For those of you that may not know PCS mean Permanent Change in Stations. Meaning we are moving from one military post to another. For us, we were able to get a pretty neat new location. We went to Schofield Barracks Hawaii on the island of Oahu. Though it sounds like a dream, and looks like a dream, there are a lot of things that go into this whole thing. I thought I would share a few things that I learned along the way, because this was my first PCS and it was over an ocean which in Military terms is called an OCONUS.(Outside the continental United States.)
1. If you have animals,they come first. You need to check with the overseas location that you are going to and see what they require. For Hawaii, they are a rabies free state, and therefore, your animals will require that they have a rabies FAVIN test done. Its a blood test, and depending on where you go, get a little pricey. Since we were at Fort Riley Kansas, we were able to take the animals to KState, and it was 88.00 Per animal. I have 2 smaller animals, a yorkie 5 Pounds, and a Maltese/yorkie mix 8 pounds. You need to do this 120 days before entering the island. For us, we were not able to get them in on time, and they were not able to travel with us. They are with the in-laws till their time is up. Plus the hotel we are in doesn't allow animals. They also need to be micro-chipped and have to have a 14 day and 10 day health check which we have to do. We will not worry to much till we get a house, than I will let you know how that goes.
2. Make a reservation at the authorized Hotels. They fill fast, and for us, we wanted to be on post to be able to access anything that we needed to get in processed. We made reservations at the Schofield Inn. There are better places to go, but they are not located on the base, and traffic in Hawaii can e crazy.
3. Start to go through the things that you want to take in your unaccompanied goods. These are things that you can take in 3x3x3 crate, and they go on a plane so they get to you faster. This will be things that you will need right away when you get a house. Plates, silverware, bedding, inflatable beds, pots and pans, coffee pot, Clothes that you will not need right away, but would like to have when you get a house. You don't want to have to take everything on the plane. Your soldier will have to go to transportation at some point and schedule this pick up. It takes about 30 days for us to get these things.
4. Check with your next post and see if you need to a memo to be able to send your vehicle over seas if you have a loan on it. We didn't need one for Hawaii, but we got one anyways just in case.
5. Go through your house and plan to have a yard sale. There are probably a lot of things you don't want to take with you and you can get some travel cash out of instead of throwing it away. For us it was winter things and really big items. They will not transport gels, liquids, and things like that. Candles have to be thrown, however we have a unity candle, and they were nice enough to let us take some meds and important candles. They wrapped them in plastic bags in case they opened or melted int he warehouses.
6. Figure out where you can take your car to be transported. In the middle of the us the only place there is for a car port is in pontoon beach Illinois. Which is like 15 minutes from St. Louis. They will authorize you to take your car to the port, and have you fly back to the base. We however, needed our car for travel since we were selling the second vehicle before coming. So we planned to fly out of St, Louis, and get a rental from St. Louis. We got a hotel across the street from the airport. Drury Inn Lambert Airport is where we stayed. We rented through USAA Hertz. It was down the road from the hotel and across from the airport. We took the car to the port, and stayed 3 nights to explore St. Louis. When you board the plane in the morning they will get you a shuttle to the airport, so we returned the rental the night before.
7. Before they take your household goods, (which go on a boat and take about 60 days to get to you) we made sure that my soldier and I both had folders that held our Very important papers. Medical records, birth certs, car information, marriage cert, copied of shot records, vet records, airport ticket information, and anything else that you know you have to have in case they loose your paperwork in shipping. Take it with you on the carry on bags so you can get to it if needed.
8. Before they come to pack your house, make sure you have your luggage figured out. The military uses Delta more times than not. Each person is allowed one carry on, and 4 checked bags. A car seat counts as a checked bag. There are 4 of us, so we had 4 carry ons, a laptop bag, 2 boosters and 6 checked bags.
9. Stay calm. When they are packing your house, things are all out of order. The packers we got we really liked. You will get overwhelmed and frustrated. Seems like everytime you turn around they have to throw something away. They can not transport batteries, so instead of having to replace them all when we got here we got baggies and put them in a checked bag along with any other liquids we didn't want to have to replace. Since you can have 4 checked for free I thought we would take as much as we could to save some money on replacing things when we got here. Another fast tip, would be to make sure that if you want to live on post, than you need to be on a housing list. You need to have your soldier make about 30 copies of their orders. You need 5 just to go to the car port. You will need them a lot. Better safe than sorry. If you are living off post, make sure you get on a list asap. Anything around a military post can be long and hard to get onto. You don't want to be homeless they will only pay for your hotel room for so long.
~ Another tip, if you have kids, keep in mind how long your flight will be. Take things for the flight. Books, game systems, snacks, whatever else you can think of. We got flash cards and things for a child that is missing some Kindergarten in this whole thing. Our flight left St. Louis at 7:10 and landed in Atlanta at 9:50. You jumped an hour ahead in the process so the flight left Atalanta to Honolulu at 10:55. This gave us enough time to get to the right gate on the tram and start boarding. To Honolulu it was a 9.5 hour trip and this time we went 5 hours back, which is only 4 hours behind Fort riley. Now they had daylight savings and Hawaii does not so we are 5 hours from them. It was only 4 pm when we got here. Have a plan to get back on a normal sleeping schedule.
~ Have a plan at the airport. We were lucky enough to have friends here that picked us up. It took over an hour for my husband to get through the line to sign in at the airport after we landed. So we found the USO in the airport and hung out there till he was done. If it will be awhile, this is a good idea, because they have free snacks, drinks, tv and other things. They also have one at all the major airports so you will have one at your airport.
~ If your flight is long enough they have DVD players in each seat where you have a lot of channels, movies, and music to choose from. Bring your own ear buds. They charge you 2.00 on the plane to buy some. They do not take any cash on the plane, so if you are buying any food than you need a debit/credit card. Because our flight was so long they offered food 3 times on the flight. Snacks and drinks are free though and they offered those a lot. The food on there is like 9.00 for a small sandwich. Its not cheap. Worth it if you didn't have time to get anything in between flights and you left the hotel at 5 am.
I am sure there are things that I missed. My husband is in processing today, and so when he is done, I will learn how we go about getting settled on this island. I will than let you all know. If there is anything else that you think you have questions about, I would be happy to help anyone, because I know it was a rough, frustrating process, please email me @ whitney_johnson07@yahoo.com and I will answer any questions you have!!! Until then, I am going to relax before the craziness of getting settled starts :)
Monday, March 11, 2013
Thursday, March 7, 2013
PCS last minute emotions and feelings
I am going to keep this somewhat short, as I happen to be sitting in the lobby of the hotel at 10:30 at night when I have to be up and ready at 5 am for our ride to the airport.
As you know we are moving to Hawaii, and in the next blog I will tell you all about what it takes to PCS with the military, because I know I could have used a little more information before taking the dive.
However, at this time, I feel like there is so many emotions and firsts on this trip I am not even sure where it is I start. After packing my life and watching it drive off in crates on the semi trucks, we made the journey back home for 14 days, a day in Wisconsin, and 2.5 days here.... in St. Louis Missouri. If you have ever shipped a vehicle with the military, you are most likely aware that there is only one car port in the mid west, and that happens to be here. So this is how we got here. We came a few days early to sight see, which was a blast. I will tell you about that also in the next blog. In short, we ate at some places we have never been to before, like Jack in the box, Hard rock cafe, and we of course saw and explored the beautiful building here as well as the gateway arch. It was amazing. That was a first for me. See when we said we were going the arch, and going to the top, none of us knew what it ment to go to the top. For someone like me that is scared of heights and does not like tight spaces, I was shocked when I got there and realized we had to ride in a small little pod, all the way to the top. Somehow I survived, and in the end it was worth it. It was so pretty and not all that bad up there as long as I looked straight and not down.
Now I am sitting here in this hotel, lost. There is so much that is left to do, but I am still shocked that I am about to get on this plane tomorrow. Me nor my kids have ever been on a plane. We go from here to Atlanta which is a 1.5 hour flight and then from Atalanta to Honolulu which is is 10.5 hours. It's weird that we will be traveling and I will not be driving. If you know my husband, you know he doesn't drive anywhere as he is nervous driver and hates it. So on all these adventures, I drive. It's tiring to say the least.
I keep thinking the army will call anytime and say Oh never mind come back to Kansas, we don't need you in Hawaii anymore. Now I am hours from that plane, and that is clearly not going to happen. I am excited and sad, and scared and happy all at the same time.
I will let you know that survived tomorrow when I also know that I have, and give you the rundown on the whole adventure. There is still a lot more to do, but lucky for me, I will be surrounded by families and friends that have already had to do all this at one time or another, and we will all have to do it again when we come back stateside. I think right now, I am at really unreal place. I feel like I need to pinch myself and wake up. In reality I need to get off here and catch some zzzz's or I won't be waking up tomorrow.
Hawaii here we come!!!! Hope you are ready, I am not sure if I am....
As you know we are moving to Hawaii, and in the next blog I will tell you all about what it takes to PCS with the military, because I know I could have used a little more information before taking the dive.
However, at this time, I feel like there is so many emotions and firsts on this trip I am not even sure where it is I start. After packing my life and watching it drive off in crates on the semi trucks, we made the journey back home for 14 days, a day in Wisconsin, and 2.5 days here.... in St. Louis Missouri. If you have ever shipped a vehicle with the military, you are most likely aware that there is only one car port in the mid west, and that happens to be here. So this is how we got here. We came a few days early to sight see, which was a blast. I will tell you about that also in the next blog. In short, we ate at some places we have never been to before, like Jack in the box, Hard rock cafe, and we of course saw and explored the beautiful building here as well as the gateway arch. It was amazing. That was a first for me. See when we said we were going the arch, and going to the top, none of us knew what it ment to go to the top. For someone like me that is scared of heights and does not like tight spaces, I was shocked when I got there and realized we had to ride in a small little pod, all the way to the top. Somehow I survived, and in the end it was worth it. It was so pretty and not all that bad up there as long as I looked straight and not down.
Now I am sitting here in this hotel, lost. There is so much that is left to do, but I am still shocked that I am about to get on this plane tomorrow. Me nor my kids have ever been on a plane. We go from here to Atlanta which is a 1.5 hour flight and then from Atalanta to Honolulu which is is 10.5 hours. It's weird that we will be traveling and I will not be driving. If you know my husband, you know he doesn't drive anywhere as he is nervous driver and hates it. So on all these adventures, I drive. It's tiring to say the least.
I keep thinking the army will call anytime and say Oh never mind come back to Kansas, we don't need you in Hawaii anymore. Now I am hours from that plane, and that is clearly not going to happen. I am excited and sad, and scared and happy all at the same time.
I will let you know that survived tomorrow when I also know that I have, and give you the rundown on the whole adventure. There is still a lot more to do, but lucky for me, I will be surrounded by families and friends that have already had to do all this at one time or another, and we will all have to do it again when we come back stateside. I think right now, I am at really unreal place. I feel like I need to pinch myself and wake up. In reality I need to get off here and catch some zzzz's or I won't be waking up tomorrow.
Hawaii here we come!!!! Hope you are ready, I am not sure if I am....
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