what I miss

I love living here. I love the speed of island life, I love the constant beauty around me, I love the weather. Just this morning, I was driving home from base and there was so much vibrant color around me. The green palm trees, the red hibiscus, the pink and yellow plumeria, the blue of the sky and the pale turquoise waters. As much as I love it here, there are some things that I miss about home. I know all my friends see my posts on FaceBook or Instagram and tell me to stop rubbing it in, but there are some things about back home that I'm jealous of! What a lot of people don't understand about island living is the lack of options in so many things. Not a lot of companies ship here and there aren't a lot of stores that I was used to living on the mainland. Since I was itching for some Chipotle early, I started thinking of things I miss, and here they are...

~Chipotle--there are a lot of amazing restaurants here, but Chipotle is not one of them. There are very few restaurants that even serve Mexican food in any capacity and they do not compare to any back home. 

~Target--What I would give for just 2 hours in a Target. I miss being able to look for shampoo and having more than a handful of options. Even just cleaning products! The NEX or BX here have a very limited array of options and they can be out of stock of a popular item for quite a long time. Oh and being able to find cute, cheap clothes like at Target? Not an option here. At all. And Target does not ship here.

~clothing--it's so hard to find any cute clothes out here! It's like every store, even the Macy's, is the clearance rack at Ross back home. It's all the things no one wanted and were left over at the end of the season. Even kid's clothing. I'm sure we'll need to buy clothes for the girls while they're here, but everything I've seen is not something I'd want them to wear. Not that the girls should be picky at a young age, but I want them to look semi cute. For me as well though, I want some new summery clothes are it's so hard to find anything cute!

~grocery stores in general--Fresh chicken is something I took for granted. Who knew that some places only have frozen chicken? If I plan to make dinner with chicken (or any poultry) it has to be the day prior so it can defrost. Oh and low-fat options in every item from cheese to ice cream? Not really available out here. Even the Lean Cuisines come in about 10 varieties here. I miss having variety in food!

~Michael's--Michael's was my favorite, but I'd take any craft store out here! I'm pretty much limited to the "craft aisle" at the NEX or BX which is less than a quarter of one side of a store aisle. If that. I was excited to learn that there is one craft store on the island, Ben Franklin, so I went to check it out yesterday. Half the aisles were empty. No joke. I couldn't even find card stock to print on. It was sad.

~Staples--or any office store, really. Do you know how hard it is to find any sort of office supply out here?! I've been looking for flash drives and between the "electronics" section at the BX and NEX, I had incredibly few options. And neither Staples nor Office Depot ship to Guam.

~Starbucks--I did find a coffee shop with good drinks, but it will never be the same as Starbucks. Nor will it be as convenient! 

~my friends--I guess this goes without saying, but I miss all my friends back home! I miss being able to just meet for lunch or go grab a beer when we need to vent. 

Ok, this wasn't meant to be a rant. I just want all my friends and family back home to understand what island living is really like, the good and the bad. At the end of the day, I can see the ocean from every room in my house and get to view the most incredible sunsets from my lanai. It's pretty damn awesome...