Because of some quirk in making travel arrangements, three of us won't be leaving with the rest of our group in the wee hours of Wednesday morning on the military charter flight but instead will be flying home via commercial airliner Wednesday evening. On the bad side, instead of arriving home late Wednesday night I won't arrive home until mid-day Thursday. But on the very good side, I don't have to go through tedious hours of hurry-up-and-wait with the others beginning tomorrow at 2pm for a 1am flight! When I learned I was flying commercial I was disappointed at first, but after hearing the charter schedule and procedures to get home, I think flying the "Friendly Skies" of United might be a more civilized mode of transportation - well, as civilized as a 7,700 mile flight can be!
Yesterday at lunch here at the new base we were startled to be eating off real plates with real metal forks and knives (instead of plastic which was all we had in Iraq) and most remarkably of all, glass glasses for our drinks! I don't mean to say this was all fine china as it was still institutional stuff, but it was a somewhat jarring change from what we had all come to regard as "normal." I guess it just goes to show how one's standards truly change when having a Coke in a standard cafeteria glass is a remarkable event.
The other changes that we noticed here were the number of people in civilian clothes. Apparently here Sunday is a regular day off from work and when one is not working civilian clothes are authorized. Also, the buildings are not all surrounded by protective concrete blast walls. I don't know if recognition of these seemingly small differences were intentional parts of the transition program, but they really highlighted to me that I was finally out of a combat environment - that and not carrying a weapon everywhere I went!
Just three more days until I'm back home! Yippee!
Cheers, Pearl
