Day 18 - Packing

I'm super excited, it's about time for our pass. It will be awesome getting to go home for a little bit and hanging out with my wife.

I've actually been pretty busy. Tonight was the latest night in awhile doing things. We had a ton of meetings today. It was one of those days when one meeting just flowed into the next. By the time I finally was done and got back to the barracks, I just wanted to rack out and go to sleep, but common sense prevailed. I took my shower, brushed my teeth, and changed out my smallpox bandaid.

Uggg, smallpox, this thing is starting to get really annoying. A few days ago the thing was scabbing over and I was excited to see it progressing quite nicely. Then on Labor Day we did some training which was fairly physical and the scab basically went away leaving a mess. I'm sure it's still healing, but not in the perfect sequence they show in the pictures. The little sample pictures in the brochure was probably someone doing zero physical activity and not trying to train to go to combat zone.

One thing that I've been aware of, but haven't really put too much thought into was the time zone difference in Afghanistan. There is a 9 1/2 hour difference there. That means that I'll basically be working the opposite schedule as most of the country. It will kind of stink because I'll either have to call family and friends either first thing in the morning or late at night.

I spent a lot of time today packing. I have to have everything ready to go by tomorrow. There is so much stuff. I have 2 large duffel bags, a large "tough box", a weapons case, an assault pack, a ruck sack, and a laptop case. The tough box and one of the duffel bags are transported separately, but the rest will be traveling with me. I'm definitely not looking forward to lugging all of this stuff.

I also have quite a bit of stuff that I need to bring back home with me when I start my pass. Ugghhh, so much stuff to do, so I better get some sleep.