Finish line

We're down to less than two months now. I think everyone is getting anxious to get back. I know I am. The weather has been pretty good lately, hopefully it stays that way until we leave. Here's what it looked like when it snowed:

I also ate at the local kabob shop today. It tasted good, but I'm not sure what kind of meat it was.

Winter storms and packing

Here I go again talking about the weather. It really hasn't been that bad here. It's definitely cold, probably 10 to 20 F, but not what I had imagined. People talk about the freezing Afghan winters like they talk about the hot Iraqi summers. The Iraq summer is bad, no doubt. But the winter here hasn't been all that bad. I'm pretty sure Washington DC probably has had more snow then we have.
We're starting to get serious about packing. Our connexes (the ones that will be sent via convoy to a Pakistan seaport) are in the process of being packed. They'll be inspected by U.S. Customs soon. It feels good to be doing this, because everyone knows it's close to the end. Hopefully they won't end up like the last unit though. When they opened theirs up in the U.S., all they had was rocks. Apparently, someone had replaced all their stuff with rocks somewhere along the way to Pakistan. We'll see what happens to ours...

Getting close

The bad weather has passed and the sun is up... for now. Hopefully it'll stay this way until we leave. The snow isn't so bad, but the rain and mud just make it miserable. We've built some drainage along the sides of our "roads," but the water still pools and they get muddy.

We're getting close to be done. We're starting to pack our connexes that will be put on a ship. We probably won't see them for a few months after we get back, but that's alright. Packing the connexes is one of those signs that the end is getting closer.

I don't usually post about the unit as a whole, but it seems that some people are getting more frustrated and angrier as the time has gone by. There is a lot of complaining going on. It reminds me of my last deployment, except at this time people were starting to come out of the mid deployment depression and be happy. It's interesting how morale continues to drop even though we're nearing the end. I'm curious to see if there will be a mas exodus from the unit when we get back.

Australia pictures

Here's just a picture of me on our last bus ride.







We crossed the tropic of capricorn... big moment in history.









This is a lake on the largest sand island in the world.

Picture of the skydiving crew... we all survived. I was the only guy skydiving that day, so I definitely couldn't back out. Nice pants huh?

Both of these are pictures of the Whitsundays. They are a group of islands near Brisbane. The beach on top is supposedly one of the best beaches in the world. The sand is like 98 percent quartz so it is very fine and almost completely white.

Same lake on the sand island.

We stayed on a cattle ranch one night and the took us out on a tractor ride. That's our bus in the background.

Famous opera house in Sydney.

Waiting for the ferry...

Snokeling in the Whitsundays.