0714 (Al Udeid time)

As of 7 am it was pure daylight and pure hot. After purchasing a converter (since I shipped mine ahead to baghdad) a couple of us set up camp at the Coffee Beanery for the wi-fi and air conditioning. We wait here at Al Udeid until we get a flight to our deployed locations. Could be tonight, could be whenever :)

0427 (Al Udeid time)

Flying into Al Udeid was one of the most amazing things I have ever seen. It was pitch black darkness for the longest time and then every so often we would see the oil refinery flames. Then all of a sudden the plane took a turn to the right and I could see the glow of a larger town up ahead. We past that town and turned right again. The darkness is split up be very long, very straight, and all alone two lane roads with lights that connect everything.

After we landed we processed through everything. The heat here is indescribable. People try to warn you how hot it is, but it is such a unique heat. Texas was hot... hot enough to have sweat rolling down my face. Florida is hot, but the Gulf breeze was always cool. South Dakota was hot in July with 105 degrees blowing in your face, but it was dry, like a furnace. Middle of the night in Qatar, 90 degrees. It hits you in the face the moment you get off the plane. Really, its not that you sweat from the heat, its that its so humid your body catches all of the moisture in the air and you feel soaked. Everytime I walk from an air conditioned building outside my glasses fog up :)

This picture is our group waiting for the bus to take us to lodging to get our linen and transient tent assignments. Since the sun was already rising, I decided to get to my tent, go eat breakfast (yummy omelette and yogurt), then I went and took a shower and brushed my teeth (ah, now I feel like a human again). Then it was off to find some wi-fi.

Well... that's quite a jet plane

San Antonio to Detroit (running up and down Terminal A because they kept changing my gate) to Norfolk... i arrived around 11:45 pm picked up my bag and my weapon and met Bryan. We spent two days in Norfolk just spending time together, picking up a few things at the BX at Langley and spending a perfect afternoon of hamburger grillin' and ice cream eatin' with the Gheeslings in Newport News. I got a yummy steak at Outback before Bryan took my to the passenger terminal in Norfolk for my "red-eye" overseas.

Me waiting for the elevator at the Holiday Inn all ready to go.

84 of us air force folks "crammed" into a 767 departed at 0130 in the morning. I could not wait to fall asleep. Cool part was I had about 10 CAST classmates on the flight with me, so we had a great time.

Woke up Monday morning to the sun and my first view of land after the Atlantic Ocean.... im guessing maybe France.

"oh yes, meals and movies are included on your flight"

breakfast, lunch, dinner, and a snack all with beverages of course. This was dinner- chicken with marinara, orzo, broccoli, sweet potatoes, more pasta and cole slaw and bread and cookies... geez.

Sure fire sign that the deployment is going to be amazing... I lay my head on my pillow and look up to the screen to see what the first movie was and I see a graphic of a full moon turning to new signaling to me the beginning of Twilight: New Moon. The audio didn't work so that was a bummer plus I brought it on dvd myself but I took it as a good sign :)

Norfolk, Virginia to Leipzig, Germany- 8 hours

Flying over Leipzig was amazing. Beautifully picturesque rolling green countryside with storybooks buildings with red roofs. All perfectly German.

We had a 2 hour layover at a tiny terminal at the Leipzig airport, where i was able to skype with Dad and the girls and buy a yummy nutella to go treat. It was a little bit of nutella with the same little breadsticks that were in the handy-snacks. Remember those?

Then, 5 and half more hours to Al Udeid Air Base in Qatar. Landed at 12:30am local time and began the several hour in-processing process. Picked up body armor, chem bag and helmet. Checked baggage, turned in weapon, and got checked into our transient tent. Now we just hang around and wait for our missions to our final destinations.

Last CAST bit

We had MREs for all three meals, all ten days (excpet for the last two nights). They have been greatly improved over the years, but eating out of a bag for 10 days can get a bit repetitive.

Most bags came with a pound cake of come sorts... always a plus, especially the carrot pound cake which I usually saved for breakfast.

The sloppy joe filling on the wheat snack bread was also pretty good.

Our second to last night at Camp Bullis the isntructors let us order pizza. 21 pizzas later and we only had a little left over. We also watched The Hangover that night, so that was a good night.

Me with my hawaiian pizza. delish.

SrA Corpuz with the coveted chocolate peanut butter. One of the best spreads out there.

More CAST

We learned so many great ground movement concepts... convoy operations, tactical casualty care, weapons familiarization, urban and small unit tactics, and land navigation. The course was awesome because we would spend the morning in the classroom being briefed the concepts. Then we would go outside and the instructors would demonstrate the concepts, then we would demonstrate to the instructors with their input, and then we would do it on our own. The whole course was crawl, walk, run and it really made sure that we understood the concepts. The other awesome thing was that our instructors have an incredible amount of experience in the deployed theater with these concepts in real-life scenarios and were really able to convey to us the importance of these concepts.

This is my workspace in the classroom. I have my M-4 rifle that we had to carry with us wherever we went. I had my burts bees chapstick (with SPF :), my perscription for Indocin I had to get the second day there to try and help with my shoulder blade pain (it was pretty much as if I never had the nerve block injection, so incredibly painful), an ace bandage to help put ice on my back. I had my little vera bradley notebook to take all of my class notes and an array of Meals-Ready-to-Eat (MREs) parts to eat throughout the day. More on those later.

This is me and the other girl in my squad Senior Airman Corpuz in our paintball gear. We used paintball guns during our urbanized terrain training. A week later and I am still nursing some pretty gnarly bruises.


This is a wide shot of the classroom where we had our daily briefings and ate our meals. We also watched movies here while we ate dinner.

The first couple of days we were there, we had unbelieveable thunderstorms. Luckily it would rain in the morning while we were inside for lessons and then by the afternoon it would still be overcast but really nice out and a little cooled off. Our third night there we had to be woken up from our tents and come up to the classroom because of a lightning warning. We can't stay in the tents if there is lightning within 5 miles. We got up there around 10pm and after about an hour I just decided to sleep in the classroom. So I took my sleeping back and laid it out on my table and slept with my blanket over me... best sleep I had had there yet.

More to come!

A little bit about CAST

Prior to my deployment I completed 10 days of Combat Airmen Skills Training (CAST) at Camp Bullis outside of San Antonio, Texas. The biggest takeaway from this training for me was exposure to concepts and building confidence with equipment and tactics used in the deployed theater, especially the confidence part. I usually feel great anxiety from the "unknown" of a new adventure. Not being able to picture where I am going or knowing what to expect causes me stress. This training really helped me to build a little muscle memory and get used to wearing body armor all the time and living in a deployed environment.

For those of you who don't know (even I forgot until I got there) San Antonio is beautiful Texas hill country. The instructors say that this summer has been unreasonably rainy so everything was green and lush. This is a view of the Camp with some of our tents in the foreground.

This is the female shower tent. Inside there were 6 showers and the sinks in the picture below.

This is inside of the tent we stayed in down the hill from the classroom. We were lucky enough to get beds in our tent, we were the first class to not sleep on cots. Also, lovely, lovely air conditioning.

Don't forget that Texas has snakes... rattlesnakes to be exact... hanging out around the tents. This headless monster was found near one of the guy's tents and the instructors went ahead and took care of it for us.

More to come!

The trip so far

Sunday morning we woke up early and Bryan dropped me off at the airport. My flight from PHL to DFW was uneventful except for the fact that I smacked my head into the overhead compartment... oh well. My layover in Dallas was pleasant, especially once I found these fantastic amenities...

Im sitting in the USO in San Antonio now after a 45 minute flight from Dallas with no air conditioning. It's pretty hot here too, but I figure now I should just get used to it. See you in about 10 days!!

My baby brother graduates from HS!

Bryan and flew to Columbia, SC to meet up with my family and to celebrate my baby bro graduating from high school and mimi graduating from middle school. It also happens to be Maddie's birthday June 7th, so we celebrated that too!! I was so happy that she, her Captain Awesome boyfriend Rick and my aunt sharon were able to fly cross-country from Los Angeles. My mom drove my grandparents up from Clearwater and some of our cousins drove in from Charlotte. We had such an amazing visit!!

Bryan in the background, Grace, Maddie, Mom, Grandma and Grandpa, and me with Chase post-grad


the girls with the graduate back at the house

Lots for Grace to celebrate... Not having to change schools, go to Iraq, or get older. Congratulations Grace!!

Bryan and I were bumped to another flight at the airport. Luckily, instead of having a 2 hour layover in Atlanta, we were moved to another airline with a direct flight to PHL that left later and arrived earlier at PHL. Maddie and Rick came back to the aiport to meet us and Dad and the girls met us for lunch... yummy Zaxby's.

We got back to PHL in the afternoon, we got some delish CPK takeout and I got to finish packing and we just relaxed for our last night. On the 6th I leave for San Antonio for combat skills training before heading to Iraq at the end of the month. Thanks to all the family for coming!!

The last few weeks

Memorial Day weekend was a blast. Bryan drove up to NJ and back to DC every single day the week prior in order to get all of my stuff moved out of my apartment by the 28th of May. We dropped off my keys and drove away from my NJ apartment for the last time. We drove down to DC and unpacked a little before settling down to watch North by Northwest, a classic Hitchcock film that features a delightful scene on a train from NYC to Chicago which has inspired an obsession with traveling the country by train... we. will. do. it. someday. promise. That weekend I got to spend a lot of time with Kristen and Alex! We lunched at Zaytinya, saw Sex and the City 2, sangria'd at La Tasca and watched Twilight (Alex and Chris' first time seeing the movie). Bryan joined us to watch New Moon (now Chris is all caught up to go see Eclipse with Bryan and Kristen while im deployed) and we went to a housewarming/memorial day BBQ of dear friends. It was a delightful weekend with great friends.

At the end of the weekend, Bryan and I returned to NJ for me to out-process McGuire for my deployment before we boarded a plane to SC for Chase's HS graduation!!