Can You Tell Me How to Get to Kuwait?

Welcome back!

I worked on the program a bit more and feel like I'm getting the hang of it.  Anywho, kinda boring stuff... but it's something new to do and figure out.  I'm by no means a crazy computer person, so I feel slightly excited to have figured this out on my own without asking for help :)

And now back to our regularly scheduled programming.... Kuwait Adventures!  I figured that I could start back at the beginning and catch up to where I am now.  It probably won't take all that long since most days here are like Groundhog Day (same stuff over and over and over and over again with a bit of different things sprinkled here and there).



M9 Range Fun!

The week prior to deployment I had to report to the Conus Replacement Center (CRC) at Ft. Bliss.   I was supposed to sign in on July 4th- America!, but was able to start Saturday morning as I live in El Paso.  Lucky for me, I stationed at Ft. Bliss so I showed up with a well researched and complete memo to allow me to live at home during that week.  It was great to be able to sleep in my own bed that entire week while spending the day at different classes, meetings, and training to prepare us for deployment. 


Highlights of the week included a full day of first aid classes where I (along with the other doctors and nurses) was told not to answer any questions or really even talk.  It was true Army training at its finest.  We did get a chance to do some fun things like go to the range as well as sit and fill out lots of paperwork.  I spend a lot of my time driving back and forth from post as we live a good 30min away, but spending some more time at home was well worth it.

Josh and I both left Ft. Bliss on July 11 to start our new desert adventures.  He left later in the afternoon to meet his unit at Ft. Hood, Texas as he is assigned to the 21st Combat Support Hospital (21st CSH).  He was at Ft. Hood for about 2 weeks training with his unit and then left the US on July 26th.  He finally made it to Kuwait a few days later with an unexpected overnight stop in Baltimore due to plane issues.

Our plane left Ft. Bliss later in the morning on July 11 with a few stops along the way.  You're also not really supposed to take any pictures while we travel, but a few of us snuck some in.  Our CRC group was about 100 soldiers and we flew a chartered Atlas Air 747 (I had never even heard of Atlas Air until that day) with a civilian pilots and flight attendants.  There really isn't a rhyme or reason to boarding and you just all get on the plane when they tell you without any real assigned seats.  We flew to Indianapolis to pick up a bunch of contractors and then on to Germany. 



The Hahn Hen

We landed in Frankfurt at the Hahn airport on a dreary rainy day very similar to all of our time spent at Ft. Lewis in Washington state.  Apparently Hahn means hen.... so there were cartoon hens all over everything at the airport. 


The military travelers are kept separate from the rest of the travelers, so we got off the plane and went to a small terminal where we waited for a few hours.  There were a few little shops and a cafe, but the craziest thing is that you can smoke indoors there.  Luckily, there was a nonsmoking area to escape to as the ventilation was pretty poor.

We got back on the plane after about 3 hours and everyone promptly fell asleep as it felt like it was the middle of the night to our poor bodies.  I woke up a little bit later and thought that the plane was quiet... a little too quiet.  We had never left the ground due to a hydraulic fluid leak.  Oh well, everyone had to get back off the plane for another few hours while they were finally able to fix it.  We took off again (only 9hrs late) with the next destination of Kuwait City where we landed about midnight local time after over 48hrs of traveling time.

Atlas Air in Germany

We loaded up some more buses and drove to Camp Arifjan to start our inprocessing, and no the military does not care that it is zero dark thirty in the morning and we haven't really slept in 2 days.  Inprocessing took a few more hours and then it was time to find our units to head to our real destinations.  I met up with a few of the other doctors here and we waited and waited for our minders to come find us.......  And waited.....  And no one came.  Eventually, we started wandering through some of the buildings and found someone to help us.

It was about this time that I found out was I going to Camp Patriot instead of Camp Buehring.  I had never heard of Camp Patriot and honestly wasn't too thrilled as everyone I knew from my training with the unit back in April at NTC was going to be stationed about 2hrs away from me.  Little did I know then, it was actually going to be much better for me and much closer to where Josh would be as well.  After hanging out watching "Storage Wars" for 3hrs with the NCO helping us out, I was finally able to get picked up and head out to Camp Patriot.
 


Camels!


We drove down the highway where camels were grazing between electric towers, crashed and broken down cars littered the sides of the road, and crazy Kuwaiti drivers tried to kill you. 



The Arabian Sea was a welcome sight as we drove onto the Kuwait Naval Base, but the heat and humidity was like a slap in the face when Iopened the door after we arrived at Camp Patriot.  I got out of the vehicle in front of my new barracks building and was eager to start my new job here.... but it was time for a nap in a real bed first.

Stay tuned for more fun Adventures of a Desert Lizard!!