This is my first post from my new home!!! I'm finally in the actual fleet here in the Kingdom of Bahrain. I've gone a long way from the small town girl from Georgia to where I am now. I'm so excited to get out on a team and on mission. And my new home is absolutely beautiful. Bahrain right now is so warm and breezy, it's literally perfect. However, it's about to become hotter than Hades here once summer hits. And humid. Very humid. So me with my wonderfully curly hair, I'm going to legitimately look like an effing lion. Hooyah. But I still couldn't be happier with my choice of duty stations. Sure, it's far away from my family, friends and other people I care about, but I'm going to experience SO MUCH while I'm out here. I'm living in an entirely new culture, learning new ways to show respect and how to act around certain people, what not to do, I have to learn all of it.
So enough of that, what have I done since I got here? Well, Thursday, when my 22 hour flight FINALLY landed here, I got off, met my sponsor type people and after a TERRIFYING trip through Bahraini traffic (let me tell you, I'm from Atlanta...this shit scared me. That's saying something...) we made it onto base and got all checked in and up to our rooms. Went to meet the rest of the CRG-2 commands and introduce ourselves (I was instantly popular when I told everyone I was from Georgia, Go Dawgs), and then finally had the chance to relax. I unpacked, showered (I was kinda gross from the flight and heat), changed and promptly collapsed onto my bed. After keeping myself awake until 2200 (that's 10 p.m. for you civilians) I passed out...and woke up at 0500. FML. Now, a quick note, here the weekends are kinda jacked up. Instead of Friday-Sunday, we have Thursday-Saturday for our weekend liberty. So Friday, my buddy who has been here for a little while, got a bunch of us noobs together and we explored the base and the infamous American Alley. It was a lot of fun and it was cool to see the combination of so many cultures smooshed into three blocks of street. By the way, did I mention traffic is terrible? Yea we were WALKING and still almost managed to die like five times. There are no "parking places" in Bahrain, you just kinda park wherever you find a space, sometimes that means in the street itself. Yikes. After a day of fun and adventure, I went back to my room and passed out, from about 0100 on Saturay to 0500 on Sunday, I was sleeping off and on. I left my room once. It was GLORIOUS. Also, I have a roommate, except I don't know who she is. Literally I haven't seen this girl since I got here. Her stuff is all sitting here, but she has yet to show up...I'm hoping she's just deployed and not like, dead somewhere...that would be awkward. Hopefully she's nice too. If I'm stuck with someone detestable for two years...it's gonna get ugly.
So today, I got up at 0500, got ready for work and Skyped my family who were not even in bed yet. Yea that's really weird (there's an eight hour time difference from here to home, I'm eight hours ahead) and then headed off to indoc. That's basically a nice way of saying, "We're gonna make you sit in a giant room with 200 people you don't know and put you through Hell in PowerPoint for eight hours." Hooyah. Finally, after all that delightfulness, I am now sitting on my little barracks bed enjoying my AC and solitude.
Right now, things are slow with all my indoc process and stuff like that, but once I really start going out and getting more freedom and being used to being in the big fleet, I will have all sorts of exciting things to chronicle on this little bloglet of mine. I know not many people if any will read this, but if you do, know that everything I do, everything I put myself through out here, is for you back home in America. I would give my life without hesitation to protect you, your family and your freedom. Sometimes my life sucks, but then I think about how this is all so much bigger than me or anyone out here. We don't do this for ourselves, we do it for those back home who can't.
There's a quote from the move A Few Good Men; Sam and Jo are arguing after losing an argument during the court marshall:
Jo: Why do you like them so much?
Sam: They beat up on a weakling; that's all they did. The rest is just smokefilled coffee-house crap. They tortured and tormented a weaker kid. They didn't like him. So, they killed him. And why? Because he couldn't run very fast.
Sam: Why do you like them so much?
Jo: Because they stand on a wall and say, "Nothing's going to hurt you tonight, not on my watch."
That quote is so powerful and it's one of the things I live by. I'm going to stand on a wall and make sure that nothing will hurt anyone. Not on my watch. You're all my family whether you know it or not and I will go to the ends of the earth to provide freedom and happiness for you.
Endless love from your favorite MA
Hardy
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