Bagram

Now that Will has spent an entire summer at Bagram Air Base in Afghanistan, and described what he does everyday, I have finally begun to read about the history of that place. All of this is public knowledge, well as far as the web is public, so no top secret info is being spilled.

What is now Bagram Air Base was a Soviet Air Force base used during their war against Afghanistan from 1979-1989. During the Soviet invasion , the US supplied the Mujahideen with Soviet weapons from an Israeli stockpile. It was a covert war. We used Soviet weapons and Afghan fighters to avoid obvious claims by the USSR that we were directly engaging them. After the war, the Mujahideen took over and morphed into the Taliban. Many of those old AK47s and RPGs are still around and, at least as of the start of the US invasion of Afghanistan, were used by Al Qaeda and Taliban fighters.

During the US-led invasion of Afghanistan the base was secured by a team from the British special force Special Boat Service. By early December 2001 troops from the 10th Mountain Division shared the base with Special Operations Command officers from MacDill Air Force Base in Florida and soldiers of the 82nd Airborne Division from Fort Bragg.

By November 2003 B-huts, 18-by-36-foot structures made of plywood designed to hold eight troops,were replacing the standard shelter option for troops. There were several hundred, with plans to build close to 800 of them. The wooden structures have no concrete foundation thus not considered permanent housing, just an upgrade from the tents, the only option Bagram personnel and troops had seen previously. The small homes offer troops protection from environmental conditions including wind, snow, sand and cold. Will has been staying in a B-hut this summer.

By 2007 Bagram has become the size of a small town, with traffic jams and many commercial shops selling goods such as clothes to food. The base itself is situated high up in the mountains and sees temperatures drop to −20 °F (−29 °C). Due to the height and snow storms commercial aircraft have difficulty landing there, and older aircraft often rely on very experienced crews in order to be able to land there.

Early on the morning of 19 May 2010 (they day after Will deployed from Italy), Taliban suicide bombers attacked Bagram, with "nearly a dozen" insurgents and one U.S. contractor reported dead while nine service members were reported wounded. A base spokesman said a building was slightly damaged during attacks by rockets, small arms, and grenades; a Taliban spokesman claimed 20 armed men wearing suicide vests attacked the base with four detonating explosives at the entrances, but the military spokesman said they failed "to breach the perimeter" and were "unable to detonate their suicide vests."

Here are some pictures of the inside of Will's plywood home for the summer. Right now, he's actually packing up and getting ready to come home next week!

 The plywood wall - thumb tacks were in the first care package

 Closet and bunk beds. Some enlisted guys share a room, but the pilots get singles. The top bunk became his storage area.

This is the pitch black hallway with doors to "rooms" on either side. They have padlocks for privacy, but the rooms don't have ceilings. Most guys have hung sheets to provide a little overhead covering.

Thanks for keeping up with us all summer. Everyone put out your yellow ribbons for one more week. We're almost there! Thanks for all of the support.

We are winding down now and the marble jars have almost made a full transition from one side to the other. In less than three weeks, Will is coming home and I'm going to Italy to meet him. I. Can't. Wait.

Full Circle

September 11, 2001. It's hard to believe that was nine years ago. I clearly remember getting ready for my 9:30 chemistry class watching Good Morning America when the second plane hit. Luckily I didn't know anyone in the tower and it didn't directly affect my family at the time. I thought I had escaped the heartache that was caused to so many people that day. I never imagined that nine years later, the love of my life would be so far away from me because of what happened that day. It makes me realize that we never really know how things come full circle and can have an impact later in our lives.

No Empuje

My Spanish speaking skills are poor, that's just a fact. I learned most of my Spanish from the kitchen crew the summer that I worked at the Crab House and from the door at 7-Eleven. The kitchen guys were from Guatamala and taught me the basics of communication which were "caliente," "gusta / no gusta" and "no bueno." I missed out on understanding how essential knowing the Spanish language was while I was telling important business executives how to avoid compliance violations at Ernst & Young. It just didn't seem all that important at the time. But now that I am catching more hispanic babies than ever, I kind of wish I knew more. I can get by, that's for sure. And I do try to learn at least one Spanish word or phrase every time I take care of a hispanic patient, but at this rate, it will take me years to put together a cohesive and grammatically correct paragraph. We have these fancy translator phones to communicate with patients but they are more trouble to use when I just have a few simple questions or things to tell patients. So I use my head to beat the system.

Enter Google Translate. Since there are computers in each of our labor rooms, I just log into Google Translate, type what I want to say, and then read the translation to the patient. It works like a charm. This is why I will never learn Spanish. I just read what the screen says and as long as I phrase things so that I receive yes or no responses, I am golden.

Yesterday I exceeded even my own expectations when I found the "listen" button under the translation. This little gem provides a female voice translation with all the correct pronunciations. Follow me - the computer speaks Spanish to the patient. It's brilliant. I used it to explain to the patient what the plan of care would be, including a cervical exam followed by the doctors breaking her water. She nodded and stated "si" when I said "comprende?" (see, I still use my basic communication skills) I was so excited that I came out of the room and said to the nurses, "guess what I just learned?" I proceeded to tell them about the verbal translator when one of the eavesdropping doctors said "You still have to learn Spanish. You should really know the language." And then the little medical student pipped up and said "Yeah, and you have to be careful with google translate because sometimes it is incorrect."

My response: "Well, you're right. I could have just told her she was about to birth a unicorn. But she was okay with that."

And that is blog post number two about how I outsmart the ridiculous medical community of which I am a part.

The guys had professional pictures taken this week. Will finally shaved his mustache off so he is the only one without one these days. Just a few weeks left and then we'll be posting pictures from Europe!