A Soldier's Story

Meet Dallas!!

Dallas will be joining the family within in the next couple of weeks!  I can't wait to meet him!  I am looking forward to spending some time off with him when I get back home.

Ok so the math class has come and gone. Thank the lord that is over. I have sent my transcripts up to head quarters and I should get my piece of paper just about the time I get home. Lucky for me all that is done in the states and I don’t have to worry about it getting lost in this mail.

I ended up with a 94 average in that class after a lot of hard work and nearly going crazy, I wanted to kill the instructor and the world at times. But things are starting to look up. I have a break from all of that at least until I get home. I am going to try to start my BA when I get back.

Time seems to be picking up I have started weeding through some of my stuff. What I am going to use before I leave what I will need to keep and bring home. I am trying not to go crazy buying stuff. I need to get some things to mail home but not much. I brought one of my new uniforms to the tailors; they sent the size I was before I left so I have to have them altered because they don’t have these particular uniforms in stock here. The tailor is a rip off it cost 10 bucks just to have the sleeves shortened. But boy I will be styling. Can’t wait to get to wear those, they are a lot cooler (temperature wise than these old ones).

I will try to write once a week from now on because I am not doing much at night but exercising and watching movies.

Talk to you soon’

J

Well it’s the 22nd Wednesday night we just finished our last class before the final in math. I am so happy this is just about over. I think on Friday I will be jumping for joy when the final is over. This has just been really stressful. I don't think I will take any more courses if I ever get deployed to a war zone again. There are just to many other things to worry about besides doing homework and studying for exams.

I haven't been to the gym in so long. Good thing I am eating right or I probably would have blown up like a balloon. I have decided that if I can dedicate this much time to math that I can dedicate that much more time to the gym once Friday is over with. Starting Monday I will be hitting the gym hard. There isn't much time left to continue with the good habits that I started before classes began.

I am hoping that I can lose 10 more pounds before my trip home. I know its possible I just need to set my mind and body up for success. I will keep you all posted to what I am going through with this endeavor.

Have a great week. Talk to you all soon.

J

May 31, 2009

Rest and Recuperation is quite a theory. I just got back from my R&R and it was such a great time if you call feeling like a chicken in a preheated 450 degree oven a good time and then being stuffed into the freezer to sleep it off. Okay let me explain, we traveled from Bagram to Qatar an extremely long flight on a C-130 I will post some pictures of what this looks like later. So when we left Bagram it was 75 degrees and it was night time, when we landed in Qatar it was over 90 degrees also night time. We arrived in the early morning hours I think it was 1 or 2am extremely tired from the flight and we still hadn?t checked into billeting. By 4am we got our room assignments and proceeded to find them, the rooms had 10 bunk beds me and 2 other girls from my unit grabbed the bottom bunks of 3 of them. Not realizing that the temperature was around freezing I went to take a shower. When I came back to the room with wet hair it hit me like a ton of bricks. I was so tired but I went to the USO to call home. When I was done with my call I found an open recliner and started to watch a movie but fell asleep and didn?t wake up until 10 that morning.

We were able to go into town shopping at the Souks (kinda like a mall) on one day and then we were able to able to get on a trip called the Doha Cruise. We set out on the gulf at 4pm cruised around the city shoreline and then we set anchor out by one of the man made islands and went for a swim. It was really hot outside and then jumping into the water was not really refreshing because the water was like bath water, very salty and it had lots of jelly fish. We had a traditional meal of lamb, hummus, salad and chicken kabobs. It was really worth the $25.00.

Then for the next few days we hung around the base, drank some beer, went to the pool, and ate a Chili?s. Then it was time to come back to reality of another few months of the same drill. But it was fun while it lasted. It actually recharged me to get the rest of this tour under my belt.

June 2, 2009

I had my first math class last night. Oh boy this is going to be challenging. The professor is really nice though, I anticipate a lot of homework and according to the syllabus there is a quiz every time the class meets so I have to make sure I stay on top of this one. I will let you know how it goes, but for now I have to go do my homework.

Talk to you soon.

J