We are finally in the last week of annual training and I very happy to be breaking everything down to return home.  Today we are running our MCT operations basically at 40% and working only until 1200 hours.  After today we are totally focused on recovery, as I said in my previous Annual Training post, such as cleaning weapons, washing our clothing, and returning unit items back to the conex.  Yesterday we washed and refueled the vehicles that we checked out and returned them--it was actually kind of fun at the washrack cleaning them. 

To some or maybe a lot of you, a lot of the things I'm talking about are probably foreign, since I have learned that the majority of my audience on this blog and YouTube are Future Soldiers (some future Airmen, Sailors, Marines and my family members and friends).  But I think you all will catch on if you keep up. :)

Right now I am sitting in the Forward Operating Base's MWR (Morale.Welfare.Recreation) tent where my unit's operations has been housed these 20 some odd days of our stay.  Most of our stuff is packed up and we're literally chillin'! lol  After we leave here at noon, we'll do an AAR (After Action Review) and then go to the half-mile running track to do 30-60s as a unit.  Originally it was just my squad leader and I that were going to run, then my platoon sergeant got wind of what we were planning to do for PT (physical training) today and therefore made it mandatory for the entire unit.  Sergeants are funny that way.

Tonight I want to relax and eat a big juicy cheesebuger!  I'll update this blog post (below) with a photo of it if I manage to get one today. ;) 

It's another beautiful day on the FOB. We have roughly 8 more days here during which we'll slowly begin re-deploying soldiers and equipment back to the contonement area so that we can all go home! Can't wait.

I have learned a lot about my unit and MOS, as annual training really gives one a feel for what they are supposed to be doing in the Army in a deployed environment--assuming all planned training works out, as some units didn't even achieve what they were sent here for unfortunately.

I have had the amazing privilege to work with, speak to and laugh with high ranking non-commissioned officers and officers alike and learn from them. There is a Sergeant Major here, who I must leave nameless, that is absolutely cool. He drove in one day, among many other times while I was on duty at the FOB RP Gate and I would be entirely formal with him, but he basically said not to worry, relax and "don't let this rank bother you," and added "take control of the gate". Since then we have spoken often in passing and offered each other help and ideas (at his prompting of course) on how we can better manage movement control operations while I am on duty.

On another note, perhaps the fact that we know we are in a training environment and not truly in harms way, FOB life these past two weeks has been relaxed. However, I would be to my own dismay to think that real deployed life will be the same next year.

We shall see.

Today I finally got a chance to see the forward operating base in all of it's desolate glory.  I got a short class on the operations that my unit will need to accomplish for the remaining 24 days and set up a place of operation as well.  From what I have been told there are only two showers for hundreds of people and small sleeping space in the tents.  Although there is a possiblility we may stay in the barracks and just commute back and forth to the FOB whereupon some in my unit complained that it's a very long drive from the barracks to the FOB.  I figure no matter how you shake up this situation there is simply going to be some major discomfort and we have to push through it and accomplish our mission.  As I said in my last post, this annual training will prepare us for deploying to Afghanistan next year.  We won't have definitive word on where we'll be staying until tomorrow, so this may be my last post for a while even though it was my hope to journal every so often while at annual training.  I guess I'll write it all down and scan it in later to post here afterward.  

Stay tuned.