Afghanistan - the worlds largest/dangerous landfill

Well I've finally made it to Afghanistan. I've been here for 5-6 days now. We arrived last thursday night and on friday went right into more power point. Anyhow, my team that I've trained with for the last two and a half months got split up. I did still retain 4 other guys and we got put with another team. We have all fit into the team fairly quickly and have started missions. We're working with the Afghan National Army. This is very different and interesting because I'm learning much about their culture at the same time. The country itself, is a giant landfill. There are destroyed Russian tanks and garbage everywhere. Soon, my team and I will be moving to a different part of Afghanistan to an area where I'll be for probably the rest of the time here. This could very well be my last post here because from the sounds of things, they don't have internet where i'm going. With that in mind, please continue to pray for my group when you think of us. Well, sorry to keep this so short but I'm writing from a public computer and there is a time limit and a line of people waiting their turn for the computer. That's all folks!

We're not in Kansas anymore Toto...We're in Kyrgysztan

Hello to all from Kyrgysztan! If you don't know where this country is, don't be ashamed, I hadn't even heard of it until we landed here. Wherever it is, it's cold and wet all the time. Getting here took some doing and some serious traveling.

Thursday night we left the Topeka airport at roughly 9:45 pm. We flew for a couple hours to Bangar, Maine where we sat in the terminal for about 2 hours waiting for the plane to refuel. We boarded the plane and sat for a 6-7 hour flight across the atlantic to land in Liepzig, Germany where we once again sat for a couple hours to refuel. Once we had boarded again, we set out to our final destination of Kyrgyzstan and landed there 6-7 hours later at 5:30 local time here....on saturday. All in all, we left thursday night at 9:45 and landed saturday at 5:30. Quite a way to spend a friday. I guess I could have had it worse, one of the guys I'm with had his birthday on friday. lucky him.

Once we landed in Kyrgyzstan, it was raining cats and dogs. We're at some airforce base here, so there is internet, showers, shops, a gym, and a chow hall that's open 24/7. however, due to the high terror threat, we can't leave here and there is really nothing to do. Being fairly exhausted after our flight, we all wanted to just rack out on the bunks for a while. However, due to a lodging problem, we had to wait a couple more hours.

The lodging problem was a multinational problem. The billets we were going to stay in, already had some Marines, and some Spanish forces in there. The Marines, being on top of their game, had doubled up and used the bunk beds the way they were meant to be used. The Spanish, had decided to put one man per bunk bed. This left us not nearly enough room and we had to ask them to move. I have no idea why this took two hours, but if you know anything about the military and common sense, you'll know exactly why.

Finally we were given our bunks and in the early afternoon i decided to take a short nap...for 9 hours. I've been running on what I consider 'vampire time'. This is because Kyrgyzstan is 12 hours ahead of us and we're all having trouble adjusting a full 12 hours. I'm frequently eating at the chow hall at 2 in the morning and doing most of my internet at that time too. This does work out however, becuase that's when people back home are online.

We've been giving a fly out date but it keeps changing. Plus for security reasons, even if I knew, I probably wouldn't post it. More than likely, I'll finally be in country here within the next week some time. This would be great since there is nothing to do here. I should have internet for the next few weeks for sure, so shoot me an email or put some posts on here and I'll get back to them in short time.

Leaving On a Jet Plane

After a short break at home I am now back in Fort Riley again. Last week we finished up our training and turned in the necessary equipment and completed our 'final' in training. Because our group has some of the youngest, lowest ranking people who have gone through the training here, we were watched a lot closer than others. However, the group of guys I'm with are first rate guys. We outperformed most of the other groups despite being under ranked.

Now we're all sitting here bored out of our minds waiting for our flight out of this place. We're all more anxious than ever just to get out of here and go find out exactly where we're going and what we're going to be doing. While we have been told where we're all going, everything is subject to change. I'm struggling to find anything interesting to write about right now as there is absolutely nothing going on. If I have Internet once I get in country, I'll update this a bit more frequently.