Saturday, April 10, 2010

The first six months


I have been here for six months already. I has been a pretty quick six. Being here has been pretty cool so far. Living with a roommate again took some getting used to, but it's working out. The job is cool, if a bit slow at points. I have been on two trips for stories since January and I leave next weekend for a story at Fort Leonard Wood.


My first trip was to the Carolinas and Haiti, with a stop in Honduras. I went to Pope/Bragg in North Carolina and wrote about people sending supplies to Haiti for the earthquake relief. Then went to Joint Base Charleston, S.C., and while there the public affairs officer offered us a flight to Haiti for more interviews. We accepted and flew down on a C-5. On the way we stopped in Honduras to pick up a couple of fire trucks to take with us. We were there on the flight line a few hours and then took off for Haiti. We got to Haiti at like 1 a.m. and also stayed on the flight line there for about three hours. Since it was dark we didn't see much of the damage other than the big crack on the outside of the airport. The inside was apparently real bad. We took more than 100 refugees and orphans to Miami on the way back to South Carolina. We sat on the floor of the plane under a cargo strap for that part of the trip. That was fun.
A couple of weeks ago I went to Eglin Air Force Base, Fla., to write about the explosive ordnance disposal students. Most of the services are there for nine months learning about all of that stuff. The Navy stays longer than the rest because they have a few months of dive training.
It was cool seeing how they inspect bombs and watching them set up explosions.

In addition to work, my grandma has been down. It was a good weekend with her and her friend going around town and showing them things. I have also had another couple of people down for a weekend and it was fun too. And I plan to have more people coming down while I'm here.

That's all for now. I'll write more later.

Links to the two stories: