Am I really in Kuwait? It’s still very sureal to me. I just came to the realization today. What am I doing here? It’s hot, 117 degrees in the afternoon. During the night it drops to a comfortable 100, 95 if we’re lucky. Good thing is that they hve set up the tents here for quite a bit now, and people tell me that they’re always making improvements to them. They’re quite very secure, pretty permanent yet very accessible and flexible, and do their job well. I’m very impressed by the amount of tents here, the amount of manpower and very proud of what the United States Army is capable of once they bring everyone together to fight the same war. In the reserves and basic training and AIT, we didn’t see much of that. We only saw one color of the spectrum at a time. It’s amazing we can set up such an emcampment and many like it around the world, half the globe away from where we came. Couple things that I caught quicky were the ants and stars. There are no stars in the sky like some people said there were. I saw none in the last two nights, and I probably never will. The moon shines brightly over the horizon in a orange hue and continues its almost linear path across the sky and disapears during the day only to peek again shortly before sunset. Ants. There are ants here, in this weather. I have no idea what they’re doing here, especially in the desert where there’s nothing to eat and even the flies are too scared to roam. I learned that the hard way when I left a package of crackers open. I had a surprise waiting for me when I opened them later on.
Our plan to move out today didn’t follow through. Probably because it’s Sunday and logistics always slow down on the weekends. So instead we visited the PX. I ended up buying nothing because they didn’t have the shirt I wanted, nor did they have the power converters so I could start charging my laptop and my iPod. So instead I went next door to a little Kuwaiti PX shop, and they had everything. They were selling Oakleys for 5 bucks a pop, and a whole bunch of bootlegged DVDs. I bought myself the Matrix one and had a blast watching that again. Except I was so tired I slept through the rest of it and through lunch too. I woke up in time for dinner, though. The food here is a lot better than what I expected. It’s better than what it was at Ft. McCoy, plus we don’t have to walk half a mile to get there, just a quarter of a mile.
It’s night now, midnight. The sun rises early in the morning at 5 and pretty much wakes everyone up. Or it could just be a jet lag thing. The sun sets late at 8 or 9, and gives an impression that we’re not getting enough sleep. I don’t feel tired, just restless. We move out tomorrow to another camp, I believe to some place calle Arif John or something, about an hour’s drive away. The planes are still landing and departing. We live about 200 meters out of the military airport that Americans use primarily but Australia is here, too, and so are the British and Italian aircraft. But for the most part I see C-17s landing and taking off. About a mile away from our position, there is the commercial Kuwait City Airport. That one I rarely see anything landing or taking off. But it’s a sight to see. It runs parallel to a highway that seems to be of frequent use all day, and I always have a blast looking at how many cars the planes pass up before landing or taking off.
We’re not supposed to be taking pictures of the camps. But I’ve been able to sneak some here and there. During the night the horizon is outlined by street lights in perfect intervals, in every direction you see. And the moon is always there, turning from an orange blob to a yellow ball come midnight or so. I coudln’t resist. I wasn’t aware that human beings were capable of setting up such camps.