After an interminable flight, or rather..... 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6 flights..... we are safely in Okinawa, Japan! It's 6AM the next morning as we write this, which means that you know it's Joe writing this and Lindsay is just getting up. =)

We had quite the adventure flying, there really is so much to see in this beautiful world we've been given to live in. We flew into Seattle as the sun was setting on a gorgeous, clear day. Mounts Rainier and St. Helens stood off to the South, watching our arrival as they cast gigantic shadows below them. After six hours of waiting in Seattle, we climbed aboard the trusty DC-10 that would be our home until Okinawa and flew to... Anchorage, Alaska! You know, you hear about people going on cruises to Alaska, and for some reason I always thought that'd be a goofy place to cruise to. Well, Alaska is now near the top of our list of places to explore - we've got to go spend some time in the Pacific North-West (Seattle, Vancouver) and then go see those mountains and glaciers again. The sun was just coming up as we began to land, gigantic snow-capped mountains poking their way through the clouds until the clouds gave way to show the beauty of this truly unique coast in full. Absolutely stunning. That stop was a real unexpected treat.

We grounded in Anchorage for two hours, then escorted the morning sun across the Pacific to Yokota Air Base, just outside Tokyo. We arrived at about 7AM local time. There, they had everybody get off and fill out H1N1 screening forms while they refuled. Yokota was ghastly while we were there, it was something like heavy London fog (though I've never been there) that limited your visibility to about a half-mile and gave you a headache. Gray, gray, gray. In two hours we were flying again, to Iwokuni Air Base about an hour west. When we arrived, there was a strong isolated cell right over the airfield the pilot didn't want to fly through, so we circled out in the sun for 30 minutes before heading back to Yokota. Everybody off the plane again, refuel, and then we're off to Okinawa instead!

Two hours later, in beautiful sunny weather, we flew into Kadena. We arrived about 4:30PM local time, found all our baggage, went through customs, met our sponsors (wonderful people, both dentists who just graduated from Iowa last year), checked into the WestPac lodge where we'll be staying until we have a home, grabbed a quick dinner at the next-door Macaroni Grill (there'll be time to go local later, although I did have a local brew: Orion, pronounced by our Japanese server as "or-ee-on"), and fell asleep about 9PM.

The sun is just coming up, and it's illuminating the Pacific to the West outside our window. I'm typing on a computer terminal provided by the lodge. Once we can figure out how to get photos up we'll try to show you some of the beauty around us. For those of you hoping for a Skype call, I don't know that we'll be able to accomplish that from here, the internet seems to be accessible only through this terminal even when I plug the right cables into Lindsay's laptop. E-mails and this blog will have to suffice, I suppose - but we'll keep trying. Today we'll work on the three C's - Cell phones, Car, and id Cards. Hope you're all enjoying the rest of your Wednesday in the States where I guess it's just about quitting time at 5PM!