Fortunate Son is a good read if you are interested in learning a little more about what I will be doing on my trip. The author of Fortunate Son is more of a pure Civil Affairs type rather than an Architect/Civil Engineer but the info is still relevant. I doubt very much that you will get the same content out of my blog over the next year. First off, Fortunate Son appears to have a better handle on prose than the author of FrantzWorkshop. But perhaps more significantly, FrantzWorkshop will have more restrictions to contend with. In the end, it may be necessary to password-protect future content....but hopefully not.
On a different note: check out Mosaic. This online webcast translates headline news from around the middle-east unedited into English. The webcasts include Al Jazeera, IBA (Israeli Broadcast Authority), IRIB2, Future Labanon, Al-Alam, Abu Dhabi TV, etc.. If you are familiar with these news sources then you know that they do not agree with each other.
I think that it is important to hear news from the perspective that you do not agree with…it helps to keep you honest. Hopping between CNN, Fox News, and Mosaic, will open your eyes a little more….or maybe just piss you off…lol
Mosaic requires QuickTime, but it is worth the trouble.
I will be taking a 12 month overseas ‘business trip’ beginning in a number of weeks. I will be serving as a Civil Engineer one of the Afghanistan Provincial Reconstruction Teams In the mean time Rheagan, Lucas and Aurora will be making the East / Mid-America Grandparent circuit.
I will be able to make only a few posts over the next year, as there are a lot rules prohibiting service members maintaining blogs while they are deployed. On that note, if you are looking to post a reply on the site, I respectfully request that you check your politics at the door. This business trip is about helping people. Rather than wondering why no one is doing anything about the world’s endless list of problems…about making the world a better place. I am putting my money where my mouth is…I am aiming to do something about it with my own hands.
For the last five and ½ weeks, I have been at Ft Bragg absorbing the Army way of doing things. The schedule that we have kept is very aggressive. My fellow PRT members and I are usually up by 0430 followed by Physical Training from 0500 to 0600…this usually alternates between calisthenics and cardio. The first training event of the day often starts between 0700 and 0800. The day will then unfolds into all kinds of different classes, meetings, and activities, which will end anywhere between 1900 and 2300 (My longest work day went from 0500 till 2320…got to sleep by midnight…followed by a 0430 start. Showers come once every three days, they are often very cold. We have not been permitted to leave Ft Bragg since arriving. Indeed, we are seldom permitted to leave our encampment in the woods, just to get back to the Base Exchange. Personal cars are not permitted, civilian cloths are not permitted, going to the gym is not permitted, even ordering pizza is not permitted. Internet access has been very limited until recently, snail-mail takes twice as long and personal cell phones are almost the only phones. It all has the feel of a Boy Scout jamboree, but a lot longer and with big teeth.
All that said, we are learning a lot of very important skills and we are coming together as a team. Although we complain a great deal, I feel that we will all look back in a year’s time and say that this training experience was a factor for success.