super loooonnnggg

So I apologize for not getting more details out yet. Internet time is limited here. Im going to try and type up a whole bunch of info on word and then next time I go to the internet café just copy and paste and get out some info.
First of all, thank you all for the birthday presents and wishes. I know this is not as good as an actual thank you note, and my mom will be really mad at me for being lazy and not finding some Iraqi stationary and writing a real one. But who am I kidding, we all know Im really bad at that anyway…. Sorry. Please know that all monetary gifts went to the great fund of purchasing my semi-american food to remind me of home haha. When it comes to luxuries Kuwait does have a few. We have 3 nice gyms, 2 dining facilities, a couple of fast food joints ( Burger king, subway, kfc, some pizza joint and then a couple of other random ones), multiple internet cafes, some that are free and some that aren’t, phone centers, a couple of shoppettes (kinda like gas stations), and then some different entertainment centers. MWR (morale, welfare, and recreation) has a place with pool and ping pong, the USO has free phones and computers and you can go in and watch movies, or play video games, or just hang out in the air conditioning. MWR and USO combine to set up different kinds of events, last week there was some kinda American idol competition, then there are guitar hero competitions, and different things.
Ive gotten a pretty good workout just trying to get around this place. Its fairly large and my tent, no lie, is the farthest possible tent. We are the last set of tents in the whole complex before the motor pool.
The first couple of days we didn’t really do anything. We did 3 days of training on the MRAP. That truck is a beast, 53,000 pounds. I feel like im going to have problems adjusting to normal vehicles when I get home, haha just ask carrie. I forgot the mustang wasn’t 8.5 ft wide. Today we did training on patrols and clearing rooms. Tomorrow there is medical training and then something I have no clue what is?
The sergeant major of the 91st task force came to talk to us yesterday. He brought 2 guys from the unit we are replacing and the task force chaplain. We got a classified brief on some of what to expect over in Baghdad which was nice to hear. Its always nice to get details. We were able to learn some about the places we will be working. The sergeant major also talked to a couple of us today as we walked to chow about the fact my platoon will be satelited out to work with the 91st. 2 of our squads will be doing psd (private security detail for important people) and then one will be working with a higher level of the Iraqi Police. Still don’t know as many of the details about that as I would like but it was nice to get some info from him. Our squad is hoping to get psd.
Had a couple of small problems with some people over the last few days. Being the only female in the squad leaves me kinda set up for failure. I got in trouble for not spending enough time with my squad (because I was sick for the first 3 days here), but whatever. One of these days ill make it to the mwr to play ping pong with them. I mainly just hang out in our tent unless im going to use the phone/computer. We have adopted squad level pt which stinks because it is set around our squad leaders schedule which is just weird. We have to go work out together for atleast an hour with atleast 30 minutes of that being strength training every other day. Apparently our LT likes it so much that it is going to be more often than every other day and sgt lambert is going to make a workout schedule for us. Kinda stinks to not be trusted enough to work out on our own but whatever. So if I come back looking like a man its because of all the strength training and lack of cardio.
Our company got the new bullet proof vests issued to us the other day. They are awesome, much more comfortable than the current ibas. They close around the waist which allows the weight to sit on your hips instead of all on your shoulders. The only problem…… I wear an extra small…. Which they are currently out of? We are having to order extra smalls for almost every female in the company because they don’t have enough here or at camp liberty. No idea when we will get them so we are stuck with the old vests until then. I would be ok with the small but it is too long so when I set down it kinda chokes me. Ive got great luck.
Today was the first semi-hot day weve had. It probably wasn’t even that hot, 80 or so? But it was our first day moving around in all of our gear and we were outside running around from 0700 to 1400. Gonna take some getting used to. Im very glad we got here in march because it does give us a chance to get acclimated a bit.
Ok sorry I know this is scatterbrained and really long but I know I haven’t given out many details about what were doing. This is probably way more than anyone wants to know but oh well! We will be in the field?? (isn’t Kuwait considered the field???) for a couple of days so I wont have much access to the computers soon. I cant give out the dates we head to liberty for security reasons but once we get there I will try and post as soon as possible to let everyone know. The other unit has already moved into tents so we can move into our rooms when we get there which will be really nice. I found out my rooming situation, it will be me and guerrero which is pretty good. We got along well at fort dix and its nice to just have a 2 man room.

So I wasn’t able to post this like 4 days ago when I typed it. Now I have been to the field and am back. The field wasn’t toooooo bad, it was very sandy and dirty. We spent 3 days out there just hanging out a bit. The first day we got to do some shooting, close quarters marksmanship. It was good, it kinda stunk to do it with the SAW but it was still pretty fun. It was working on shooting when youre close to the target and have to draw quickly and switch from safe to shoot and then drop your weapon back down and into safe. It was good stuff, we had a former infantry special forces guy teaching us.
The 2nd day we had a couple of classes, practiced some stuff for our mission on the 3rd day and then got to drive around in the sand which was a lot of fun. I will try and upload some videos from it because it was pretty sweet. The 3rd day we ran a mission. It was a lot like everything weve done in the states but a much larger range. Actually had vehicles out there, 400 people role playing, and a whole lot of other stuff. It was good stuff.
Were kinda on the downturn here now, will be leaving here sometime soon (obviously cant post when). Im pretty wiped out so I am gonna crash. Sorry I haven’t posted in so long, I know yall have probably given up on checking it but its not for lack of effort! Ive had some technical difficulties, should get much better when I get to Iraq. Love you all

btw its really hard to post on here now, the stupid screen is written in arabic and it makes it very difficult to find the correct button!!! ive been trying for like 10 minutes... grrrr