Birthdays are good days...

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Even in the worst of circumstances all good soldiers can find fun. We had a birthday! One of our girls in logistics was the recipient of paper flowers and a great treat. The best part was that a couple of the soldiers went shopping and found an ice cream cake! Yummy! See, deployment isn’t so bad. I’m thinking that with nearly 1500 soldiers traveling with us we should be able to find a birthday every day and then we can be guaranteed a fun part of every day!

It really hasn’t been that bad here. Well, our housing is still nasty but Germany is beautiful and the days have been nice and warm. The evenings are cooling down so that we wake up to a light frost on the roof tops, which means that it is nearly time to put those jackets on. Of course the Dakotans are very comfortable with a little chill in the air, but we have mostly southern states with us and people are wearing their stocking caps already. Quite the sight to see. The barracks have yet to turn on the heat, but we are guessing that this week we will have toasty places to sleep.

It has been challenging here in a strange way. The active army has taken two separate four day weekends off so that has left us truly only three hard charging days. Not that we don’t have plenty to do without them, but it has been nearly impossible to set up the life support system that we are accustomed to.

The Torch Party is still in charge for the next few days, but over 100 soldiers flew in a few days ago and they have started to set up their individual units in preparation for the bulk of the soldiers that will fly in this week. Meeting them at the airport was great fun for me. We had to drive to______ to meet the chartered plane. With map in hand a couple of us navigated our way through the foreign streets and signs all in written in German. Then I was able to board the plane and greet our KFOR 12 fellow soldiers. They were so tired but seemed to be happy to see me, or maybe they were just happy the plane finally stopped. All said and done it ends up being a 18 hour travel day and with the time change it can really tire you out.

We get our shipment of supplies on Tuesday so most are rationing toilet paper, we don’t have hand towels yet and in the male officer barracks I am pretty sure they haven’t touched the mop bucket and mop that we provided for them! Could be a long month if you live there! A mess hall finally opened up when the extra people came in, it serves tolerable food and we are now making the transition to milk that has a shelf life of 26 years, paper plates and plastic ware and juice that comes in little boxes. We will receive a hot breakfast and lunch and then one of those great MRE’s (Meals Ready to Eat) for lunch. Those MRE’s are not that tasty so in reality that means most soldiers will eat snacks and fruit taken from the messhall at breakfast. Those really are not the meals of choice and they are extremely high in calories. I know that beggars should not be choosy but after eating those for months on end during Desert Storm and in Iraq I can guarantee that I will never be that hungry that I would have to eat an MRE for any meal.

Finally received computers today but many of us locked them up within a few minutes because of the military card readers and our passwords. Yes you guessed it, I was one of those people. Not real computer savvy yet so now I have a pretty computer sitting on my desk and probably won’t be able to use it for days. Ugh.. The computer boys have started to set up an internet café for use with personal computers. That will prove to be a busy place as the days wear on and our numbers grow. Soldiers will stay up into the late hours so they can reach their families back home, and that will just add to the fatigue that will be endured in the weeks to come. But that is just one of those things we do to stay in contact with home and it sure helps to combat the home sickness.

One of the hardest things to learn since arriving is the recycling rules. We have garbage cans everywhere with labels and I spend more time trying to decide where to put my trash. Really struggle with items like: the silver wrappers from the pop tarts, empty cigarette packs with the foil on the inside and half drank sodas. But we have been threatened that if we do not get it correct we will have to go through the trash and separate it correctly. Hopefully we can pass that part of the training!

In the next few days I should have better connection to the internet so stay tuned for…”To Munich and Back!” Welcome to Germany!

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