I love my day off

Hello All,

It has been a few weeks since my last post, but has not seemed like that many. Days seem to fly by....I am in constant motion up until I run out gas with me trying to write on last email or look at one more website.

Things are well. I am writing this on 9/11, a day all of us will remember. The operating environment here shows hope for change. I work with local nationals (Iraqis) everyday and have developed a couple of new friendships. The 34th ID is here not in a search and destroy mission, but a training and relationship building mission. It will be easier to come back home with a clear head knowing that we made a positive (maybe neutral, but surely not negative) impact on the area we were placed in.

Today, I will go thru a ceremony placing me in the Non Commisioned Officer Corp. More of a formality, but there will be pleanty of senior NCO leaders there and one of them mentioned that this would be kinda like a college graduation ceremony. We had a rehearsal this morning and have a live event this evening.

I had the Division Sargeant Major come out to our ECP yesterday to tour the area and see how the process works. With about an hours notice, we had our place shining and were prepared for anything. Timing was perfect. We were fully staffed and we had a bunch of people waiting to go through the ID process. With a few basic questions and some small chat, he thanked us for our time and left with a handshake (in the hand shake was a CSM coin). Coins are kinda a wierd thing for the military and I have maybe a dozen from different people, but is kinda of nice to collect and remember stories. It is also nice to get some from people high on the foodchain.

Overall, things are going very well. My job is going well and I have a sense of job satisfaction & pride in the area I oversea. I have things to look forward to: I have my leave in November and I have been registered for a NCO developmet class in WA at the end of this deployment (it was nice to see a date on paper of when I would start something on the states). I continually get to see new pictures of my beautiful children (and wife) on facebook. Those pics are good n bad: it gives me a sense that time is passing. I have not experienced any changing of the seasons here. It has rained twice since early May and it only changes from hot to really hot to really hot n humid. The bad part about it is that I see my children growing up so fast and hate not to be there with them. Alex is starting middle school and graduated from RAAA football program to Rosemount Middle School program. He is super excited and thru text messages it sounds like he is enjoying the change to middle school alot. Annika is starting 1st grade and will be away from mom and little sister for a full school day now. I think she is having the hardest time with me being gone and I hope me being back in Nov for a couple weeks will help. Mia is a crazy little monkey and is enjoying her one on one time with mommy when the two older ones are at school.


Well thats all for now...not alot of new pictures as we are not allowed to take any pictures at our work site. But I will try to get some more up.

Later,

Sam