Settling in

We've been here just over a week now and we're finally starting to feel settled.  Neither one of us are working/going to school/doing much of anything responsible at the moment so we don't have any sort of routine established so we're simply enjoying our time together.

We received our express shipment (unaccompanied baggage) which means we have a lot of clothes, a lot of kitchen stuff and not much else.  Our kitchen here is very different from the one we had in Japan.  It is missing my beloved pantry and has really odd shaped cabinets.  I still haven't figure out how to make the best use of them yet, as you can see (I've never had lazy susan's and as of right now I hate them!  I'm hoping they'll grow on me.).  I'm not trying to complain, I just need to figure out how to make it work for me.

Since we have all these kitchen supplies, we've been making trips all the grocery options in town. We have about 5-6 to choose from with in 10 minutes of our house.  The first time I went to buy chicken and had more than one option I was so overwhelmed it took me 10 minutes to pick something.  There is so much more variety and selection here than we've had in the past 3 4 5 years!  They also have produce here like I've never seen anywhere else.

We thought to pack chairs in our UB but not a table so we've been eating dinner on trash cans (that are brand new and I still cleaned extra thoroughly).

We're slowly finding the perfect place for all of our belongings.  This place is smaller than any we've ever lived for an extended period of time so it's going to be interesting once our HHG arrive.

We did send our bikes with our UB so we've been putting them to good use exploring our neighborhood.

We live close enough to the beach that we can ride our bikes there.  We haven't yet but it'll be happening this week, I'm sure.  We did stop by Ocean Beach one day for a few minutes while we were out running errands.

We checked out a new church.  It was my first time at a "mega church" and it was interesting but it felt kind of like corralling cattle to me and that's not really what we're looking for in a church.  I loved all the outreach opportunities they have though so we'll see.

Everyday here I think "man, what a perfect day today is" then I realize that this is going to be EVERYDAY for the next 3-4 years. I really think we're going to like it here, more than we had hoped.  We live in the perfect neighborhood for us.  Almost everything we could possibly need is a bike ride away, the weather is my idea of perfection, and so far the people have been great to us.  We're looking forward to the next 3-4 years here!