Salutations from a Soldier, Message from the Middle East, Yadda, Yadda, Yadda

Posted on Facebook 10/14:

Dear Friends, Compatriots, Acquaintances, Fellow-travelers, and People I Barely Know or Maybe Don’t But Somehow Got on This List,

Howdy, all. Marhaba! Il-Hamdalillah, I’m doing well (zayn) and thanks for asking. Location: Camp Buehring, Kuwait. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Camp_Buehring) Our local USO office, to be precise. It’s a nice set-up - carpeted floors, air-conditioning, X-Box 360s, Wii’s, and internet pc’s to be signed out for hour increments. Not bad at all.

Local temperature today, high of 104 degrees. Weather is unbearably sunny - imagine yourself an ant walking around under some dumbass kid’s magnifying glass. Yeah, that bright. And other than the camp tents (only tents as I imagine there’s some stupid political sensitivity regarding our having more permanent structures. Stupid political sensitivity I say, as I don’t this Camp is going anywhere anytime soon), there’s not much beyond empty sand as far as the eye can see (although when we went out to a range the other day, there were several herds of camels on some neighboring dunes. Luckily, they were far enough way that we didn’t smell them).

Anyhoo, things are going well. And with any luck, we’ll be heading north soon to Iraq to finally start working. Looking forward to meeting and greeting the locals and practicing my Arabic. The powers that be are already pleased with what I know, so they’ll probably be encouraging me to make friends and allies among the Iraqis. Don’t know if I can get the Iraqis to support anything like Bryant Park Movie Night but I might at least aim for a potluck or two.

Morale’s good here but I think I speak for all the guys in my company when I say we’re looking forward to moving north and getting on with the mission. Of course, it doesn’t hurt that current events say that things are trending better in Iraq (yay Awakening!) and that the bad numbers are going down. Now we just need to make sure it stays that
way.

No word yet on our mailing address but we should have one soon, so let me know if you’d like to have it (any magazines you’d like to send would definitely be appreciated by me and the guys, I’m just saying).

Just wanted to drop y’all a line (and sorry if you got this two, three, or even four times - it’s rough but you’ll survive) and let you know I’m doing ok, enjoying the deployed in the Army life so far, and have high hopes for the next 15 months. Would love to hear from all of you.

And I’ll be damned if I don’t miss New York City.

Cheers.