New Job

Well, I guess it's that time again! I have less than... we will say 20 days left (its less) and I'm getting moved to another job. Our replacement unit got here on the 13th of June, they are the 524th CSSB from Hawaii. I don't have a person filling in my position, as they are moving to Hawaii.. So the next few weeks I'm here will be interesting. I plan on hitting the gym A LOT.

My new job... I guess I will be working at the USO for the most part. Nothing wrong with it, I've already put in about 130 hours there, which has made me eligible for a Volunteer Service Ribbon. Kinda cool! I've met a lot of people working doing Head Count and I'm actually sad to leave. But my unit is saying there is a new requirement for Master Resiliency Training (google it) and I might have some things to do. Well all the information I brought for that, I've already sent home. I have NEVER done anything with it. Ahhh well, such is life I suppose.

I'm ready to get out of here.. Its getting hotter and hotter and the wind storms are getting worse. I've debated on posting, Do you know whats worse then being in Afghanistan, 100 degree + temp and sand storms? Me either. Maybe some day.

I dont even know if anyone reads this blog anymore... but hey, I'm almost home and don't really expect many people too. Oh USA... you are so close to my sites.

Head Count

It's that time again... I have a new job. I'm currently working at the Deli, making tally marks for all the personnel who come and eat. This is what I get paid the big bucks to do.... I have easy hours, 0900-1400, so I'm going to start volunteering at the USO to keep me busy the last month and a half that I'm here.  Its nice to not have to work 12-14 hours anymore, oh and That's right... Month and a half!!!!!! I'm so ready to blow this Popsicle stand!

I've been trying to run as many races as I can. There were two two runs in April that I did. Both 5k's. I placed 2nd in one, 3rd in the other. May doesn't have so much going on, but I signed up for a 5k on the 24th and a tough man competition on the 25th. The tough man comp. is on a team. The two other people I'm with are Spc Stoll and SFC Cox (not that any of you know them), but our team name is Rep it or Leave it... We're pretty much doing it for fun because none of us are super buff. But it will be fun.

Sometime in mid June our replacement unit should start showing up. I have already sent home two tough boxes of things and will be mailing one more and hopefully nothing else. I'm ready to pack up and like I said blow this Popsicle stand.

I dont have much else to report... I really dont even know if anyone reads these.. but i'll try and do one more! Maybe two!

Entry Control Point

So.. I haven't written in a long time... I should have looked at my last post to check. Oh well.. I will go back as far as Valentines Day... I ran the Stupid Cupid 5K and got first place for the females running a 22:25, second place came in at 22:28, so she was right behind me! On February 28th the Mayor Cell closed. So.. I have a new job!! I currently work at the ECP, Entry Control Point. This is where allll the local nationals who work on post come through. I tell you what... It's creepy. They stare.. and stare and stare. Hardly any of them speak english.. And I don't speak good Dari at all.. I can say, Hi, good morning, how are you, go away, come here, yes, no, go sit down... good night, good bye, and what did he say... Nothing much. Let me go backwards a bit... So.. what I do, is take what are called Taskeras. This is like they're identification  And I input the number into a tracking system. It tracks how many times they have been on post. Daily Labors are not allowed on post more then 4 times. Its supposed to be three, but if they have been on post 3 times, I can let them on. So if they show up with 4 times, I have to turn them away. This is incredibly annoying because I have to tell them no, and explain why. EVEN THOUGH they know why. Sometimes they act SO incredibly dumb, like oh i didn't know. Yes, yes you knew. And no, he can't come on just for today. No exceptions. I know they just want to earn money, but its not my fault there economy SUCKS. Some of them I feel so incredibly bad for. One is 20 years old. He lives with his mom, dad, brother, his brothers wife, their three daughters and his two sisters. He is the only one that has a job and is bringing in income to the family. And he sleeps on the floor. He doesn't even have a bed. THEN there are times when I dont know how to feel about them... This girl Bethany, is a 3rd grade teacher at a school and her students have been sending me cards for holidays. For St. Patricks Day they made cards and she sent them, girl scout cookies and granola bars. The Afghans we hired to do security, took all the granola bars, and 4 boxes of cookies. Two of them go fired because EVERYTHING, and I mean everything (well everything but the bathroom), has a camera. So we caught them going behind my desk and taking them. Just the other day we caught a guy stealing..... wait for it..... 90, yup thats right, 90 cases of water. I dont even want to tell you how much the government pays per bottle for water. Anyway... The only bad part are the locals stink. They come into my tent and when there are a lot... wow... I have to open the tent windows, it's awful. I really like the unit that I am attached too. They're guys from the 3rd Infantry Division. They're good guys, and they treat me like I matter and like they actually need me. Which is the exact opposite of how the 1034th have treated me since I have been here.
Anyway, St. Patricks Day... we had a race, I got 3rd. I was almost a minute slower then Valentines Day... I blame it on the wind, and the fact that there were a ton of people and it was HOT! Oh well.. I'm not sure what race will be next... but I haven't ran since Sunday. I've been lifting with the guys and I'm too tired to wake up and run. But after this week, I will get back at it. It's generally in the 70's here. So it's fairly nice. Today I have about 112 days left. I know I shouldn't be counting, but I can't wait to get out of this crap hole.  I honestly don't know why we are even in this country. We aren't gaining anything from being here.... except more debt. Oh well.. they will just take more benefits away from us instead of doing something smart like cutting congresses salary. I mean what do they do that's so important!? They can't even make decisions!!! They work less then teachers and make practically 10x's as much!!! DUMB.

Oh well.. That's all from the Stan!.

Oh the weather outside is frightful...

So.. I haven't written in awhile... I should have probably looked to see when the last time I actually wrote was.... This week, right after Christmas we had a huge blizzard. We got close to 10 inches of snow, which I guess is unheard of. They have said it gets as cold as it is, but not this much snow... We have had A LOT of issue all around the Camp. Heater units are going out, only blowing out cold air, when it's barely getting above 32 degrees during the day.. and at night it gets into the teens. And it's very frigid.  We have been having  A LOT Of issues with pipes freezing. The bathroom I use by my tent has been closed for 3 or 4 days now, and the showers... well lets just say a lot of us are lucky to be able to shower every other day. It could be worse... So I'm not trying to complain.. just let everyone know what we are going through. Where I work, we no longer have usable bathrooms and now have porta potty's. What's really funny, is that the blue liquid is frozen.. .I've never seen it frozen before.

Christmas was another normal work day for the most part. My boss and I ended up watch A Christmas Story, Christmas Vacation and A Charlie Brown Christmas... Most other Soliders had the day off, so you could hear them outside enjoying the day. On that day, I ran a 5K race that I helped set up and run, and ended up placing 2nd for the females, running a 22:37. Not to bad for 3.1 miles. I'm not sure what place I came in overall.. but there were close to 150 participates. It was a great turn out and for placing I got a $50 Amazon gift card and a Battalion Commanders Coin.

Speaking of coins... Maybe people don't know a whole lot about coins, but you get coins for doing good things. So far I have gotten 4 total. I received one from a Civil Affairs team here, for helping them with some PPE to go on a mission. The had helped out with The Blue Mosque, and in order to go inside you had to take off your boots, but I had given them over boots, from a supply that i had, and they were able to go into the Mosque without taking off their boots. The Blue Mosque is something VERY huge in Mazar-i-sharif, and people from all over Afghanistan come to see it. My friend from the Civil Affairs team gave me a CD of pictures. I will post them on Facebook... It's VERY pretty. My 2nd Coin was from the post office girls I work with. It's a great coin! It has a honey badger on it :) The third was from the race. And recently I got another one from the 1 Sustainment Brigade Command Sergeant Major. Which is a pretty big deal. Still not 100% sure why I got it, because I said, are you sure I deserve this, I'm just doing my job. And he said, isn't that why everyone gets one. It was pretty weird.

Travis is back in Iowa enjoying time with his friends and family. He seems to be enjoying himself, but always makes sure to tell me he misses me. It's nice to hear, but hard at the same time. I get very mad at myself for choosing to be away from him. If I could do it again, I totally wouldn't. Having a combat patch is not worth being away from the person you love. People say distance makes the heart grow founder or something like that... it's true, I miss him more and more every day. And we are very lucky to be able to have the communication that we do, but it is still VERY hard. We both have VERY different schedules and everyone knows how social of a person he is. Which doesn't  always help especially when I want to talk to him, but its just something that we have to work through. He will leave for Alabama sometime after New Years and I think he jumps right into the first phase of flight school right when he gets back. We are hoping everything works out and he is able to come back for my Welcome home in July. We will see...

This past Saturday I hit 18 weeks of being gone... And on Christmas eve... we broke 200... We hit 199 days left. And today we (the people I work with) were talking about how we are 45 days away from being half way done.. BUT if they don't pass the budget by the first... some of us could be leaving here soon. Sometimes I pray that, that happens. The only thing that would stink would be not having a job. I have a good skill set and I feel I would be able to get a job quit quickly.

Oh.. I am learning to crochet.. I've only made a handful of things. I'm great at making scarves! haha... and learned how to make a beard!!! So all I have to do know is figure out how to make a beanie, and then.... Epic things will happen!! I posted a few pictures on facebook. THere was a beanie laying around and i just attached a beard... Looks pretty sweet :)

Well.. I need to go pick up my laundry.. So until next time!

Road Trip to BAF

So... I went on a visit to Bagram Air Force Base.... not because I wanted to, because I was told. I had to go meet the Mortuary Affairs (MA) Team and our higher up MA people. Our higher ups, didn't even know I was going to show up... And well.. everything we went through only took about an hour. So... it was a worthless trip.

I did get to have some Green Bean Coffee, which we have at Camp Marmal. It was nice to just sit and enjoy it. There PX wasn't anything fancy, nor was there bazaar. So we (I was with another guy in my unit), ended up just hanging out at the MACP (mortuary affairs collection point). We actually spent the night there too.

I expeirenced my first IDF (Indirect Fire). It landed about a football field away from us. So we hung out in a bunker for about an hour. It hit a water buffalo (no one was hurt), and there was water all over that particular area.

I ended up sleeping on a couch... Well.. I didn't sleep much because the building was right by the flight line, so aircraft were constantly leaving.

The personnel at the airport are idiots too. I called at 10 pm, that night to see if there were any flights out in the morning... The guy said the only one was at 1015. Well I asked if it was show time or the actual flight left. He said show time was then. Which is just a time they tell you to show up before the plan comes in... Well it turned out 1015 was the flight time NOT the show time, AND another flight had gone out earlier that morning. So... we thought we were screwed, but another flight went out later that afternoon so we made it back.

I ended up sleeping 1130 hours that night and it was the greatest feeling ever!!

Well... that's all for now... :)

The Dust Bowl...

Well, my unit has made it to Afghanistan... Everyone is here, but we had to send someone home early because the death of his 4 year old son. Please keep him in your prayers. He's not coming back over here with us.

I'm living in a tent with 4 other females. We are all getting along very well. Myself and one other of the females work on Camp Pratt and the others work on Camp Marmal. Camp Marmal is the bigger base that houses all the other foreign nationals that are here. Camp Marmal is run mostly by Germans.. and I tell you what, those German men are pretty handsome!!! :)

Camp Pratt is still being built so there isn't much over here. But the journey to Camp Marmal is only about 20 minutes and we take shuttle buses to and from. The Mongolians are in charge of letting people in and out of Camp Marmal. They're all really nice and I always wave and they wave back. There are a lot of local Afghans that work all around Pratt. I've been told that most of them hate the Taliban because the Taliban killed their families. I think it's great the the Government is helping them get work. They are very hard workers and work 12+ hours a day.

It' gets dark around 530/6 pm and gets light around 6 am. It's starting to get chilly out there too. We have some mountains right outside our tents and they are so pretty to see. I'm hoping to post pictures sometime soon!

I will write more again soon... I am trying to have a skype date :)

Leaving on a jet plane....

Well... we don't have much more time here in "The Great Place".... but from what our advanced party, that is already over there, has told us... "The Great Place" is a lot greater then where we are heading... I mean, it's Afghanistan... what did they expect? I'm not expecting anything fancy... So far, where we are going, they have said is a HUGE dust bowl... If you walk to the showers, which is just a tent with water (No place to change clothes or anything) you walk back and it's just peer dust... And that's really it. We will just be sleeping there... But still... walk to the showers in dust... walk back in dust... Will I be dirty for a year? Yuck... Not excited about that.

Also, they said there is a really small gym, and one of the guys said it sucks, well its better then no gym at all. We also have a dining facility and I guess that's all that there is. So... YAY! I'm excited... I'm hoping for the best, because that's what I need to do, otherwise 9 months will go by way to slowly.

I think the hardest part about our deployment is that we are going to miss out on all the holidays. The unit were replacing left in January so they got lucky... But hopefully, like I said, it will fly by and we will be home before we know it. I still am not sure about the internet. The advanced party has also said its not the greatest. So.. .we will see. Whenever I find out what I will be doing, I should have internet for my job.

All prayers are welcome and I thank you all for them. This will be my last post for awhile, until I am all settled in.

Keep prayer :)