But for all the down sides to military life there are A LOT of positive parts to it as well. The chance to explore a new part of the country (or world), the opportunity to get involved in different ministries and activities and one of the best parts is getting to meet a whole new group of friends while still keeping your old ones. My Christmas card list is crazy long and every time we move it gets a little bit longer. I learned early on to never write a military families address in my address book in pen. It will for sure change a bunch of times and after a while the white out gets so caked up you can chip it off. About a third of my Christmas cards go to other countries besides America. And before I address my envelopes every year I have to send out a bunch of e-mails to figure out new addresses. I love to address our Christmas cards and see what parts of the world our friends are living in.
Whenever we get orders to a new place one of the first things we do is figure out who we know that already lives in that area. The Marine Corps is very small compared to all the other services so no matter what base we go to (as long as it is a Marine Corps base-right now we are on an Army base-not the same) we always know someone.
Because we (military families) are all in pretty much the same situation we make friends very quickly. This is probably one of the hardest things for people outside the military life to understand. My sister will often comment to me about how fast I have made friends after arriving at a new base. She jokes that I have more friends in the first month of living at a new place then she does after living in the same area for all her life. Military families all have one major thing in common-the military. We may have different religious backgrounds, different moral standards, different child rearing methods, different interests and hobbies but even with all those differences the one major common factor instantly brings us together as friends. The idea of knowing you have experienced the same situations causes you to bond with other people very quickly.
We may not always be lifelong friends with every family we meet but for the time we are stationed there together we are friends. But there are always a few special families that you instantly bond with and you know they are going to be forever friends. We may not see them for years at a time, but when you do get back together it is like you never were apart.
Because of all of this when you have a chance to visit with one of your military friends that you haven't seen in a while you do everything you can to make it happen because you don't know when the next chance to visit with them will come. Some of our very good friends from Camp Lejeune, NC are currently stationed in China. He is taking masters degree classes (yes, they are all in Chinese-it boggles my mind) and working towards earning a masters degree. Part of his job is to travel to other countries in the area. When they found out we were going to be stationed in Korea they quickly began to make plans to visit us.
They came for a week at the end of January and we had a wonderful time together. It was like having a small piece of America visiting me. They have an adorable 2 year old son. I was able to baby sit him a few times for them while they were here. It was fun to have him here for a while and it was fun to send him home :). He is a great kid, but I am getting too old to chase a 2 year old around all day. I was exhausted when he went back to his parents.
I didn't take many picture of the activities we did because most of them I had done before, but we did take a few pictures together.
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| The only group shot we got and the baby was not happy about it. |
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| Watching TV with the girls. |
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| I couldn't ever get him to sit still long enough for the picture to not be blurry. |
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| I'm not a hugger - she is. She got me to give her a big hug in front of the big flag. |
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