NEWS FROM KELLY...

Later this week I'll probably go to FOBs Mehtar Lam and Kalagush. Mehtar Lam is supposedly the site of the tomb of Lamech, the father of Noah. I probably won't be doing much sightseeing though. Kalagush is up more in the mountains and is supposed to be really pretty, so I'm looking forward to it.

I saw some video from msnbc the other day that I thought was interesting. It was a series on the Korengal Valley , which is about 30 miles from here. I work at the Headquarters for the unit that is there and it is probably the most violent place in Afghanistan. To see the video, go to http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/21134540/vp/27304836 and then click on the "U.S. news" category and then "Military". It's the "On patrol in the Valley of Death" and "Seeing the enemy in Afghanistan". Fortunately, despite being physically close to the Korengal, the security situation here is a world away, so don't be scared for me.



NEWS FROM CASSI...

I wanted to show off my flowers that Kelly got me for my birthday. They are my favorite kind, lily, and favorite color, purple. He had them delivered to Columbia Elementary where I was acting as the kitchen manager for a week.

Things are going well. Kelly is a quarter of the way finished! We got to see each other on webcam twice now, which was very awesome! The guys in the video don't have many opprotunites to do that. We are blessed that Kelly is out of danger.

Life in Jalalabad Afghanistan and on the Homefront

I am posting for Kelly because he is having trouble getting on this website. This first picture is from his brother Chris. Most of the Wood family cars and Mom Hakes have a blue star flag on it, representing a family member serving in war. We have one on our car. If any Hakes sibling wants one, I know where to get them.

Below are some pictures Kelly sent from Jalalabad. The captions are also from Kelly. We get to email regularly and talk on the phone about every other day, which is better then we previously thought. He is in a public room everytime we talk, and he is using shared phones. The signal on the phone is great, however. He can get pretty much anything he needs, except for family. It is good to know he is taken care of.

This is the best picture I could take of my room. It's pretty much just my bed and a few feet of empty space to the side. Someone before me built those wooden shelves, so that's nice. The room also has an air conditioner, so that's very nice.

This is a bad picture, but I was trying to be discrete. This is the cafeteria aka D-FAC aka chow hall. Here it's all decorated for the air force's birthday. Generally they have a main line with turkey or pork chops or whatever, a grill with hamburgers and hot dogs, a taco or potato bar, salad bar, a bunch of fruit. Also, there are fridges with cans of soda and gatorade and lunch and dinner have a dude who scoops baskin robbins ice cream. It's run by KBR (aka Halliburton) and generally very good with good quality food. It's a thousand times better than the Academy cafeteria and much better than Ft Dix. I'm sure the Army is paying them a fortune, but it's free to us.

This is the place where I sleep. This one is on the end, so you can't see that there are dozens of these lined up real close together. There are 8 of us in here, but it's divided in half, so my part has me and 3 civilian contractors. I'm kinda lucky because my half has 6' high plywood walls in them giving us our own kind of private room. In most of the huts, people have to hang blankets from the ceiling to form makeshift walls. And like most of the base, there is a random pile of rubble.

Count down of 179 days begins!

We also got to see Charlie, Kelly's brother! He came to NYC on business and took us out to a fancy dinner and showed us around the city. You can see some of the food we ordered. Kelly got a huge Kobe burger and Charlie and I got filet mignon.

Amid other things, we went to the David Letterman show! It was really awesome to witness Dave and the crew behind-the-scenes. Robin Williams was hilarious. Our seats weren't great, but the entertainment was. We also saw Little Mermaid on Broadway and visited Kelly's family in Philly. I was mad at myself for about an hour because I didn't take pictures of that. We Mostly we did nothing, and it was great.

With Kelly's new haircut, he is ready for Afghanistan. This was right before we said good-bye. It was hard.

He will update us all when he arrives in Jalalabad, Afghanistan. This is his itinerary: Leave Tues, the 9th at 12 noon from Fort Dix, NJ on a bus to Norfolk, VA. Arrive that evening and take a charterd airliner at 3am to Kyrgyzstan. Three stops along the way include Canada, Iceland, and Hungary. He will have to stay on the plane. He thinks he may arrive in the middle east (Kyrgyzstan) on September 11th. Ironic, we know. Then he will travel into Bagram air field in Afghanistan on an Air Force plane. Then he will make his way over to Jalalabad, which is the northeast portion of Afghanistan. We will try to post a map. Good luck Lieutenant Wood!

I know her eyes look weird, but I often find greycoat sitting in my bathroom cupboard. Its kinda cute.
This is me babysitting my cute nephew Harmon. He fell asleep in my lap while I talked to Kelly. He is a good baby.
Janelle and I went to Andele's for dinner together while Karl is out of town, and Kelly too I guess. I brought my camera to take a picture but I forgot. So this is a picture of the food we ate, which is what Kelly and Janelle always get, and it is the food that was also served at our reception. Thank you mom.

More Fort Dix

So, I'm three weeks into Combat Skills Training now. The first two weeks were relatively great. Easy workdays, days off, etc. The last week has been miserable though. After giving me four days off, the army suddenly realized it was in a hurry and we did 16 hour days. The past three days were spent at Camp Victory, a simulated Forward Operating Base (FOB) in the Jersey woods. It looked a lot like a base with the standard guard towers and barb wire, tent cities, and hummers galore. The conditions themselves were actually pretty nice. Our tent (seen below) had room for 16 and there were only 5 of us, the food was better than it is on Fort Dix, there was a tent withg gym equipment and tv, and there plenty of hot showers. If it wasn't like an oven in our tent, it would have been really pleasant.

The training itself though, was miserable. It consisted of us parroting back the sounds some guy was making for hours on endand calling it "learning Dari" (Dari isn't even the language for the part of Afghanistan most of us are going to). We had many redundant briefings on how to conduct a checkpoint, but they were so poorly taught, and we were so uncomfortable in the heat with all our body armor and gear on, that I still have no idea how to do a checkpoint--not that I or any of us need to. It's a shame, because the soldiers are great dudes, but the army has eliminated any sense of thinking outside the box, or independent thought from them. That's enough complaining about the army for now though.

We did get in a lot of shooting on the M-16 and M-9 though. We did shooting pop-up targets at different ranges, night firing with tracers, and close-quarters combat. And then there was the nightly hand-to-hand combatives class. It was a lot of fun, and a good refresher of the PE classes we had to do at the Academy. It culminated in me fighting my friend 2Lt Erik Chan in front of the group. We started out very aggressive, but neither one of us could choke out the other person, so we just wore each other out.

An exhausted and smelly 1Lt Kelly Wood

Our tent at the FOB

Inside the tent

This is Kelly with all of his gear. He is wearing his usual ABU, boots, helmet, bullet-proof vest, two M-16s, M-9, backpack, and holster. I know that is not all, right Kelly? He then did " land navigation training" in the heat of NJ. Long hot day.

My Quarters