will help send us off at the airport tomorrow, then drive our car up to Minnesota and keep it for us while we are in Japan. In the last few days we have cleaned the apartment, had some fun around town with the folks (including yummy seafood and antique shopping!) and we even managed to pack all our last belongings into our 4 suitcases, 2 backpacks, a laptop case, and my purse... I'm impressed.

Tomorrow will include and early rise, around 6:00 am, following by two trips to the airport (yes, we don't have a big enough car to fit all our luggage, 4 adults, and a dog in it at once...), and two flights. Our first flight is from Corpus Christi to Dallas/Ft. Worth. We are there about 1.5 hours then we depart for Seattle. Assuming no delays *knock on wood!* the dog will be in the kennel less than 10 hours for the whole trip. Hopefully he handles it well!

In Seattle my good friend Geatano will be picking us up at the airport and letting us stay with him that evening. Geatano and I were interns together a few years ago with Boeing and have kept in touch, so it will be fun to see him again! We have most of the day on Saturday free so we plan to go to Pike Place Market and maybe see the Space Needle. Then we are going to head to a brewery for lunch (Seattle is known for its many local micro-brews!) and hopefully meet up with our friends Matt and Orly sometime that day as well.

We will be back to the airport on Saturday night to check in for our flight to Japan. We are taking "the Rotator" as the AF calls it, which is a chartered commercial flight that will fly directly onto the base in Japan. This will save us another 3+ hour journey from if we had to fly into Narita International, plus who knows how much trouble getting the dog through customs (even though he has ALL required paperwork!). However, the flight is not non-stop, as we will be picking up people in Alaska and northern Japan as well. This will make it about a 19 hour flight. I'm cringing thinking about it... but what can we do?

Meeting us at the airport will be our new friend Chelsea (this makes Air Force spouse #3 named Chelsea...), who we will be staying with for a while. She is awesome and is offering us (including Marty!) a place to stay while we get settled into housing. We are sooooooo grateful to her! Also we might have our friend Beth, who was in training with Dereck in Little Rock, and possibly a few other people we know there depending on their flight schedules. Its crazy to think that I know more people in Japan than I knew when moving to college in Florida, or even when I moved to San Antonio. It'll be good to see them all again (and meet some of them for the first time in person!)
So that's the agenda for the next few days! I'll make sure to post a blog about the trip (and photos too hopefully) depending on when we can get internet connection. Who knows, if the airport has it for free then there might be an 'en-route' post as well!!

Sayonara!