Dust

January 18, 2010
Camp Leatherneck, Afghanistan
09:04

I just realized I've been typing 2009 as the year for my past few entries, so I went and changed that. Embarrassing...

We flew over here in a C-17, which is an Air Force plane. All I really need to say is that it was uncomfortable. For about two hours I couldn't get in a position that felt good enough for me to fall asleep. On top of that I was on top of someone on either side of me and I had a backpack and my laptop bag on my lap. It sucked.

When we finally landed I realized that this was going to be pretty similar to Camp Wilson in 29 Palms, although it's colder there. It got pretty warm during the day yesterday, but I was drinking water all day so I felt pretty good.

Leatherneck is kind of confusing. You can't really get a map and there aren't signs anywhere to show you directions. All kinds of people are walking around. People in different branches of the U.S. military, people in foreign militaries, civilians, Afghani policemen. There's a lot of SUVs driving around. There are cars everywhere actually.

I spent the day walking around yesterday and found a bazaar with a friend of mine that everyone refers to as "The Hodgi Shop" or however you spell it. I was hoping to see some of those crazy bootleg DVDs that people always bring back to the U.S. from foreign countries, and luckily this place was full of them. They had a few copies of Avatar.

I've been doing much of the same thing today, although the bazaar (which includes "Smily Jewlary Shop") wasn't open yet. Neither was the PX, but I'm not sure what I'd buy there anyway.

I have not found a working WiFi signal yet, which is disappointing because a message from the advanced party was sent back to my chain of command saying that WiFi was easy to come by. They must have been talking about Kyrgyzstan.

This might be harder then I anticipated.