Saturday, June 19, 2010

CRC Day Seven: Leaving on a jet plane

I write this from Leipzig, Germany. This is our second stop in the trip to Afghanistan, the first being Bangor, Maine. I should be in Kuwait in the next 6-7 hours. There's a TV in the corner playing German pop music videos. The gift shop as a large World Cup display with tons of German national team gear.

The last day of CRC went very smoothly. I was able to get my malaria medications without trouble, and the flight crew are very practiced at getting people onto their planes and on their way. We lifted off from Georgia around 1500 yesterday. The building we were waiting in, Freedom Hall, was one giant room around the size of a football field, with large easy chairs to relax in and projection screen TVs hanging from the ceiling. It was a great venue to watch World Cup soccer in, especially since the US was playing. For the record, that goal they disallowed was a terrible call, but it did seem like he made the call before the ball went into the net, so he didn't know he was disallowing a goal when he blew the whistle. That doesn't excuse the error in judgment, but at least he wasn't actively trying to screw us.

The airline we're flying is a charter company called World Airlines. So far on two flights, with a total of a little less than nine hours in the air, they've shown us three movies, and fed us meals twice. Pretty good service. The movies were Avatar (not bad, but seen it many times), GI Joe (absolutely terrible), and I have no idea what the third was. I saw it on the screen, but I was trying to sleep then, so I didn't really care.

Internet in Bangor was supposed to be free wi-fi, but ended up being broken. Here in Germany I had to pay 3.95 euros for an hour. That works out to something like 6 bucks, but I wanted to try and talk to my wife over Skype for a bit. Of course, it's 2 AM back home, and she's not getting the texts I'm sending her via Google Voice, so that may or may not happen. At least I get to update this thing.

After we land in Kuwait we've got a ~2 hour bus ride to the air base. We should be on the ground in late afternoon to early evening, so I'm hoping to get some good pictures. Will update from Kuwait when I have the opportunity.

Until next time. Out here.

1 comment:

  1. Glad to see you jumped the puddle without too much trouble. In the airports, go find a small cafe or restaurant, and have a bite. Normally, you can find a place with free wifi. Won't do you much good now I suppose though. Good luck on the bus ride.

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