Come on down to the picture show

I was bored (again) so I decided to get some pics of my living area. I may try to get some of the base later. On a side note, tonight's dinner was steak and lobster...I was fairly shocked by that. The only thing that would have made it better is if I actually liked steak and lobster :) Anyway, on with the pictures:

First and foremost we have this guy...the bearded wonder of the middle east:

Then you have the wonderous living quarters we get. Pics are in order from outside the tent, right by the door, and then finally my bunk:

At the back of this pic there is a fence (I know it's hard to see, but it's there). Just over that fence is the Pakistan border:

This is the main road I have to take to get to everything (DFAC, MWR, etc):

And finally, these are my "mountains". I call the left one Bitey:

On a side note, yesterday it was so dusty out that those mountains couldn't be seen at all. That was pretty crappy I gotta say.

Finally

The journey thus far: 1 week in Georgia,  16 hour commercial flight to Kuwait, 1 day on base there, 3 days at my company’s facilities in Kuwait city, 1 more day on base in Kuwait, 6 hour military flight to Kandahar, 1 day there, a 4 hour ride in a Blackhawk to…wait for it…MY NEW HOME: Spin Boldak. I’m so happy to finally be stationary. Or, as George Clooney put it, I’m glad my days of “straitened circumstances forcing me into a life of aimless wanderin'” are at an end. Literally living out of a suitcase for 2+ weeks is no fun. Not to mention having to carry around ~150lbs worth of gear and clothing every time I moved. The facilities here are nicer than any of the other I’ve been to. My tent is nice, well lit, and clean. I even got a coveted bottom bunk…which is probably the most amazing thing that’s happened to me yet. I’m sick of having to jump and climb just to get into bed. So, all in all, this is a good base. We have stores, a gym, a pretty decent MWR, and one of the best DFACs I’ve experienced (that’s what most of the soldiers have told me as well). There’s also not a lot of people here which is great. Most of the places I’ve been to felt kind of overcrowded. The only real problem is that it’s pretty spread out. It’s at least a quarter mile walk to anything I need other than bathrooms. But…it’s not as thought the walk won’t do me some good. The new jeans I bought before I left that were fairly snug are kind of hanging off my hips now. So score for me. I can’t find a scale anywhere to know if I’ve lost any weight for sure but I fairly positive I have. I also now have a steady internet connection now so I’ll be able to keep in touch more regularly which is a good thing or a bad thing depending on how you look at it ;) I guess to sum everything up I’m fairly happy with my home for the next 11 months and hopefully won’t get reassigned any time. It looks like I got about the best that I could have hoped for. Pics to come soon.

The 3rd world...ain't so bad...

We took a cab to a mall tonight so I stopped at an ATM and took out the lowest amount of cash which was KD50. Turns out the exchange rate is insane and it's almost $200...and that was the lowest amount I could do. They had a big kids area in the mall, I attached pics. The mall was huge (as you can see from the map attached) and extremely overpriced. There was a Wrangler and Lee jean store in this mall. Not a pair of jeans under ~$70 US in site. Everywhere else was just as bad. A Kuwait:US::US:Mexico apparently. Oh yeah, I got to experience my first burqa store...they had some high dollar burqas in there. Who knew being humble could be so fashionable? I also saw a man wearing the equivalent of a tuxedo T-shirt except the design was like the front of a nice robe instead of a tie and jacket. Pretty friggin sweet to see that everything American including white trash has infiltrated the middle east. I've had so many inoculations this year but I don't think I got my white trash one. I guess they figure if I haven't gotten it from living in TX for 28 years then I'm probably immune. Oh yeah, I almost forgot: We rode there in a pretty bad thunder/rain storm and our cab driver ran a light and almost killed us. I'm already almost dieing and I'm not even in the war zone.

Inna here!

After roughly 20 hours of plane and bus rides I'm in Kuwait. I gotta say that my limited experience at this point is: the desert ain't got nothing on TX in the summer. It's cloudy and very windy...all in all not so bad. I'm on a military camp last night and tonight and will be moving to a building my company owns tomorrow. Not sure how that's going to be but my LNO says it's "the Taj Mahal compared to what you will be staying in." Yippee.


 

Outta here

Well, training is over and we did our final formation yesterday. I also go my orders yesterday. I’m going to Spin Boldak. It’s a border city between Afghanistan and Pakistan. 1 price for 2 3^rd world countries (see what I did there?)! I’m still pretty apathetic about the whole thing. Want to get there, get done, get paid, and get home. My goals for this trip are to get completely out of debt, get some technical certifications, get a lot of reading in, and maybe get in shape if there is a gym on base. Oh, and get a wicked awesome tan (go 120 degree summers!). We’ll see how well all that goes after I’ve been there for a few months though. This week as pretty boring for the most part. Mainly just had to be up really early for some formations that lasted about an hour or 2, then had most of the day off and then had another 1 or 2 hour evening formation. Pretty simple really. Wednesday though was different. Yesterday was from 0600 to 1800 and it was all training. Most of that was first aid training. We learned how to apply a chest catheter, close up huge wounds, apply these neat little tourniquet things and all sorts of stuff. After we’d sat through 8 hours of that, I was then informed that the civilians’ “first aid kit” consisted of 1 bandage…that’s it. So none of the stuff I learned will actually be applicable unless someone who has this crap gets hurt and I happen to be around and in perfect health.  I needed an aspirin after finding this out…but that wasn’t in the first aid kit so I was kind of out of luck. This week also held a smallpox vaccine and an anthrax vaccine in store for me…which was pretty awesome I gotta say. I think the only things I’m not immune to now are AIDS and the common cold. I’m immune enough that , when I come back, I could probably work in a daycare and have perfect attendance.  So, back on topic now, I leave today, will be in Kuwait next week for more training, and then it’s off to my new home! Yippee.

Day 1

I started my [US] orientation today. Unfortunately for me they didn't have a class first thing on what the 400000 acronyms stand for that I've come across so far so I'm pretty much as knowledgeable as I was before I got here (maybe a little less). But, thanks to the incomprehensible power of the infamous "smile and not" technique I made it through. All joking aside, today was relatively uneventful. Got all my medial and tax forms filled out. Was handed a massive bottle of malaria pills and sat through a few hours of power point. I have a 5 hour [paid] break then get to go listen to a half hour long speech. Then I'm done for today. I was told I would have my final location assignment by Thursday and fly out for Kuwait on Friday.