Long post with pics! Part 1: The Trip to Iwakuni

Finally, I've found some time to sit down and update you all! I'll start at the beginning. On the 15th, we woke up at the La Quinta Inn in Pensacola and drove to the airport around 5 am.

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We flew out of Pensacola late due to weather and landed in Houston. From there, the Houston to LA flight was over 3 hours late and we landed at LAX after our Tokyo flight had left! The next flight out was not until the following day! It was quite a bummer, but we were lucky enough to find the USO at the airport. We had planned to email our sponsors in Iwakuni to let them know we would not be arriving and it turned out, we could stay overnight at the USO! It was pretty nice. They had a family room with a tv and kid's movies, toys, and some books. They had dinner and snacks as well which was nice. We got showers the next morning before heading back to the airport. LAX was a whole other story! It was terrible. We got into the first line to drop off our luggage, only to find out that they could not help us at the desk because we had one way tickets (still don't understand that one). So we waited in another line to be helped. About 2 hours after arriving in LAX we were finally heading to the security checkpoint. We made it through and had some breakfast before boarding the plane to Tokyo!
Bennet was wonderful on the plane. He read stories and watched movies in between flirting with flight attendants!

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Once we landed in Tokyo, we had to take three trains to get to Iwakuni!! But before getting on, we had our first run-in with Japanese culture! We were very thirsty and bought what we THOUGHT was water!

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(HINT: Read the bottle!!!) It was actually closer to a salty tasting gatorade! ICK!

So, we took the trains, which was fun, but would have been better if it was daytime so we could see the countryside. But still, 600 miles in 4 hours is pretty cool!

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So on monday, we arrived at the base at 2 am!! (which felt like lunchtime to us) Luckily, we were so worn out from the trip, we felt right to sleep and had very little jet lag!

Tune in later, for part 2: At Home in Iwakuni!