Its been a while since I've posted, I had to go back and read the last blog to see what the last thing we talked about. It is now Feb 2 and we are 10 days away from the 8 month mark. So lets go back to Christmas and work up to today. It wasn't as hard to be away from home on Christmas and I believe that was because I knew I'd be home by New Years Eve. They had a pancake breakfast for us and handed out T-shirts and goodie bags for Christmas. So all in all it wasn't too bad. I flew out of Afghanistan on the 29th and headed to Kuwait, that's where everyone who is going on or coming from R & R goes. We were there for about 36hrs but that's only because our flight got delayed twice. While in Kuwait you are separated based on where your final destination is pretty much everyone east of the Mississippi goes through Atlanta and then to their final destination. Everyone going west goes through Dallas and then to their final destination. We flew from Kuwait to Shannon, Ireland where we only stayed long enough for the plane to re-fuel and we were on our way to the United States. Once we land in Atlanta we were given a round of applause and had to go through customs, get our leave papers stamped and get our return date which would be Jan 16. Since our flight out of Kuwait was delayed we arrived later than originally planned and the flights that they had scheduled us were already gone. I ended up catching a an 8:30pm plane and arrived in Orlando around 10pm. Even though I had been traveling for almost 3 days I still wanted to make it to church. I arrived just in time to pray in the New Year. I really didn't have too much planned this trip just wanted to take it easy. A woman from my church named Mrs Johnson had a dinner party for me with some other members of our church, funny thing was I had no idea it was for me until I saw a cake with my photo on it. Other than that I went to a couple of Magic games and took some young men along with me. Just the feeling of being home from Afghanistan was enough for me, I didn't have to do a whole lot. I will be back in the summer for longer period of time so I'm sure I'll do more and see more people during that time. It was hard to come back here but its my job and its just what I had to do. I'm glad that I took my R&R in the middle of the deployment rather than the beginning or end. As I said earlier there are only four months left and we are already starting to turn certain vehicles and equipment in to be shipped back to Hawaii. Continue to keep all the deployed troops around the world in your prayers and I will talk to you guys in March
Time is Afghanistan: 7 months, 21 days
Time until Redeployment back to Hawaii: 114 Days
