HI all,
Today is Tuesday and I started off the day pretty uneventfully. I went to the Palace to pick up something and then began our trek over to BIAP to get on a flight out of Iraq and back to Kuwait. On our way to BIAP we stopped off at another Camp within Victory Base Complex called Camp Slayer. THere is another palace there that was never completed called the Victory over Americas Palace. I don't know if it's as big as the AL FAw palace, but it looked pretty nice. The whole reason we went to this palace in the first place is because there was a Flintstone-like house behind it that Saddam built for his grandkids. Apparently it was made to be like the Flintstones cartoon. Anyway, we took a couple of pictures and drove by it, and it did look like a big stone complex with tunnels all over. It was pretty neat...I mean, it was one of those things that every kid would probably like. Anyway, this palace complex also had a big lake, canal and a swimming pool. It's crazy to think that there are lakes in the middle of the desert.
Anyway, then we headed over to the flight terminal and got onto a flight just after lunch. It was a C-130 and we were packed in it. Unfortunately we had to sit on the airfield for about an hour before even taking off. Let me tell you, there is less room than in an economy seat and there is no air. Everyone just sits on two rows facing each other on both sides of the plane. So, your knees are touching and leaning agains the people's knees on either side of you AND on the person across from you. Oh, add the fact that you have your carry-on in your lap, your flack jacket on, and your kevlar helmet on, too. It got SOOOOOOOOo hot after that hour because the engines are on and we were just sitting there. It was just my luck that it had been windy and pretty brisk while waiting for the flight so I put on my sweatshirt and fleece vest. I was steaming. But, even though it was kind of miserable, I cannot complain. I cannot imagine how much the soldiers have to go through doing this all the time.
We finally got off the ground and it cooled off drastically for the 2 hours we were in the air. We arrived at Ali Al Saleem in Kuwait and took a bus from the airfield to the passenger terminal. We checked into tents for the night and headed over for a nice sit-down meal...chicken, sweet potatoes, collard greens....a proper southern dinner. Then I had some Baskin Robbins ice cream for dessert. I have to say, so far the food has been pretty darn good everywhere I've been.
We found the USO tent and are chilling out in here for a while. It is super cool in here. I love the USO and if anyone is looking for a non-profit to support I recommend it. The walls are purple, there are two buses in here painted in psychadelic colors, and there are comfy sofas and chairs everywhere. One of the buses has chairs in it and a large screen tv that they show movies on. The other bus is up front and serves as the reception desk. I thought it was neat that they make you take your shoes off before you come in. There are not many places you can go without boots on. Even when you're at your bunk, the floors are plywood and dirty so you try to keep at least flip flops on. They have a bunch of books, a couple of tvs with video games and some Morale phones that you can use. The USO is so good for morale and they really provide an escape.
So, that was my day...full of travel and lots of sitting and waiting. I will say that after this month-long trip my trapezoids and lateral muscles are going to be pretty strong after dragging around a heavy backpack and duffel bag over my flack jacket. That's good, though, it will help me get back into working out when I return.
Tomorrow the advance team and I are going to pick up our 10 other team members at Kuwait Int'l Airport. We'll get to spend the night in a hotel so it will be nice to get away from the dust for a night. I keep on forgetting to have pics ready to upload, but I will do it tomorrow evening. I hope the hotel in Kuwait City has good connectivity so I can post some. Take care all of you and thanks for reading my ramblings. Erika
Tuesday, February 6, 2007
Monday, February 5, 2007
Fly Fishing in the Canal
Sorry I did not post yesterday...very tiring day and didn't get back to the tent until about 1 am. We had our briefing on Sat afternoon in the palace. it went well and we walked around the second floor of the palace. THe place is decked out in so much marble. THe bathrooms are huge...just the sink room is bigger than my livingroom. you walk in and there are a ton of sinks then you go through another doorway and there is a hallway full of individual little rooms which are all toilet rooms. the toilet rooms are about 6 feet by 10 feet and all have a bidet (mom, you would appreciate that). i think there's a rule in the military that no one is allowed to use bidet's because they just serve as a convenient place to store extra rolls of toilet paper. the toilet, sink, bidet are all porcelain or at least really nice ceramic. there are filigree gold flowers and designs decorating them all with the edges gilded in gold. so fancy.
speaking of fancy, i have never seen a chandelier as big as the one that's in the rotunda of he palace. huge, i'll upload a pic when i can. i keep on saying how huge the palace is, but i found out it was actually just a hunting lodge...a vacation home. can you believe it? apparently it was built in 1991 and cost $500 million to build. it has 3 lakes and various smaller lake houses all around the lakeshore, which just happen to not really be 'cabins,' but carved sandstone villas. Apparently they were for his friends and family to use. After leaving the palace we worked for a while in a building that used to house an outdoor pool. it's pretty neat how the building has been retrofitted. you walk in and it would take you a while to figure out that the "downstairs" full of cubicles is actually a tiled pool. The 'loft' is built over the pool.
In any case, Saturday night I did play ping pong, but it was just volleying it back and forth so no awesome winning point to tell you about. Saturday night it was sooooo windy, which normally can be loud if you are in a house, but think about how loud it is if you're in a vinyl tent. My goodness, the tent shook and was very loud until about 1 or 2 am. Do you know when you empty the garbage and you get a new plastic garbage bag and you shake it so it is open before you put it in the garbage can? Well, think of that noise, because that is what is sounds like when you are inside a tent in windy weather. Also, the walls were shaking so hard that it kept on bumping my mattress on my cot and scaring me. i survived the wind and then it started raining big rain drops. the good thing is i finally fell asleep. Sunday we started off with a hearty breakfast at the Coalition DFAC. The mud created from the heavy rain drops was the stickiest mud...it suctioned my boots onto it and it wasn't even deep at all. THere was so much mud everywhere...even covering the asphalt streets. There's no grass and the soil is pretty impervious so the mud just slides and spreads everywhere. You're supposed to clean and stomp and wipe your feet when you enter a building, but sometimes it's impossible to get it all and the floors are constantly being swept up to at least get the big pieces.
After breakfast we headed over to some meetings. I didn't go to the palace, which was kind of a bummer, but i did go to the Boathouse on Al Faw lake, which now serves as an administrative office building. It was only yesterday, but i don't remember too much about what i did other than being in meetings and in front of a computer. i guess it wasn't eventful enough to put in a blog. Oh...the DFACs opened at midnight for the superbowl pre-show and stayed open all night through breakfast. i didn't go watch it, because i figured if i had time to do that, i should be doing something else...especially sleeping. anyway, my coworker said he could hear the noise coming from the DFACs on his way to watch it at the boathouse. Oh, now i remember what else i did yesterday...i did go to the palace after all. in the lobby they have kind of a tourist trap. They have a huge ornate chair that apparently was saddam's chair. you can sit in it and have your picture taken. at first i didn't want to sit in it because it kind of creeped me out. then, my team wanted to have a picture of the 4 of us so i conceded. although, i somehow accidentally deleted the pics from my new camera right after i walked out of the palace. i was trying to look at them and pushed the wrong button. oh well, it was a creepy chair anyway. on our way back from the palace we have to walk over a bridge over a canal and we saw a Major and a Lt Col at the water's edge. THe MAJ was fly fishing!!! it was a pretty basic rod and he was still in his ACU's, but he said everyone has to stop and take breaks every once in a while when and where you can to be able to keep going in this environment. anyway, he asked if i wanted to try it. of course i did and he had me throw the line out a few times...i didn't catch anything, but now i can say the first time i went fly fishing was in iraq.
we started today (monday) off with a tour of some power generator farms which was kind of neat. we had meetings all day. we had one at the palace and measured the rotunda to be about 100 feet across. not much to report for the day, really. the nice thing is that every building you walk into has big bowls or boxes of candy everywhere. there are so many care packages received from the US that people just leave them out to share. i never mind having candy lying around. the weather was super nice today...sunny, clear, maybe 68 degrees. it helped dry out the mud, which was nice.
Tomorrow should be my last day at VBC and then we head on over to Kuwait to pick up the rest of our team members. hopefully all will go well getting on a flight tomorrow without too much of a wait.
signing off, erika
speaking of fancy, i have never seen a chandelier as big as the one that's in the rotunda of he palace. huge, i'll upload a pic when i can. i keep on saying how huge the palace is, but i found out it was actually just a hunting lodge...a vacation home. can you believe it? apparently it was built in 1991 and cost $500 million to build. it has 3 lakes and various smaller lake houses all around the lakeshore, which just happen to not really be 'cabins,' but carved sandstone villas. Apparently they were for his friends and family to use. After leaving the palace we worked for a while in a building that used to house an outdoor pool. it's pretty neat how the building has been retrofitted. you walk in and it would take you a while to figure out that the "downstairs" full of cubicles is actually a tiled pool. The 'loft' is built over the pool.
In any case, Saturday night I did play ping pong, but it was just volleying it back and forth so no awesome winning point to tell you about. Saturday night it was sooooo windy, which normally can be loud if you are in a house, but think about how loud it is if you're in a vinyl tent. My goodness, the tent shook and was very loud until about 1 or 2 am. Do you know when you empty the garbage and you get a new plastic garbage bag and you shake it so it is open before you put it in the garbage can? Well, think of that noise, because that is what is sounds like when you are inside a tent in windy weather. Also, the walls were shaking so hard that it kept on bumping my mattress on my cot and scaring me. i survived the wind and then it started raining big rain drops. the good thing is i finally fell asleep. Sunday we started off with a hearty breakfast at the Coalition DFAC. The mud created from the heavy rain drops was the stickiest mud...it suctioned my boots onto it and it wasn't even deep at all. THere was so much mud everywhere...even covering the asphalt streets. There's no grass and the soil is pretty impervious so the mud just slides and spreads everywhere. You're supposed to clean and stomp and wipe your feet when you enter a building, but sometimes it's impossible to get it all and the floors are constantly being swept up to at least get the big pieces.
After breakfast we headed over to some meetings. I didn't go to the palace, which was kind of a bummer, but i did go to the Boathouse on Al Faw lake, which now serves as an administrative office building. It was only yesterday, but i don't remember too much about what i did other than being in meetings and in front of a computer. i guess it wasn't eventful enough to put in a blog. Oh...the DFACs opened at midnight for the superbowl pre-show and stayed open all night through breakfast. i didn't go watch it, because i figured if i had time to do that, i should be doing something else...especially sleeping. anyway, my coworker said he could hear the noise coming from the DFACs on his way to watch it at the boathouse. Oh, now i remember what else i did yesterday...i did go to the palace after all. in the lobby they have kind of a tourist trap. They have a huge ornate chair that apparently was saddam's chair. you can sit in it and have your picture taken. at first i didn't want to sit in it because it kind of creeped me out. then, my team wanted to have a picture of the 4 of us so i conceded. although, i somehow accidentally deleted the pics from my new camera right after i walked out of the palace. i was trying to look at them and pushed the wrong button. oh well, it was a creepy chair anyway. on our way back from the palace we have to walk over a bridge over a canal and we saw a Major and a Lt Col at the water's edge. THe MAJ was fly fishing!!! it was a pretty basic rod and he was still in his ACU's, but he said everyone has to stop and take breaks every once in a while when and where you can to be able to keep going in this environment. anyway, he asked if i wanted to try it. of course i did and he had me throw the line out a few times...i didn't catch anything, but now i can say the first time i went fly fishing was in iraq.
we started today (monday) off with a tour of some power generator farms which was kind of neat. we had meetings all day. we had one at the palace and measured the rotunda to be about 100 feet across. not much to report for the day, really. the nice thing is that every building you walk into has big bowls or boxes of candy everywhere. there are so many care packages received from the US that people just leave them out to share. i never mind having candy lying around. the weather was super nice today...sunny, clear, maybe 68 degrees. it helped dry out the mud, which was nice.
Tomorrow should be my last day at VBC and then we head on over to Kuwait to pick up the rest of our team members. hopefully all will go well getting on a flight tomorrow without too much of a wait.
signing off, erika
Sunday, February 4, 2007
A pic from Afghanistan...
A couple people have asked me when they will see pictures. E will probably upload some when she can, but until then, here is one of her and her co-workers posing for the camera in Afghanistan back in October with their protective equipment.
M
Saturday, February 3, 2007
I figured out how to log into this thing so now I can post stuff myself...unless I don't have good internet connectivity at my next location.
So, I spent my first night in Baghdad last night and I want to clarify that I am not in the Green Zone/International Zone. I'm about 10 miles away in a huge complex of military bases/camps that is collocated with Baghdad International Airport (BIAP). This complex contains a military controlled side of BIAP called Sather Air Base/Camp Anaconda where I landed yesterday. Down a bumpy road from that a couple of miles is the Victory Base Complex (VBC) which is made up of various camps. This is where I am. The IZ is about 10 miles away, but you can only get there by chopper or by something called a Rhino, which is an armed mini-bus type vehicle that can withstand an IED.
The team and I started off the day meetin our POC for breakfast at 0700...yes, I know, if you know me you know that I don't usually get up that early unless I'm up from being awake all night. For some reason when I travel I need less sleep than usual and I can actually get up really early and be on time. Maybe it's because I work with the military so I feel I have no other choice... or maybe it's because I don't have any distractions when I get up in the morning (ie. playing with my pups)...or it might be (probably is) because I remain in a complete jet-lagged state the entire time. I also typically have so much adrenaline from these trips and from information and sensory overload that I go into a weird survival mode. In any case, Michael would be very impressed...although probably wondering why I can't function this way at home. Anyway, we had breakfast at the Oasis Dining Facility (DFAC) which has any kind of breakfast food you could imagine. They don't have Korean breakfasts, however, which sometimes include kimchi and miso soup.
We headed for a pre-brief with the COL of Multi-national Corps-Iraq where he provided us with good planning guidance for our work over the next couple of weeks. Then, our POC, took us on a short driving tour around VBC. You wouldn't believe it, but it was raining...not hard, but big rain drops. It rained for about one hour and then it was over, but I just had never thought of it raining in Baghdad...I had always thought of it being so arid over here. They have a rainy season and sometimes the streets flood. Actually, it happened about 2 weeks ago and we've been told the ground is finally drying out. Our tour took us around 3 lakes and many sandstone carved buildings. The buildings are really incredible from an architectural standpoint. Aesthetically, they are really nice and you can see the craftsmanship in pretty much every detail. My architecture side really appreciated them, but my humanitarian side was thinking about how much slave labor probably went into their construction. I mentioned there are 3 lakes. One of the lakes Al Faw Lake is in front of the Al Faw Palace. Yep, I said palace. There is a palace here with a lake and a moat around the front of it...a real-live moat! The lakes have white-healthy looking ducks with big orange bills and lots of birds flying around. There are also HUGE carp in the lake. We saw some Iraqi army guys fishing for carp with a net. It's actually really pretty to look at the palace and lake...like a painting, but it's depressing to see all the military vehicles everywhere on the lawns.
I'm signing off because my co-worker, a 6'5" dude from Oklahoma of Norwegian descent is challenging me to a game of ping-pong. I can't pass up a challenge so I'll finish my narrated tour soon. Take care, Erika-I-sat-on-a-porcelain-toilet-with-gold-leaf-today McGinley.....yep, that's a teaser for the next post!
So, I spent my first night in Baghdad last night and I want to clarify that I am not in the Green Zone/International Zone. I'm about 10 miles away in a huge complex of military bases/camps that is collocated with Baghdad International Airport (BIAP). This complex contains a military controlled side of BIAP called Sather Air Base/Camp Anaconda where I landed yesterday. Down a bumpy road from that a couple of miles is the Victory Base Complex (VBC) which is made up of various camps. This is where I am. The IZ is about 10 miles away, but you can only get there by chopper or by something called a Rhino, which is an armed mini-bus type vehicle that can withstand an IED.
The team and I started off the day meetin our POC for breakfast at 0700...yes, I know, if you know me you know that I don't usually get up that early unless I'm up from being awake all night. For some reason when I travel I need less sleep than usual and I can actually get up really early and be on time. Maybe it's because I work with the military so I feel I have no other choice... or maybe it's because I don't have any distractions when I get up in the morning (ie. playing with my pups)...or it might be (probably is) because I remain in a complete jet-lagged state the entire time. I also typically have so much adrenaline from these trips and from information and sensory overload that I go into a weird survival mode. In any case, Michael would be very impressed...although probably wondering why I can't function this way at home. Anyway, we had breakfast at the Oasis Dining Facility (DFAC) which has any kind of breakfast food you could imagine. They don't have Korean breakfasts, however, which sometimes include kimchi and miso soup.
We headed for a pre-brief with the COL of Multi-national Corps-Iraq where he provided us with good planning guidance for our work over the next couple of weeks. Then, our POC, took us on a short driving tour around VBC. You wouldn't believe it, but it was raining...not hard, but big rain drops. It rained for about one hour and then it was over, but I just had never thought of it raining in Baghdad...I had always thought of it being so arid over here. They have a rainy season and sometimes the streets flood. Actually, it happened about 2 weeks ago and we've been told the ground is finally drying out. Our tour took us around 3 lakes and many sandstone carved buildings. The buildings are really incredible from an architectural standpoint. Aesthetically, they are really nice and you can see the craftsmanship in pretty much every detail. My architecture side really appreciated them, but my humanitarian side was thinking about how much slave labor probably went into their construction. I mentioned there are 3 lakes. One of the lakes Al Faw Lake is in front of the Al Faw Palace. Yep, I said palace. There is a palace here with a lake and a moat around the front of it...a real-live moat! The lakes have white-healthy looking ducks with big orange bills and lots of birds flying around. There are also HUGE carp in the lake. We saw some Iraqi army guys fishing for carp with a net. It's actually really pretty to look at the palace and lake...like a painting, but it's depressing to see all the military vehicles everywhere on the lawns.
I'm signing off because my co-worker, a 6'5" dude from Oklahoma of Norwegian descent is challenging me to a game of ping-pong. I can't pass up a challenge so I'll finish my narrated tour soon. Take care, Erika-I-sat-on-a-porcelain-toilet-with-gold-leaf-today McGinley.....yep, that's a teaser for the next post!
Friday, February 2, 2007
Note from Erika
Erika tried to log on to update the blog, but couldn't access it. We'll try to work it out so she can post things up here, but until then she just e-mailed a message to me to post for everyone, so here it is...
Hi,It is actually erika from baghdad. our advance party arrived safely this afternoon with backpacks, duffel bags, kevlar helmets and flack jackets. we took a shuttle from BIAP (aka Sather air base) and met up with our point of contact (POC) at victory base complex. i've never seen 10-foot tall jersey barriers before, but they line the unpaved, uneven gravel road system here. i'm staying in a cushy tent (read: bare)with a few DOD civilian ladies that told me the scoop on the port-a-potties outside our door and the showers. there's no toilet paper in the potties today...good thing i brought plenty of travel kleenex tissues. also, the showers apparently DO have hot water...i'd settle for warm. this morning i woke up in camp arifjan in a bunkbed in a tent and woke up even quicker when i took an ice cold shower. now, i would whine if i was at home and that happened, but when i travel i make it a point to be as rough and tough as i can so i didn't even complain in my internal monologue. all i could do was wet parts of my body at a time and my head separately to ease the pain from the cold. i was thinking, however, that maybe i should send an email warning the rest of the team who's arriving next week about the water. then i thought i shouldn't because it would just make them bitter before they even arrived.
so, i am part of the advance party of four of us who are giving a presentation to MNC-I (multi-national corps iraq) tomorrow. we're also the guinea pigs to see how smoothly or bumpy the in-country travel goes. we're bringing 12 more people over next week to join us. apparently, MNC-I is located in The Palace. I guess it's Saddam's former palace and I've heard it's decadent...marble everywhere. it should be pretty interesting. the four of us ended up on a c-17 flight this afternoon from ali al saleem, kuwait along with about 200 other military personnel heading into baghdad. the trip was uneventful and short...about 75 minutes...however I did cringe a little bit when the "red lights" came on. inside the aircraft they have red and green lights lining both of the walls. the lights turn red when the aircraft officially enters a combat zone...i.e. baghdad. yeah...that kind of put a lump in my throat. oh, the other thing that i forgot put a lump in my throat was when we were loading up the plane to take off and i could see the pilots up front through a porthole...they were putting on flack vests...yeah, the fact that they had to have those on just to pilot the c-17 was also a bit jarring. in any case, i apologize for the lack of capitalization and/or proper sentence structure...really no time to or energy for much of that. i'm in a morale welfare and recreation facility (MWR) and they are giving salsa lessons upstairs...i wish i could join...then i could say i learned how to dance in baghdad. take care, erika
Hi,It is actually erika from baghdad. our advance party arrived safely this afternoon with backpacks, duffel bags, kevlar helmets and flack jackets. we took a shuttle from BIAP (aka Sather air base) and met up with our point of contact (POC) at victory base complex. i've never seen 10-foot tall jersey barriers before, but they line the unpaved, uneven gravel road system here. i'm staying in a cushy tent (read: bare)with a few DOD civilian ladies that told me the scoop on the port-a-potties outside our door and the showers. there's no toilet paper in the potties today...good thing i brought plenty of travel kleenex tissues. also, the showers apparently DO have hot water...i'd settle for warm. this morning i woke up in camp arifjan in a bunkbed in a tent and woke up even quicker when i took an ice cold shower. now, i would whine if i was at home and that happened, but when i travel i make it a point to be as rough and tough as i can so i didn't even complain in my internal monologue. all i could do was wet parts of my body at a time and my head separately to ease the pain from the cold. i was thinking, however, that maybe i should send an email warning the rest of the team who's arriving next week about the water. then i thought i shouldn't because it would just make them bitter before they even arrived.
so, i am part of the advance party of four of us who are giving a presentation to MNC-I (multi-national corps iraq) tomorrow. we're also the guinea pigs to see how smoothly or bumpy the in-country travel goes. we're bringing 12 more people over next week to join us. apparently, MNC-I is located in The Palace. I guess it's Saddam's former palace and I've heard it's decadent...marble everywhere. it should be pretty interesting. the four of us ended up on a c-17 flight this afternoon from ali al saleem, kuwait along with about 200 other military personnel heading into baghdad. the trip was uneventful and short...about 75 minutes...however I did cringe a little bit when the "red lights" came on. inside the aircraft they have red and green lights lining both of the walls. the lights turn red when the aircraft officially enters a combat zone...i.e. baghdad. yeah...that kind of put a lump in my throat. oh, the other thing that i forgot put a lump in my throat was when we were loading up the plane to take off and i could see the pilots up front through a porthole...they were putting on flack vests...yeah, the fact that they had to have those on just to pilot the c-17 was also a bit jarring. in any case, i apologize for the lack of capitalization and/or proper sentence structure...really no time to or energy for much of that. i'm in a morale welfare and recreation facility (MWR) and they are giving salsa lessons upstairs...i wish i could join...then i could say i learned how to dance in baghdad. take care, erika
Between Iraq and a diffcult latin dance
Erika has safely arrived at the green zone in baghdad and is in her tent where she will be staying with three other female DOD personnel. She is in a MWR center (Morale, Welfare, and Recreation for you non-Army folks) and they are having salsa lessons there right now, and the music was pretty loud. She was actually kind of jealous and wanted to go take the lessons.
Anyway, she should be there for two days of meetings and preparation, then back to Kuwait for a few days to meet up with the rest of her team when they arrive, and then back to Iraq for a month. As of right now, her return flight is scheduled to get her back to Atlanta on Saturday, March 3.
Anyway, she should be there for two days of meetings and preparation, then back to Kuwait for a few days to meet up with the rest of her team when they arrive, and then back to Iraq for a month. As of right now, her return flight is scheduled to get her back to Atlanta on Saturday, March 3.
Thursday, February 1, 2007
Quick Update
The Air Force said "sorry" but they have no room for them for transpo today, so Erika is going to have to spend the night at the AFB in Kuwait again tonight and try again to get on a flight to Baghdad sometime tomorrow. Also, the Air Force doesn't have any room for them to spend the night, so they will be sleeping in tents. Real cushy consulting business travel, huh?
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