Chris' Updates

Another milestone has been passed during my time here in Iraq. I was here last month for Halloween as well, but this holiday brought a more acute feeling of being apart from home. I've grown accustomed to having to choose a family to spend the holidays with, but this year I'm away from everyone. I'm still feeling okay. I'm surrounded by my brothers in arms, and that's good enough. In the morning, I attended a special mass for Thanksgiving, and spent a few minutes afterward talking with Fr. Hotel and a few of the other church-goers. I'm really starting to feel friendships building there. It's great to have another group of people out here to have for company. After church, I worked for a couple of hours, and then Sgt. Rhino sent us home and closed up the shop early. There were few people in the offices anyway. The dining facilities (DFACs) put on a royal feast, as they usually do. It's one of two days that the military cooks put on their white chef's ...

I've updated my Kuwait photo gallery with pics from Pros vs Joes. Check 'em out!

I've got tons of exciting news (exciting to me at least), and I'm sorry I haven't written sooner. You have to believe I've been busy! To begin with, I finally passed my physical fitness test a couple of weeks ago. It has been about three years since I've passed one, and my career has been in a holding pattern because of it. But after two months of steady work, I finally managed to earn a pass, and actually scored well! A couple of days later, I was elated to learn about the good consequences of passing. My commander decided that I had shown good job performance and was an outstanding soldier all around, and since my PT was finally in order, he decided it was time for a promotion! So now, I'm earning a little more money and have a little more rank on my chest. Not only that, but as a reward for my hard work, I was selected to accompany SGT Yankee for a mini-pass to Kuwait. Normal passes are 4 days in Qatar, but this time we were sent for a special MWR mission: a ...

We have liftoff. The satellite has been working for a few days, and the wireless network has been set up. However, we still have some kinks to work out. The wireless network has potentially saved us many hours of digging trenches and laying wire... that is, if it works. We've been having issues getting it to reach all the way into the chu's, which are big tin cans and don't allow the signal through very well. As I type, I'm sitting outside, and getting a few weird looks from people passing by. But it's a small sacrifice for internet. I realized that the internet is a little like a drug for me. I never realized how much I relied upon it, but when I'm home, school, or work I have a high-quality connections with very few restrictions. But when we first got here, we had the office internet, which is very restrictive and in a public setting, or the internet cafe, which is a little bit more open but still very public. When I'm posting personal pictures in the caf...