Home Sweet Home

Oh Hello!

Life has been a little busy over the past few days which has resulted in delaying this new post.  More about all of that later.  However, I did get to spend a good bit of time with Josh yesterday and today.  It's one of the few perks of being here.

I think today I will give you a tour of my home here at lovely Camp Patriot.  Home sweet home is a small camp that probably takes about 3 minutes to walk across.  We area small part of the much bigger Kuwait Naval Base which is located on the Arabian Sea and have a combined force of Army, Navy, and Marines here.

Chapel by the Arabian Sea
Everything is pretty much housed in the same types of buildings

There are some great perks to living on such a small camp, but there are also some downsides.  We live in big buildings similar to warehouses with concrete floors and bunk beds.  I am fortunate enough to have my own room within one of these big buildings, as I am one of the highest ranking females here (as strange as it seems).

My room- Tons of pictures of family and friends too

The room has 4 beautiful white walls like a prison cell, a couple of sets of bunk beds, and a bunch of wall lockers.  Look closely at the picture.  The walls don't quite extend all the way to the ceiling too.  If we had more people, I would likely have to have a roommate.

Other side of the room complete with metal lockers

I don't have to worry about waking anyone else up, leaving the lights on, dealing with petty roommate things... but it does mean that I don't have anyone else there to talk to if I spend a good bit of time in my room.  That all being said, I usually don't hang out in there much as it could be pretty depressing.

I usually head over to the MWR building where there are couches and more stuff to look at besides the walls.  There are some TVs, ping pong, pool tables, and air hockey.  It's pretty nice to have somewhere to go, although it is noting really compared to the facilities at Camp Arifjan.  Oh well, the grass is always greener over the fence.  We do have a shuttle that runs between the camps, so I can use all the fun stuff over there when I visit Josh.

The camp has concrete barriers and places to hide in case of incoming rounds/fires/missiles/alien attacks...  The units paint one while they are here, but we haven't gotten that far yet.  I've kind of made it a pet project to make sure that it actually gets done as the morale here isn't the greatest and we do need some fun things to look forward to.

Painted barriers

For alien attack protection

Kuwait Medical Clinic

The clinic is only a short walk away in the Kuwaiti Medical Center.  We have about a third of their building for our clinic and only treat our own soldiers there.  We do have a partnership with the Kuwaiti doctors next door, so they will run some labs for us and do x-rays as well.

Camp Patriot Troop Medical Clinic

No clinic tour today, but that will come in the next few days.  I have to leave something for you all to come back to besides just my wonderful writing.







Break time... Gotta go change my laundry over....

And with that I'm done with laundry.  We have people that cook and clean for us and there is a laundry service available, but doing my own laundry makes me feel like I get to do something for myself (and then I know that laundry detergent was actually used too).

The DFAC (dining facility) offers breakfast, lunch, dinner, and midnight meals as we have a ton of soldiers working shifts.  The cooks are all pretty good and most are actually from India, so our Indian themed food nights are amazing.  We all sit family style with about 12 people to the table, but most aren't full at all.  They have a bunch of TVs, so if you don't have anyone to eat with you can always watch the news.

Bathrooms are in 1 trailer and showers in another.  All of the water is trucked in to the camp as we live in the desert.  It doesn't matter which handle you turn on in the shower as the cold water is always hot hot hot and heaven forbid if you take a shower in the middle of the day.... Now I know what a boiled lobster feels like.

Water Truck

Anywho, enough writing for today.  Thank you all for reading and keeping up with my desert adventures.  I miss you all tons!!

Liz

Gravel everywhere... At least it's not sand!

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!!

Sunshine, Sand, and water?!?!?!

Hello!

I've finally gotten around to creating the blog so that anyone that's interested can keep up with my Kuwait adventures.  I'm still working on figuring out this entire program, so bear with me and I'm sure my posts will be more fancy as time goes on.

I'm sure if you're actually reading this, then you do know a bit about me.... but just in case you accidentally stumbled on my humble little blog or have forgotten who I am in the long 6 weeks I've been gone, I will tell you a little bit about myself.

I am an active duty Army Pediatrician currently deployed to Kuwait.  I traveled to this desert from another desert in El Paso, Texas where I usually spend my days taking care of newborns and occasionally some older kids as well.  I am lucky enough that my husband, Josh- who is an Army Emergency Medicine doctor, is also in Kuwait.  However, we are stationed at different camps but are close enough to get to see one another weekly.  We are both adjusting to a new mission, change in our daily activities, and change in patient population.  Interestingly, a lot of the soldiers I am taking care of are young enough that they could still see me in a pediatric clinic if they weren't in the Army.  Just some food for thought....

I am currently stationed at Camp Patriot in Kuwait which is located on the Kuwait Naval Base.  Yes, you did read that correctly.... Kuwait Naval Base.  We are right on the Arabian Sea and yes, there is water in the desert.  I can't see the Sea (hahaha) from where we live and work, but it is a short 5 minute walk if you're willing to brave the heat and humidity.  It is quite interesting to work on the same base as the Kuwaiti military, but more to come on that in future days.

Alright, time to figure out how to make this blog look nice and easy to read....

Thanks for reading!
Liz