1 Week Down

I have now been at Ft. Dix for just over 1 week. The training is not quite as rigorous as our previous round of training and thankfully we are not repeating what we did last time as we were told we would. In fact, we actually have a lot of down time in which we are injecting our own training into it based on our mission set, mostly Dari language training so far. The food is not too bad this time, seems to be a little better than last time, or I am just getting in the mindset that it is free  and edible. I am able to hit the gym pretty hard each day as well which has been nice. I anticipate a lot of gym time in Afghanistan as well

This past week we have been going through medical and administrative processing. This constitutes making sure we have all of our shots, vision screening, and a basic physical to ensure we are fit for deployment. On the admin we get new ID cards if needed, update pay, insurance and other emergency contact data.

We also went through a test with our protective masks to ensure the seals were not leaking. Here are some pictures. I had to go through the test 4 times myself as myself because my seal kept failing. The mask was leaking around my chin. Once they changed the head harness to a special kind I passed with no problem. I guess I just proved the test actually works. Sometimes you wonder in the Army if are just doing it because.

We checked out vehicles for training this week as well. This is our ride. I t is an up armored HUMMV. These are only used for training on and base operations now. They are pretty much obsolete for combat with the IED threat and their flat bottom design. We now have a new class of vehicles called MRAPS that can take an IED blast with better survivability.

The next week we will be in cultural awareness training which should be fun and informative. Everyone is pretty much ready to get over there and get to work at this point.

Christine and I have been able to talk quite often via phone and video chat. She is just about 3 weeks away from her due date. We are both getting very excited. The baby’s room is pretty much done. Thank you all again for all your thoughts and prayers. We can definitely feel them.