Tattoine

Hello Everyone. I'm now in Kuwait and have been here since 26 APR, not as bad as I thought it would be! We are in 9 man tents, vice the 300 man tents I was expecting. It's very hot but tolerable. We have been doing some training but basically just climatizing. The picture is of me standing at the Udari range, I called the blog entry "Tattoine" for all of you Star Wars fans out there. I was just waiting for C3PO and R2D2 to come over the sand dunes! The training was very interesting, of course we started with some good ol' shooting in 110 degrees wearing the full body armor and then off to convoy training. We drove through a 17 Km course that was laden with IEDs (improvised explosive devices), not live IEDs! We had an 8 vehicle convoy, I was in the first vehicle, aka target! haha. We did a good job overall, only "blown up" twice. I have new found respect for the Soldiers, Sailors and Marines that do this every day, with the added pressure of the well hidden IEDs. The only bad thing about the Udari range was the fact that we didn't have showers or running water, ate MREs (meals ready to eat) for breakfast, lunch and dinner. We had a sand storm the first night out there, wow! It actually hurt when the sand hit your skin, nothing like a free dermabrasion! We also slept on the floor of the buildings where our classes were taught. When we returned back to Camp Virginia, Kuwait we were actually happy to see our cots and our showers, when before there were some people complaining about the cots and showers! Well we will be leaving here in a couple of days for our next destination, can't wait to see what's in store for us there. The good thing is that we'll be given the official word of where we will be ending up, nothing like the unknown to make things a little exciting! Hopefully I'll be able to do another entry next weekend, if not, I'm still very safe and healthy. Shayna I miss and love you very much, everyone else take care and I'll be writing soon.