And the journey begins

I said that graduation was officially the 5th of August, but we had graduation on 4 Aug. I leave in just a few days. We are taking a bus to OK and then flying straight over from there.

I have a lot of anxiety. I can't believe it is finally here. The last month and half has gone by incredibly quickly and hope that is an indicator of the next year. My bags are packed. All that is left is some dirty laundry and my civilian clothes which I will just through away when I leave. However, I did pack my running shoes in the wrong bag. LOL.

Monday night was a great experiance. We had several personal trying (yes, trying after a couple cancelled flights I think they finally made it. ) leave at Oh dark thirty. I stayed up and hung out with them and helped them load everything up on the bus. It was a different type of good bye than those where you see someone off for a PCS. Some of them I had never talked to before and just decided to hang out with. It was human. It was nostalgic. It was memorable. We talked and laughed about anything and everything (except their bus departure or Iraq).

They ended up making it to Baltimore. A few of them had canceled flights in Chicago, they all had a canceled flight in Baltimore and a canceled flight in Ramstein. The bad experience of being on a broken plane in Germany is that you really can't go far. You must stay in the terminal and hurry up and wait for it to be fixed, because when they are ready to board, you better have been on that plane 15 minutes earlier.

I have made some amazing acquaintances and a few I think will become close and long term friends.

There has even been a guy that I wish that we had met under different circumstances. He's incredibly smart, by which he has a great sense to have a conversation and be patient. He is a Comm troop too. He was two classes ahead of me and stuck on what they call the "bench." That is where they train extra Army personnel in the event that someone gets hurt, gets out or for whatever reason cannot deploy (They only do this with Army). The downside to that, is that those on the bench have no idea where they are going, or when. They could be here sometimes up to a year and then have to deploy for a year. But of course, he has no idea that I have this little crush on him. :-)

I have run into a friend of mine from Korea. He was my next door neighbor back when I lived on the first floor. His wife is coming in tonight (in about an hour actually :-)).

Let's see what other crazy stuff has gone on... I got to fire a couple of foreign weapons, the M-2 and 240. Now that was cool! Makes me kind of want to be a gun owner. I would probably never fire them because I hate cleaning them.

Well, ladies and gents, here's to my last weekend in the US for a year. I love you and I miss you.

My head is down, I promise, no purple hearts.