फंडिंग अ हाउस तो कॉल ओउर होम

The Search is On... Trying to find a Home

Yesterday between 10:30am and 5:00pm we had about 5 different appointments with 5 different agencies to see several places off base trying to find a home for our family. When we first had orders to Okinawa we thought for sure we would want to live on base, just because living out in a different country seemed a little scary. Since then we've been talking to different people about their experiences and have gotten a lot of feedback. Living on base has its advantages and disadvantages. You have a lot of rules to live by on base. Your grass always has to cut and maintained at a specfic height, or you'll get a ticket from the grass nazi. And we've also been told the housing on base is extremely small, and to boot we might only rate a two bedroom house. Needless to say, it didnt take us long to start considering living in a house/apt off base. Many of the places available off base are much bigger. After our many appointments yesterday we thought we had found "the one". The apartment had tons of space. Four bedrooms, play room, spacious family room, huge balcony with a oceanfront view, and a communiy yard right outside the kids could run around in. It was amazing but it ended up being just a little bit out of our price rang, and the last thing we want to do is stretch our budget. Can you imagine paying rent on an appartment that is more than $2,000 a month? Yea, that's what we're looking at, but luckily we get whats called OHA (Overseas Housing Allowance), which is 180,000 Y or $1,818. Plus a rather large utility allowance that helps with the outragious electric bills during the summers.
Overall are biggest need right now is for prayer helping us to know where we should live (on/off base) and to find a comfortable place to call home for the four of us.