January Blues

Sooo... this is becoming a theme of me being really bad at keeping this current... apology accepted...?
Its been a couple of months and I guess there's quite enough to talk about. Lets see..
I took another trip back to the states for a week of leave and (another) TDY in San Antonio. During my week of leave I visited my folks in South Carolina for a quick Thanksgiving/Christmas/New years holiday sweep, on my time of course. Took some time to relax, and explore Columbia and Shaw, where I will be living for the next 3 years! It seems like a fairly nice area. The base is about 30 mins from the city, which is a bit of a drive, but remembering some of my commutes in Phoenix, during traffic, it really doesn't sound too bad. And, I do like my morning music and coffee time. No Starbucks on base though, that is a bummer...
After SC, I flew up to Milwaukee to visit my favorite pregnant friend, Leslie! She was about 8 months pregnant and looking incredible. As an added bonus I also got to hang out with Jenn, who came back home to the states (from India)for a while, and Ivette, who came up to the city post call to go to the baby shower. It was great seeing each other, but again, far too short.
Then, I flew back down to San Antonio, to Brooks, for my TDY course about Aircraft Mishap Investigations, something that I will most likely end up getting assigned to at some point during this part of my career. It was a pretty interesting course, and I also got to hang out with Ki, whom I met in Korea, some friends I had met at the August AMP course, and a couple friends from residency in Ohio.
And then, back to Korea. Unlike most people, dreading the way home, I was actually really itching to get back. Webcam and phone are great, and definitely very greatful for the technology, but seeing Craig at the Inchon Airport and finally embracing him, wow, there is absoltely nothing that can replace that.
Then, back to work. We had a couple short weeks b/c of Christmas and New Years. We had a combined 80th and 35th squadron dinner for Christmas, which was pretty great. I made Craig endure some of the Norwegian Christmas traditions I grew up with, and he didn't even complain too much. :) New Years weekend we actually got quite a snow storm. We got over a foot of snow, and the roads were so bad that we were restricted to base. We ended up suiting up in snow gear and truding our way to the Officer's Club to hang out on NYE, snowball flights and snow-wrestling on the way there and back. Which is probably how I lost my cell phone and camera.... so no pictures from that weekend. :(

Then came some news: I finally heard officially that my tour here had been extended from leaving here in July, to now not leaving until September... which was very much a bummer.

We just got finished with another Exercise, another week of wearing lots of heacy gear, putting on gas mask fro Alarm blues and laying around for an hour with it on until we were "green" again, and ... yeah, No so much fun.

And now, its still kinda cold, the snow has melted so now its just Brown and wet, and rainy, and dreary. I am looking forward to some warmer, happier weather, and all the fun outdoor activities that go with it. Very easy to get cabin fever when stuck on base.

First Flights!

Me in my flight suit
So, I should have written this last week, after my first ride in an F-16, but I was just excited at the time. AWESOME! You know, I was so worried about this first ride, from horror stories from other people: Getting sick all over the cockpit, GLOC, pushing buttons you shouldn't push.... so, I was pretty much freaking myself out to the point of psychosis. I think I was even making other people nervous. Thank god my squadron is full of cool guys, and gals, who have sympathy for me and actually took the time to make me feel more comfortable with the whole situation. Even though i was still nervous as hell, I took to the backseat of my first F-16D on Tuesday, Oct 16th. Rip was my pilot, and showed me around his "office" with special emphasis on what not to push or pull, sts. We taxied onto the runway, snaked the tower, and we were up and off. It was a beautiful day (rare!), very few clouds, very sunny. We did a few cool aerobatics and Gx's before heading back down to 500 ft off the ground, to start our low level ride at 500 kn, zooming over the countryside (reminds me of Trogdor, the burninator) and ridge crossing across the mountains. Pretty frickin cool. After about 1.5 hrs, we landed, headed back for refueling (this was a pit-and-go, 2 sorties for the price of one!) I had a little trouble with my own "de-fueling" mechanism, but thats a whole other story.... anyhoo, round 2 was just as great. We landed, taxied in, I got all unhooked on my own, and then back to the squadron. I think when i got off the car i was running about mach 1 to get to the nearest bathroom, bladder fullness hurts! But I survived, didn't get even close to sick, and I had so much fun! Which is the best part. I was mostly worried that I wouldn't like flying, because that would make this year very long and painful. No problem there though!

My second flight was yesterday, wed the 24th. More of a tactical mission which means I really had no idea what the hell was going on. Its pretty frustrating being so naive about the whole situation. Makes me feel very insecure and inadequate really, kinda a cut into my self-esteem. Its kinda like being plopped into the middle of rural china and expecting to find your way around, not knowing anything about the language, culture, lay of the land, just that they like rice. And same thing if you think of injecting a pilot into the middle of a complex surgery, having him/her be 1st assist, asking his to clamp the inferior mesenteric artery. He wold be like "clamp the what? The "heun-yaker or the howyadoin?" Most of the guys are again actually really good about answering my dumb questions. Hopefully it will get a little less muddy with time!

Not much else is new thus far. I'm trying to get some word on if my TDY for a course in December is going to work out. That will be 2 weeks in Texas, and then 1 week before that in South Carolina, and maybe a jaunt over to Milwaukee for a baby shower if leave is approved. :) Time is going fast!



Dillard (35th, the Pantons's flight doc, my collegue, and friend, and crisis counselor!)


Some scenery around our base, Kunsan, not much, but its actually a nice day!


I wish I could say these were our dorm, but they aren't.... the people who will move into these have really, really, really bad dorms now. Ours are just bad.



That is the gym in the backround, actually its pretty nice, has a climbing well... i will get some pics.

Sweeps and Sweats

Yeah, I always wanna be a gangsta...
Still working on the ghetto-factor, not quite there yet.
Anyways, so Oct has been good so far. That pic was from my first night outa at Zizzicks, a bar in Gunsan City, of course very Americanized, and very Juvat friendly. My squadron has lots of people who love to dance, so I'm feeling right at home here. :)
We had a nice 4 day weekend d/t Columbus day, off on Monday, and what the heck, why not take Tuesday off as well? Gotta love govenment jobs... So, Monday night was my first sweeps night, or "green bean" sweeps. Started off as a nice BBQ outside of the dorms, and then we loaded the bus at 19:30 to A-town (America town, about 3 miles outside the gates of the base, pretty much just a lot of stores, bars, clubs and restaurants, all run by Koreans, and infestated my us americaners. the sweeps consiste of various activities, including drinking, at usually about 3 clubs. They do some crowd surfing exercises, some table surfing acrobatics for warm up. Then usually is the naming ceremony, where the pilots get their call sign, lots of creative stories involved. (I'll get mine probably at the next sweeps). There are various contests (yes... involving drinking for the most part, but I was saved by the clause "drink it or wear it.") We were actually done fairly early, all on the bus back by 11:15ish, and then back to the dorms for traditional breakfast.
Wednesday at work, was a mini-exercise, kinda an exercise to get ready for the week long "lets pretend we're at war" exercises they love to do here. Our involved a simulated mass casualty exercise, of which I got to be quite involved in. I'm happy to say that because of my performance, I was able to highlight the number weakness we, esp as new staff members, had, and that we have some work to do. :)
This Saturday was "Pantoberfest" for some and "Rocktoberfest" for some others. The 35th fighter squadron, the Pantons, throw Pantoberfest ever year, complete with german beer and music, brats, saurkraut, leiderhosen, and a huge fire. The Rockertoberfest was put on by the base, and had a couple local bands play, and then Rock Kills Kid from stateside played the headliner show. They even made their way back to Delta (the panton's hooch, where Pantoberfest is held) for some extra songs. )
To round out a good couple weeks, today, Sunday, we decided to go explore the countryside a bit, and go on down to one of the National Parks for a hike. A 45 min drive turned into... maybe a 3.5 hours drive, maybe there was some faulty navigation there, or maybe we shouldn't get direction from Koreasn when we can't speak Korean.... but we finally got to the start of our hike. It was quite a jaunt up LOTS of nature stairs, rocks, etc, and finally, finally, to the waterfall, that really was a lot bigger in the pictures, but it was worth the hike anyways. And now as i sit here waiting for my motrin to kick in for my feet will stop throbbing, I am awaiting passing out in my bed, and waking up to a whole new week.


Again, trying the ghetto-look


Me and Gracie, in Leiderhosen



Joanne and her signs of the devil


Rock Kills Kid


Finally at the start of the trail, one of many temples




Tea at the temple

October in Korea

So, its been exactly a month since my last blog. man, I really suck at keeping this up to date. Anyways, so the rest of my time in San Antonio was great. I had a birthday, which is always a good time. I went out with some friends for sushi and sake-bombers, and then to a couple places downtown. We ended up at this martini bar, and was doing pretty good until my friend Stacey showed up, which prompted the crazy shot buying binge. It was a great time, dancing, even though it wasn't really a dancing kind of establishment, but didn't matter to us!
Our last week there we did the field training for SERE (Survival, evasion, resistance, and escape.) We spent a week in the woods, and it wasn't exactly your typical camping trip. (No s'mores by the campfire, that would have been awesome though). We learned general field survival stuff, life building fires, find and building shelters, then navigation skills, evasion skills. And... I think thats all I can really say about it... the rest is classified... (so fun to say.)
So, now I'm back in the swing of things at Kunsan. They put me right to work in the clinic, and I feel like I never leave that place now. I'm trying to get all my training and paper trail taken care of so I can actually fly in the F-16 soon!
Last weekend was my first trip up to Osan. I went with Joanne, one of the other new flight docs here. She actually decided to try out for the womens basketball team for the base, so they have a couple scrimmages up there this weekend anyways. I think she is the sole officer on the team, at least she can get away with saying she's THE Capt on the team. :) Osan was good, much bigger than our little Kunsan, and, it has a Starbucks on base, what else could you ask for? Lots of families there, its just ridiculous they still consider it a remote location. We strolled around the shopping district during the day, watched Joanne's game, and then went out to dinner and a couple bars/"clubs" there at night. Nothing too crazy, although I can definitely see how things can get wild up there pretty quick. I unfortunately had caught a cold from one of the 10 thousand pts who came in with cold the last weekend, so I wasn't up for a whole lot anyways.
And, thats about it so far! More events coming up this month to write about inlcuding "Pantoberfest", my first Sweeps, and more Kunsan adventures!
No pics this time, I need to take some more!

I'm a Texas Girl Now

New Haircut!!

So... its been about a month since my last post? Already I am slacking. Its been 4 weeks now that I have been living out of my lovely room at the La Quinta hotel outside of Brooks City base. Our last official day of our AMP course was last Friday, and now we have 2 more weeks of SERE training (survival/evasion stuff). The course was pretty good, mostly classroom and workshop stuff the first week, then the 2nd week was the physiology week. Monday we did the altitude chamber, all the way to 35K feet which doesn't feel to good even with a tight fitting aviators mask and pressure breathing, and then found out my hypoxia symptoms mimmick me on my 4th or 5th drink of the night. The rest of the week we were doing parachute landing exercise, spacial disorientation in a SIM, and oh yes, the mighty centrifuge. I did everything i could the night before and morning of to get my BP up (very salty meal, pseudophed, lots of caffeine), but couldn't quite fight the forces on my first try. Since I am stationed at a fighter base, I had to do the toughest profile, including up of 9 G's for 15 secs, and this series at the end of the profile going from 9-4-3-8-3-7-3-9. I held the 9 G's for about 10 secs and then started freaking out because my vision was... well everything was black. I didn't G-LOC (pass out) but I thought i was going to. After I got out of that crazy thing I had the worst back pain ever. The oc had to examine me, because I guess there have been some cases where guys have even fractured a vertebrae from this. I was okay, just hurting. Lots of "g-measles" too (petechiae in dependent areas from all the stress). Since I still had to qualify before I can fly in the jet, they gave me another shot the next week and this time I passed. Still lost some vision, but the thought of having to do this again was enough to motivate me to squeeze and strain like I never had before.
The last 2 weeks were more lectures and workshops, and the last week we finally got to go up in the air. We all got a sortie on one of the trainers (we flew at Randolf and Laughlin, training bases) so the choices were T-1, T-6, T-38, T-43. (the fast jets are the T-38 (trainer for the F-15 and 16's) and the T-6. I got the T-6, which was pretty damn cool. The pilot let me fly a little, did some loops, rolls and pulled some G's.
On the social side, I've met some great people out here. We've hit up some of the hot spots on the river walk and lots of good places to eat. I'm trying to get my share of Mexican food when I'm down here since the selection in Korea is quite limited. I somehow managed to win a Happy Hour party for me and 100 of my closest friends (do i have 100 friends?) at this dueling piano bar called Howl at the Moon, which is awesome. I decided to invite the whole class out this Friday since some people who have already done SERE graduated, and it was a great opportunity to celebrate. About 20-30 people ended up coming out, and we all had such a great time.
We have this whole labor day weekend off, so just spending most of it relaxing and catching up on other things.
Like I said about SERE starts Tuesday, the first week will be some classroom and practical stuff, and then the next Monday we are drug out to the woods somewhere, dropped off, and then picked back up on Friday. I hear they give us a potato and a power bar... for the week... so it should be interesting!
This is all for now, enjoy the pics!

Our night out at Howl at the Moon, me and Tommy B taking control of the floor!





Birthday Dinner for Mike

2nd week, then home again, almost

So, after a week of the "exercise" I was VERY happy to walk around without 40 extra pounds on me, and speaking of extra pounds, I decided I should also start hitting the gym. I heard that coming to Korea was like the freshman 15 all over again. I came here with all these aspirations, you know, like really getting in shape, maybe taking a martial arts class, maybe even teaching a yoga or pilates class, learning a couple of languages, and then find out that pretty much, people just drink here. Its ridiculous. I swear if they did a per capita survey it may be the highest alcohol consumption/possession in the country! The weekends after the exercise are particularily crazy, because during the exercise the base is under "general order 1" which means no drinking, no leaving the base, and its the discression of the commanders when this is pulled, could even be for the rest of the weekend. The exercise ended at 3PM on Friday, and the drinking part was pulled at 6 PM, and then we could leave the base on Saturday at noon. (Probably smarter, less drinking and driving that first night at least.) And, of course this is the cause for a busier Urgent Care call for the weekend, and very busy sick call on Monday. On Friday night, went to a BBQ first, and then a couple of "hooch's" (the base's version of a bar, more like a hangout for all the different squadrons) which were a good time. Explored Gunsan city a little on Saturday, and then Saturday night, my squadron has a going away thing, kind of a ceremony, for a bunch of people, including one D.O. (director of ops) and my sponsor, Ki. Lots of traditions, customs, rules, that I had to quickly pick up, otherwise, that meant getting yelled at (in a funny way) or more drinking from the Grog bowl. Lots of speeches, and the whole thing lasted until almost 2AM! I ended up leaving then because i was exhausted, but that was leaving early for everyone else. The next week, they put me to work in clinic all day for primary care, which was interesting since i had no computer access and i think i had 3 techs working for me because of that. The rest of the week i was trying to get more inprocessing done, and actually get orders and plane tickets to come to San Antonio for the AMP course. We finally got the tickets on Thursday, and left teh base Friday morning on the 3:30 am bus to the airport. Our flight was out of Seoul at 2PM, had a layover in San Francisco, and finally into San Antonio around 5PM, to our hotel at 7PM. We caught up with Joanne, who will be our 3rd flight surgeon in Kunsan. We went out for margaritas and mexican food, and then I was more excited that you could imagine to lay down in my huge kind size hotel bed (that smelled only slightly like mold and cigarettes) and pass out until noon today. I'm still pretty tired from all the travel but doing fine now with a full night of rest. And now I finally have some pictures of my own to show!


A group of us at a traditional Korean Restaurant, sitting on the heated floor.

Ki, my sponsor, and Mongol, one of the pilots from the Juvats squadron

A bunch of us in front of "Pumpkin Duck" the Korean Restaurant in the picture above

A picture from a dance performance on base last week, featuring traditional Korean dance, ballet and contemporary.

First week

Finally I am here in Korea! I left Dayton at 10AM on the 16th, and arrived at my base, Kunsan, at about 10:30 PM.. on the 17th. Long day of traveling and lost almost a day as well. Wed-Fri was kind of a blur, recovering from jet lag and a lot of trekking around base, inprocessing at the hospital and general base inprocessing. Its strange to be so far away from home, but to go to the Commissary and buy regular American food, magazines, have normal voltage american plugs. The weather is kinda like the midwest in the summer, except ever MORE humid, which seems impossible, but really, its frickin humid here. Most days are pretty hazy, overcast, and rainy since its monsoon season now. Over the weekend it was pretty nice. Saturday, a few of use decided to check out the Buryeong Mud Festival (http://www.worknplay.co.kr/buryeongsites/index.html), about an hours drive north of here. It was pretty fun, tons of people, very muddy. :)
On the way back, unfortunately, we got into a pretty bad accident. There were 4 of us in the car, driving around 60-65mph on the freeway, and one of the front tires blows, steering wheel now useless, lost control of the car. We swerved into the left side of the median, bounced of, spun around and hit the drivers side along the concrete barrier on the right side of the highway, spun around again, almost rolled the car, and then when we thought it was over, a big truck hit us. The back side door where i was sitting flung open and i guess i almost fell out, but the other dude grabbed my leg. Amazingly, all of us were alive with on some cuts, bruises. One guy ended up with a consussion, all of us had a little whiplash, and thank god that was it. Car is totalled, and I'm not too excited about driving in Korea anymore... I think bikes are just fine.
So, thats the crappy part I guess. This week is kinda a lost cause as far as getting stuff done. This base loves its "exercises" so we get to do this several times a year. The whole base shuts down, and we pretend we are going to war with North Korea. We have to trudge around in 40 pounds of protective gear, helmets, and full chem suit, even a gas mask during some exercises. You start sweating before you even go outside. 2 more days of this! I will post some pics of me in my awesome chem gear once i get the right cord!
So, thats about it for this week so far. There will be a big BBQ party on Friday after the exercise, and then saturday night going away parties, and my first use of my "party suit" (<-- more to come on that later, pilots are nuts!)