Guys I wrote this whole post in September… don’t ask me why I never published it! I’m going to leave it as is and include more updates at the end! It’s a long one, but stick with me.
After 3 years in Camp Lejeune, North Carolina the time has finally come to move again! I know a lot of people love this area but I’ve always been honest about the fact that I don’t. I struggled a lot with our orders here, because my husband was here (pre-marriage), I got to visit him twice and did not love Jacksonville. Coming from Okinawa, where there is so much to see and do, there was a lot of reverse culture shock… or actually just culture shock because this was my first time living in the continental US. There isn’t much to do in this area and although we’ve enjoyed exploring what North Carolina has to offer and have done a lot of US travel I am ready for a change. And like I said in my previous move announcement – we are going back to where it all started…
WE ARE MOVING BACK TO OKINAWA, JAPAN!!
Can you believe it? I sure couldn’t!! It took me a couple of hours to process the news, as I was in complete and utter shock when I got the call from my husband mid-July. Honestly it still doesn’t feel real! I keep wanting to pinch myself and I am a bit scared that they’re going to change last minute. Also, in that previous move announcement I wrote “I am 100% sure we will be moving back at some point (we love it that much), so it feels better to not say goodbye, but instead say see you soon” and like how AMAZING that it came true!! 😭
My husband was originally supposed to get orders around April-May, because his job is pretty great about giving orders early. By June we still hadn’t heard anything… and honestly I thought we were for sure getting stateside orders. He finally got in contact with his monitor and he told him he was waiting for the promotion board to come out before working on moving people around. Thankfully that came back the following week. Sadly my husband wasn’t selected for promotion this time, but we knew orders were going to come any day after that. I think we waited 2-3 more weeks. This was our first time actually waiting for orders and OMG it was excruciating. His orders for Okinawa in 2012 and Lejeune in 2018 were both a surprise. I’ll seriously take surprise orders over waiting any day.
Since then we have hit the ground running and have started the PCS process! And wow I was not mentally prepared to deal with another OCONUS (overseas) move so soon. Thankfully the orders were pushed back from September / October to January! So we won’t be traveling during typhoon/hurricane season and hopefully won’t have to deal with 2 natural disasters like we did last time… You can read more about our PCS from hell in this post!
For months I had been worrying about the dogs if we did get overseas orders, but I kept telling myself to simmer down because we still had no idea where we were headed to next. As soon as I heard the news my first thought was the dogs. We were mostly worried about Ponzo, because he is 13 years old now!! Some awesome Oki friends who’ve retired from the military reached out and said they’d take him in if we couldn’t bring him with us… how amazing are they?! I am happy to report that our vet had 0 concerns about him (*bless*) as he is very healthy for his age, and as of now he is coming with us!!
Japan is rabies free and requires 180 day wait after pets are microchipped and rabies tested. We were able to get that stuff done in time (with some added drama, because of course things can’t go smoothly when you do PCS stuff) and the dogs shouldn’t have to quarantine once we arrive on island!!
We also started the PCS process extra early in hopes that we can score Nova a spot on the military flight with us, while we planned for Ponzo to fly with a third party shipper again. But to our surprise he may not have to!!! When we moved from Okinawa, United Airlines had stopped shipping Giant (700 series) kennels. There was also a rule that dogs needed 3 inches of space over their ears and Ponzo has ginormous ears… so we had to buy a metal extension kit for his kennel. This ultimately took him over the 150lbs Patriot Express limit, so he had to fly Cargo with ANA, and we had to pay $7,000 to use a third party shipper. Our wallets will be SO happy if we can score those 2 pet spots.
My husband will be working on Camp Foster this time around and we’re hoping we get to experience life off-base. We’re contemplating the Okinawa City and Awase areas… we shall see! We’re also already thinking of the cars we want to get and just trying to focus on the good stuff (like the turquoise beaches that await us) and not the stressful stuff.
We’re 5 months out and are practically done with most of the dreaded paperwork. Doctor and dentist appointments have happened, got a new ID, applied for my government passport and figured out when our shipments will be picked up… and guys I am already done, lol! I wish it was possible to fast forward to when we’re on island and settled in because *ugh* moving overseas is too darn exhausting, but one way or another we will make it through this stressful season. If you are moving to Okinawa I suggest checking out this post in my L.I.T. series!
Make sure you follow me over on Instagram for all the moving updates and OMG I am so excited to finally have fun stuff to share on here and on social media!! So excited to have another chance to travel to some countries we missed… that is if COVID ever gfto!
Hi again! I am updating this blogpost 5 months later from our hotel room in Okinawa!!
The most important update is that we did manage to score 2 pet spots on the Patriot Express!!! Because of that our wallets were in fact super happy. We ended up paying only $500 to bring the dogs with us from the states. After having to fork over $7,000+ to ship Ponzo with a third party last time this was such a relief!
However we did end up driving from NC to WA because both dogs used 700 series kennels and they don’t fit in any planes leaving from Jacksonville. We sold our car, rented a mini van and did the trip in 2 weeks. We ended up doing a total of 10 stops, visited 4 sets of friends along the way and stayed in 4 different pet friendly AirBnbs. I struggled with some sinus congestion after we got to Colorado and was so scared I’d gotten COVID. Thankfully we found some at-home tests at a Walmart in Wyoming and we both tested negative! After arriving in Seattle we had to do a PCR test in order to fly (we drove down to JBLM to do it) and also tested negative!! I was so damn happy and relieved!
Checking into the AMC flight in SEATAC airport was a complete disaster!! Two people were not made to carry three luggage carts… one carrying all 6 of our suitcases, and the other two carrying the Giant kennels with 1 dog inside and 1 dog walking. Seriously there has to be a better way to do this whole thing. Maybe more workers to help families out? I don’t know. I can’t imagine doing this with young kids…
We arrived at the airport around 2am, parked our rental vehicle outside the check in area, rented 3 carts (at $8 each this was so annoying) and set up both kennels. We haphazardly moved everything inside and I waited for my husband to return the rental car and shuttle back. I literally could not move from our spot to start the check in process until he was back and I felt so helpless. Nova’s kennel actually fell off the cart with her inside (!!), that prompted people to walk over and help me. I asked one of the service members who came over if there was anything I could do while I stood there and she handed me the COVID forms to fill out. It felt good to do something, especially because it was 3:50am and check-in stopped at 4:30am. We were actually the last family to get in line and our dogs were the last ones left at the drop off. Talk about stressful.
The three flights honestly felt eternal… the dogs did really well on the flights though (shout out to the Trazodone the vet prescribed Nova) and we had a nice layover hanging out in the pet relief area at Yokota AB. Arriving in Oki was also a disaster… we got separated and took two different buses to the terminal. Had to do another COVID test and wait 15 min for the results. Since we were some of the last people on the plane our suitcases came out pretty quickly, but there weren’t any available luggage carts. One of us hung out with the suitcases while the other went to the vet desk to give them all of the dogs paperwork and they lent us a luggage cart!
There was also no wifi… thankfully we knew our sponsor (he worked with my husband in Lejeune) or else that would’ve been so awkward trying to find him. We had to leave a dog behind while we took our suitcases and one dog out. Go back for the other, take them out to pee, walk all 3 carts to the van, load it up and drive 30 min to Camp Hansen. Oh yeah, we managed to book the 1 pet friendly extended stay room at the new Inn of the Corps and successfully avoided having to board the dogs for two weeks!!
We are one week into our 14 day ROM (restriction of movement) and feeling thankful that we can move around on base. We’ve been to the Kadena Commissary twice and have walked to the BX/Shoppette/Palms on Hansen. Although no one knows exactly what we can/can’t do during ROM and it’s been super frustrating. We had to do another COVID test on Day 5 and we just received our negative results!
This week we plan to take our written drivers test on Monday and my husband gets to start checking into his new unit. Now that we have the negative “exit ROM” test we can go off-base for essential things, so we’re hoping we can go buy a car! Then we’ll have a bit more freedom during those last few days of ROM, since we’ve tried to avoid asking our sponsor to drive all the way up here.
Come February 14th we are taking the dogs to the vet so they can officially be signed out of their pet quarantine. Then comes a Housing meeting where we’re hoping to get approved to live off base! Dying to house hunt and find our new house. Our Express shipment is already on island which means I can see the light at the end of the PCS tunnel ya’ll!!
We cannot wait to settle in and start exploring Okinawa again! I also can’t wait to get back to blogging all the island stuff and hopefully future travels!!
If you’ve read through this whole thing you’re the bomb.