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After two months of living nomadically without a home, we have finally made it to Japan! These last two months have been jam packed, with James traveling between Virginia, California, and Florida for training, a vacation for James and I in Savannah, GA, two friends weddings in Blacksburg, Spring Game, lots of visiting with family, two showers for my new sister-in-law, my brothers college graduation, and his wedding! Needless to say, we were exhausted by the time we left for Japan.  We left on Sunday morning (the 23rd) at 6:00 in the morning, and we arrived in Tokyo at 1:30 in the afternoon on Monday (the 24th). Our check-in went surprisingly well, despite the fact that the Navy spelled my name wrong on my plane ticket.  The flight to Dallas was only a few hours, and we slept the entire way, since we decided to not sleep on Sunday night.  (And we still had to pack for Japan, since we had spent a week in Connecticut up until hours before our flight left!) James and I have a way of jam-packing everything into small amounts of time, and then desperately getting our stuff ready for some crazy move we are doing.  Such is our way our life!

The flight to Tokyo was thirteen and a half hours, but it really didn’t seem very long.  I slept most of the way, and James went in and out of sleep, despite the three year old kicking him and creating a great deal of chaos with the flight attendants.  We were hoping the kid would fall asleep, and when he finally did, it was on the ground, which just created another scene.  We saw the flight attendants quite a bit on that flight.  Long flights mean lots of food, although I thought three meals was a bit excessive.  Our first meal included sushi (yay!) and I was hoping we’d get more, but it was just part of the first meal.  When we landed in Tokyo, it seemed like we had just gotten on the plane, yet like we had been on the plane forever.  We didn’t really know where we were meeting our sponsor, but we had hopes of running into him.  Customs and immigration took us less than five minutes, and all of a sudden there we were, in our new home! It was the first time it really hit me, and I was excited, but anxious as I realized what a big airport it was, and that we had no idea where we were being met.  We wandered for a bit, and couldn’t find the military liaison, which we later realized was in a completely different terminal.  Thankfully, James had met the guy who picked us up at his school in Florida last month, so they recognized each other.  I was thankful, since I almost had my first breakdown when I didn’t think it was possible to find the people picking us up!

The drive from the airport to the base was about two hours, and we were exhausted, so I didn’t take much in.  The freeways looked pretty much the same as ours, except you drive on the other side of the road, and I couldn’t read the signs.  But, basically exactly the same.  We’ve been here almost a week now, and we have finally started to really adjust to the time.  In the first few days, I woke up at 4:00 am every morning, and I would be wide-awake.  Usually I need an hour or two to feel even slightly awake, and that is slowly coming back.  We are moving into our new apartment on Friday, so these nomadic Hokies will finally have a place to live for the next three years.

Heading south into winter from Brazil the temperatures quickly dipped.  As the days grew short, I managed to grab an awesome picture of the sunset off the Argentine Coast. I had regained much energy by the time we entered the Strait of Magellan, the highlight of the trip for me.  It took us two days to cross the Strait, though it took Magellan over two weeks.  Entering from the Atlantic we saw a vast flat empty land, with some ice but mainly brown reminding me of pictures from Greenland.  This was cold and boring until we reached Punta Arenas for an overnight anchorage.  The current strong and we dragged anchor, but I enjoyed looking at a large city in a desolate countryside through binoculars.  I really wished we had made a port call to walk around, but we had to continue.  The next day was one to remember, with dramatic views of mountains, ice, glaciers, penguins, and the circle of life. We entered a narrow channel with freezing mist, but got to see the southern most point of South American mainland, with only patagonia and the Drake Passage on our left to separate ourselves from Antarctica.  We are also able to see tiny Magellenic Penguins enjoying their penguin lives.  After hours of majestic beauty, we literally could take a picture anywhere and see something good, we were joined by a pod of Orcas.  It was cute at first with thoughts of Free Willy in our head, but then we saw them hunting seals, a truly terrific sight.  Seals were trying to escape, but couldn’t make it… it was just like the Planet Earth series on the port side of the ship.  After a frozen day we looked forward to my favorite port stop in Valparaiso, Chile.

Pulling into Rio de Janeiro (January River), Brazil afforded a great view of among the most unique topography I’ve ever come across. The main city was founded within a large natural harbor with a narrow opening to the ocean. Both the French and Portuguese attempted to settle the area, with the Portuguese easily fortifying the opening to the bay. The Portuguese empire moved its headquarters to Rio after Napoleon invaded the Iberian Peninsula, affording Old World riches and architecture to litter the city. Today, Rio is famous for its beaches which we saw riding in, particularly Copacabana and Ipanema neighborhoods. On a mountain top overlooking the city is a 40 foot statue of Jesus, Christo Redentor (Christ the Redeemer) that we could actually see riding in. However, Rio is in the grip of rapid, massive urbanization as the population continues to move in from the countryside into cities looking for jobs. Without housing construction to meet population, shanty towns have gone up everywhere, called favelas. There are miles and miles of favelas and are areas of high crime. We pulled in at a commercial pier downtown. I was immediately struck by the high amount of grafitti, EVERYWHERE. There was literally nothing NOT tagged by rather colorful and artful spray paint, including churches and gravestones. Once liberty call went down I went out with a few junior officers and explored Copacabana beach in their winter. We enjoyed drinks and a sunset on top of a hotel, then headed to a few bars and restaurants, running into American and European tourists. I was surprised by the open prostitution and drugs around, but brothels are legal in Brazil… Portuguese as a language is interesting but not too difficult to communicate with others if you are polite. We tried hard not to be ignorant Americans, but did have to point to pictures at times when ordering. Also, the local Brazilian beer was not that good. The next day Tim, my roommate, and I woke up early to take a white water rafting tour out in the countryside. It was an hours ride, but saw many favelas on the way out. The rafting tour was neat, as the rapids were mildly tough but fun. The guides were nice and liked to splash us. After rafting by old coffee farms, we went through a jungle area and saw actual monkeys in the wild, pretty crazy. That night we had a required Wardroom function at a high class brazilian steakhouse. The servers kept bringing mounds of different cuts of meat, as much as we could eat. Hanging out with 80 officers got lame, and we took a cab back to the ship to pass out. The next day we got to play real tourist and visit Jesus. A group of four took a cab up Corcovado Mountain to see the famous Cristo Redento (Christ the Redeemer) statue overlooking Rio. Pulling into the city I was able to make out the statue on the peak. Unfortunately for us the clouds were low that day and hung right around the mountain peak, but we got to see Jesus up close, which is not one large chiseled rock, rather a mosaic pieced over a frame. In search of food, we made it down the mountain to Ipanema beach, an area much nicer than Copacabana. At a nice micro-brew pup we ate some fried cheese dish, then had coffee in the local style, instant… not all that good considering they grow the beans everywhere. Maybe Americans are the only ones obsessed with drip coffee. After walking the boardwalk we headed back to the ship for an evening reception for Brazilian Naval officials. While preparing to aide the captain with the evening handing out gifts, I suddenly and violently became ill. Then sick. Something I had out in town had hit me, and my last day in Brazil was spent with the toilet. Eventually I crawled down to medical, who gave me two IV’s to hydrate me and stop my stomach from discharging everything. I was not the only one on the ship to get food poisoning, and we suffered together, though I thought my insides were trying to come out. I was weak for two weeks after that blow.

After several months of toil and hard work in humid, sticky Pascagoula, Mississippi the USS MAKIN ISLAND finally got underway.  She was only two years overdue and overbudget at 2.5 Billion taxdollars, but in reality she is a pretty cool ship. I am on a hybrid ship that saves a bunch of gas.  So, we headed south into the Gulf of Mexico and finally into the Caribbean.

The water turned a cobalt blue and was very nice, but I was rarely outside. The ship offered a deal where you could pay to not shave. I tried my hand at facial hair and surprised myself with a decent beard. A few officers even shaved theirs into a fu man shu… eventually we transited the entire Caribbean, passed through the windward islands and entered the Atlantic.

We turned south along Brazil’s Atlantic coast and saw the opening of the Amazon River (not really, but the captain was excited to tell us somewhere to our right was the largest river basin in the world).

The other highlight was a traditional crossing the line ceremony where King Neptune and Davy Jones embarked the ship when we passed the equator to allow us to enter their domain.   Other than that, our daily routine settled down and we rarely saw the sun. Three short weeks found us in the southern hemisphere in the middle of winter outside of Guanabara Bay, Brazil.