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We arrived in San Antonio late this morning. We were very excited to see TX. Believe it or not it is cooler and less humid in TX, it is almost enjoyable compared to Alabama. Kent and I have spent the day trying to get organized as we go to work on Tuesday. Anyway I am including some pictures...


Kent and I dressed in our standard blues. This is what we will be wearing everyday for the next four years. The female pants are very uncomfortable.


















Kent sitting on the bleachers in a 100+ heat index outside at the mock deployment. He is in his Batlle Dress Uniform (BDU). There are no pictures of me at this exercise because I was miserable and wantd to cry at every moment. I did not enjoy camping in a tent, or baking in the sun during lectures outside. I was a poor sport. But what did you all expect?
















Kent and I in our Mess Dress at the formal Dining In. This is a big deal in the military. We had a General address us. And Kent was part of the skit, the entertainment for the event. I will let him give you all the details.

Blue Thunder

So...

Meghan and I just returned this morning from 2 days at Blue Thunder. It is a field of large military tents including a tented hospital. The weather was a cool 97 degrees with a heat index of 110. Boy - what a treat!

This place makes the Tri-State area seem like a winter wonderland. Of course we were required to wear our BDUs (Battle Dress Uniform) in the heat. BDUs are those camoflouge outfits that we military people seem to find so fashionable that we wear them daily!

So were were broken up into 2 groups. Each had a 2 hr 45 min exercise. It was a mass-casualty drill. It was both scary and exciting all at the same time - AMAZING training. The whole point of these 2 days were to experience what life is like on deployment to another nation (such as Iraq). While baking and sweating in that sun, it was hard to believe that in Iraq the weather is actually hotter: 120 degrees.

We recieved no weapons training. They said that since we are medical personnel, we would only receive weapons training if we deployed. And even then, the Geneva conventions state that as medical personnel, we can only use the firearm to defend our patients or resources (food or the hospital).

We also had the fortunate opportunity to eat 3 MREs per day. These are prepackaged meals that you can cook by simply adding water. They are very balanced for nutrition and are meant to sustain someone in the event of a food shortage (each one totalled about 3000 calories). Clearly I didn't eat all of each MRE, so I have some samples to bring back home (of course, I'm assuming that everyone is dazzled by the idea of MREs).

So our spirits are high. We have 4 days left. All testing is complete. We have an official briefing (oral report) and a short paper due tomorrow at 0700 (yup, we're getting into the habit of using military time - quite strange). Otherwise we have no more assignments! We cannot wait to get back to our lives; they have not been our own for the last 3 weeks. We are looking forward to starting the internship, as it will be a more normal job experience. Like this experience, it will be good training - but less intense, and at an 8am-4pm schedule.

We fly back to TX at 6am on Saturday July 30. We start our residency at Wilford Hall Medical Center (at Lackland Air Force Base) Tuesday 8/2/05.

We miss all of you!

All visitors are officially invited to claim one (or more) weekends to come visit. We are very excited to host you all:)

Saluting

By the way, it is very strange to be saluted by everyone around us. Since we are captains, the majority of the other students here are lower than us in rank. That means they have to initiate the salute first, and they cannot let their hand down until we let ours down. It's a really interesting experience. We've been saluting left and right!

Also (a bone of contention here) we have formed the habit of saying sir and ma'am all the time. I call my roomate sir, I call everyone I see sir or ma'am. However, I did not expect that they would require me to call my wife "ma'am." I am guessing that this is unique to the military, not to the 1st year of marriage...

The purpose of calling each other sir and ma'am during the work day is to maintain a professional decorum. While I understand this idea, it's frustrating.

-- what an adjustment!

COT

So here we are at Commissioned Officer's Training. Wow is this training intense. I think between last Wednesday and Saturday I had a total of 8 hours of sleep. But due to the hurricane, things were on lock-down, so I was able to get a whopping 6 hours the other night! Meghan is in the same boat.

We are both learning quite a bit about this organization, it's mission, and its philosophy of training. We have also learned about the history of the US'a major foreign wars. It's all been educational, exhausting, but rewarding!

Meghan and I were both randomly selected to be the Flight Officer's in Charge or our respective flights. This means we are in charge of leading the 14 other flight members (including physicians, nurses, lawyers, dentists, chaplains, dieticians, and pharmocologists). It has been a great experience so far.

This is the first opportunity I have had to get to the base library. We are safe and sound, just extremely busy!

Hopefully, another update will come soon:)

Long Over Due Pictures

Hey everyone. I hope all is well with you all. It is pretty hot here in Texas and I fear it will be worse in Alabama next week. It is so odd to be leaving this place just as we got settled. Not to mention that I will be sleeping in a dorm with a roommate other than my husband (still strange).


Kent has been promising pictures. I finally uploaded them......



Jasmine had a rough trip from DC to Texas. However, she appears to have settled in very nicely. She loves all the sun spots in the house. Her favorite is in this basket in the kitchen. We are not sure she will notice that we are gone for 3 weeks.

















Our back deck with some flowers that Kent has worked hard to keep alive.
I am certainly not responsible for the gardening in this house as I often kill all plants. Also the view from the deck is very different than our view in VA. It is so nice to see trees.
















Our neighbors have a pit bull that is continually outside & barking.
















Kent's new hair cut. He paid $6.20 on base for the hair cut.
The prices on base are very nice. Pretty short for Kent but I am sure he will appreciate it in the hot Alabama sun.






















PS No scorpions or snakes yet!!!!

Out of the Loop

We have been really out of the loop for the last week or so. Between buying uniforms, having them altered and personalized for the USAF, we have been so busy. Also, Meghan's computer (as we all know) is in the shop and mine somehow caught a nasty virus. So this is the first time we've been online in over a week! We even went to the public library in order to at least get some things taken care of. The whole thing gave us a deeper appreciation for technology.

More pictures of the house are on the way. It'll be my 4th of July project!

Otherwise, we are just preparing to go to AL, which is next Tuesday. We might even be able to update the blog from there. We'll let you know if we survive the drill sgts. We've started running in the mornings just to try to get in shape. We both completed our required 1.5 miles yesterday morning. We were very excited to find out that we could actually do it - due to our extrememly sessile lifestyle since moving. At 9am it was about 80 degrees - a relatively cooler time of the day to run...