Wednesday, September 6, 2006

Home!

I survived! I made it all the way to South Caroline and back with out any mishap. While the trip back east was long, it worked out to my advantage because we arrived at 10pm their time and after being up for 36 hours we where more than willing to crash. This allowed us to adjust to Eastern Time very quickly. The 4 hour time difference was much more of a killer on the way home. The hotel the army travel agency booked us into was a nightmare! But the rest of the trip was great and more than made up for the holey blankets and towels... well mostly.

Our first day there we got to hang out with my baby brother on base and meet his buddies and one of his drill sergeants. I was great to see him and he seemed really happy.



The second day of our visit was graduation. I was surprised at how many soldiers were there. I estimate that their where around 20,000 people in attendance at the graduation and we had all the traffic issues that go with that. Here he is marching past the stands with his platoon.



After graduation he got to leave the base with us for the rest of the day and we went shopping for a new cell phone for him and some civilian clothes. We mostly just hung out and joked around and in general had a great time. We did finally manage to find what I believe was the ONLY Starbucks in SC and so we finally had some decent coffee for the first time since leaving Seattle.

We had to drop him off at his barracks that evening because he was shipping of to AIT the next morning. We did get to hang around there for a bit before the Drill Sergeant called them back.



We were told that if all the families didn't leave promptly, the soldiers would have to push ups until we all left. Needless to say, I did get a couple of great photos of him on the ground. The best part was that they all chanted “Hurry on up!” and “Waiting on you” as they pushed. Ah! Good times!

The trip home was long, but uneventful. I have spent the last two days recovering from a major case of jet lag. The thing that keeps running through my mind is, if it is this hard to recover from a trip out east, how is coming home from Ethiopia going to be?




2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Congrats to your brother. I have been to a military graduation like that and it was pretty fun.

Melissa said...

sounds like you had a good time. how long has it been since you saw him last?