I'm BACK!!!

I know I know, I can hear it now...why have you taken so long to update the blog? The answer, no excuse. Things have been really crazy here, mission tempo has picked up A LOT which is good as it's made time fly by. Here it is middle of June and i'm around 98 days out from leaving this place to come home on leave, double digits FINALLY!!!

We just got back from a 10 day mission to the Nawur and Jagori districts of our Ghazni Province here in Afghanistan. Let me tell you, the time away from our little FOB here was very much needed. Gave us a chance to relax and interact with the locals without having to worry about someone taking a shot at us or trying to blow us up. Nawur and Jagori are areas in our province that are pretty much "Taliban Free" areas. These are areas that the residents actually kicked out the Taliban and are open to help from the U.S. We were actually able to shed our body armor and helmets and being away from the "Flag Pole" <---- our HQ element, we were able to go to with relaxed grooming standards. I had a full grown beard by day 10, it was too awesome, not having to shave and even had the joy of getting food stuck in my beard..HA!

I did have a somewhat scary experience happen on day 6 of our trip. Around 10pm, I crawled into my sleep sack and quickly fell asleep. I'm not sure how the heck I did this but around 2:30am, I felt something pretty much run UP my face and stop around my right eye, natural instinct I threw my hand up to flick whatever it was off my face, when I made contact to sweep whatever it was off, I felt the weight of the thing. I got it off my face, jumped up out of my sack, grabbed my light and flicked it on to see what the heck I hit was. To my amazement it turned out to be a camel spider about as big as my palm and it was still alive. Now, I consider myself a man and not easily scared when it comes to spiders and other bugs...that is UNLESS it crawls across my face. Well I totally tripped out and went from hard core combat soldier to a 10 year old girl scout in about 2 seconds. I jumped up, grabbed my otterbox case and started smacking this thing for all it was worth to make sure it was dead. Once I made sure it was dead, I pushed it off to the side and went back to sleep. I had to save it to show off the next day to my buddies. Well, wouldn't you know...when I woke up, the only thing left of the spider was one of it's huge legs which told me that something bigger, grabbed the thing while I was sleeping to drag off to it's nest.

Other than that, the trip was good. Spent alot of time with the locals, climbed some of the mountains in those districts, swam in some of the rivers and also drank out one of the springs flowing out of one of the mountains in Nawur. You know, in my 37 years on this earth, I have been the world traveler. I've been to pretty much every corner of this globe and I can honestly say that Afghanistan is one of the most beautiful countries I have ever been to. So many times I have wished with all my heart that Jill and my boys were with me to experience the beauty of this place. I really do hope that one day Afghanistan can find it's peace and stability because 10 - 15 years from now, I would love to be able to bring them here on vacation so that they can see Afghanistan's beauty. Iraq, HA, no doubt that place sucked but Afghanistan? not so bad if you can get past people shooting at you. :-)

On another note, I checked my email when I got back yesterday and was surprised to see that I got picked up for E-7 / Sergeant First Class. Sooo, that being said, hopefully I will get that second rocker on my chest soon. The slot i'm being put in is with Charlie Company 2 - 142nd Inf as a platoon sgt for a rifle platoon of 30 - 35 guys. I'm sad that i'm going to have to leave 143rd Inf when I get back but i'm thankful that I have guys in my corner that will keep that door open should I want to come back. Thank God for good friends right? I no doubt consider myself a lucky man even though i'm here on the other side of the world, away from everything I hold dear in life. How much more luck can one person want in life? I'm married to my best friend, I have two beautiful boys, a loving family, a fantastic mother-in-law who i can sit down and watch a football or baseball game with....and I have great friends. Life is great.

Well friends, I need to get going. I hope all is well with you and know that as always, each of you are in my thoughts.

-Jimmy