Questions Answered

I asked if any of you had any questions. Here are my answers. As best I can do. Please add another comment if you have a different question or if I didn't answer it accurately.

1. You don't have central heat? Nope. We sure don't. I have been told that in general, it doesn't get much below 50 degrees here, and the bigger battles are wind and rain. JB doesn't think 50 is that cold. I do. We do have two fireplaces, and we may have to consider some space heaters (which are never good combos with small children in your home.) In the end, we may just all sleep in the room with the fireplace on really cold nights. As I understand it, absence of heat and a/c is pretty much the norm around the island. One of the reasons people choose Base housing is because of some of the non-American-things you find in off-Base housing here. (Other things would include small appliances, no dryer, etc.)

2. Can you fill me in on JB's job? John will be one of two doctors on the Base. He and his buddy Nick, will be the two doctors, and in fact, since Nick just pinned on Major (which JB should do at the end of this year), he will be John's boss (called the Flight Commander.) There is also a female nurse practioner which is good for me -- because otherwise I'd have to see Nick for any "issues." No thank you to that. There is also a Flight Medicine doctor who sees all pilots and their families. We are not sure of John's hours yet but the days do appear that they will be a bit longer with the commute and the possibility of not coming home for lunch. They also end their day at 5pm instead of 4:30pm. However, everything else should be very similar to Turkey. There will not be evenings or weekends as there is no hospital or OB work to do. He will take phone call and direct people to wait until Monday or go to the local ER. (I have been told that the ER here is not as good as Turkey.)
3. The Base won't provide you American-sized appliances? Don't get me started! Honestly, this is just another example of the frustrating way that public organizations work. There is some sort of rule and there is no ability for anyone to think outside of the box. (Excuse the small rant.) Apparently, "the rule" states that if a house is advertised as having an appliance, then the landlord is in charge of providing that appliance, and the Base will not step in to help. However, if the house is not listed with that appliance, than the Base can give you what you need to borrow. So because our landlord listed a refrigerator, we now have one, even though it is entirely too small for a family of five. JB went all the way up to the housing manager who refused to budge. So frustrating. We have a dryer (albeit a strange one). We have a washer that is currently broken. The landlord is going to get it fixed, but even when they do, it is very small, and I fear I'll be doing laundry 24-7 to keep up with it.

4. Do you have closets? Great question. The house does have closets, but they are on the small side for a house this size. It's interesting the things that they have so much of and the things they have so little of in European style living. Showers are of little importance and are often small or don't work well. And closets are another thing that the European homes seem to be lacking in. (As are appliances.)

5. Is English mandatory in schools there or is English speaking locals hard to find? As I understand it, English is taught in the schools. However, you have to keep in mind that Spanish is often taught in the schools in the USA. But that doesn't mean that people can really speak it. In addition, older Azorians don't usually speak any English. So far, it seems a lot like Turkey. In areas that cater to Americans, you can find someone who speaks English oftentimes. However, most locals do not speak any English. Protuguese, while related to Spanish, is so very different. Learning it would be a lot easier if it was Spanish as I have a decent background in that.

6. How do expenses work off-Base? If you live on Base, all expenses, including rent and utilities, are simply covered by the government. In Turkey, we never saw a bill for our rent, water, electricity, gas, etc. It was just all covered. Even repairs around the house were covered. We only had to cover certain things (like the door Scrubs broke -- although why that door wasn't covered but our screen doors being broken four times was -- is still an enigma to me.) The only thing you pay for in base housing is internet/phone/cable -- although sometimes a basic cable or basic phone is provided free of charge -- depending on how that Base organizes it.

When you choose to live off-Base, you are given a housing "stipend" (called BAH -- basic allowance for housing). This is how much you are allowed to spend on a house. You can get something more expensive, but you have to pay the difference. In our case, our house was almost exactly what our stipend allowed for. We have to pay just a little bit extra each month. All utilities are extra though.

How much your BAH is, is determined by your location. For instance, Stebbs' BAH in Washington D.C. is the same as what we are getting here. (Stebbs was worried about being left out of my bog so I'm going to keep working her in. :) BAH is determined by what you need to have a house adequate for your family and rank based on the cost of living in the area you are stationed.

In CONUS (bases in the Contintental U.S.), you are given money for your BAH. If you have extra, you are allowed to pocket that. So, in other words, if you get $2,000 a month for a home, and you choose to live in a house that is only $1,000, you can have that extra money to use as you wish. Most people will try to do this in order to use that extra money to pay all their utilities.
In OCONUS (bases overseas), the Base pays your landlord directly. If you have extra money, you do not get that money. So if we were to choose a much smaller house that only cost half as much, it would not help us in any way financially. In addition, you are still responsible for the utilities, either way.

7. Is there housing on base? And if so, why did you choose to live off base?  Each time we have been stationed, we have had a different set of circumstances to consider. When we were stationed at Eglin, we were coming off of just having bought and rennovating a condo and just didn't want to deal with property owning or renting. In addition, we were quite emotionally worn down from the infertility journey, and just felt the need to simplify our life. We also thought we would only have one car and wanted JB to have an easy commute.

In Turkey, we were not given a choice. Due to safety concerns, they require you to live on Base. Contract employees and teachers are given the option since they are governed by a different body. But there is no choice for those of us stationed there.

Here in the Azores, we were given the option. Some people here are not. Because they have an abundance of houses on Base (due to so many people wanting to live off Base), they are now requiring people of certain ranks to live on Base. However, we are not among that group.

Generally, when living in an overseas location, most people will encourage you to live off-Base so that you can "experience the culture." When you are on Base, you are very isolated and prevented from truly experiencing living with the people. We therefore thought that this would be something we would like to experience, since we didn't get to do that in Turkey.

I probably would have picked living on Base again. It's all I have ever known, and I love the community formed on Base. However, JB really wanted to have some land (since the BAH allows for that here.) He wanted to be able to garden and not be "institutionalized" anymore. So we decided to go for it and try something new. It will cost a bit more in utilities and rent, but we thought it was worth it to experience the culture.

8. I know in Turkey you had a lot of safety concerns. Are there such concerns here? There are not nearly the concerns here as there were in Turkey. Outside of deployment areas and maybe Korea, the Base in Turkey was one of the more "risky" areas. In Turkey, we were in the Middle East. While Turkey itself liked to consider itself separate from the terror of the Middle East, there were still terror cells present, and we were constantly reminded to stay hyper vigiliant. In addition, the Base in Turkey dealt with protecting us in the Middle East. And therefore a lot more was at stake.

Lajes Field is simply a gas station. So there isn't nearly the heightened security. No car checks getting on and off Base. No dog checks. No opening your trunks. Maybe a look at your pass. Maybe not. And a wave on in.

I can tell a major difference in JB. I didn't realize until we got here, the extent of his caution he felt for himself and his family in Turkey. We've talked about it since we moved here. He just couldn't relax there. He just constantly felt like he was watching his back. I didn't feel that way, but I'm naive. JB is not. I also learned the language which helped a lot.

Here, the threat level toward Americans is nearly non-existent. That being said, we are in the world, and therefore crime does exist. The crime on the island is very low and mostly within the realms of petty theft. Violent crimes are nearly unheard of.

9. My question is why are there so many lavish homes when it seems like the island is still mostly farmed and the tourist population low? Where did the wealth come from to allow people to build such beautiful homes? I think the island is very much like Southern Florida (just one example) with extremes of beautiful homes and very average-sized homes. It is true that most of the homes seem a bit larger than normal. However, overall, I think it is pretty normal. I also think that because the island is "contained" there is probably some old money that stays on the island. Farming is the chief source of employment.

As for why we could afford such an amazing house, the economy has hit hard here too. Our landlord tried to sell our house but was unable to. Therefore, I imagine they purposely set the rent at an amount that one of the higher-paid-military-personnel could afford, knowing that an American was the most likely person to rent their home. But that's just an assumption I am making.

10. Does Rita remind you of Hatice, or is she a completely different type of person? I need to get a picture of Heeta for the blog. She actually does remind me of Hatice. She is a "soft" (as Hatice called herself person) with a big heart and very grandmotherly personality. They look different but their hearts seemed the same. A great love for their family and a desire to work hard to provide for that family.

11. The garage goes into your house? Yeah! Take a look at the video I took showing off how it works.