23 Days and a Wake Up

In three and a half weeks, or roughly 23 days, Melissa and Ella will arrive here in the "land of the morning calm" to reunite our family for five weeks. This will be a great as I am seeing a few mysterious trends beginning to happen in my lovely apartment in the Jung Woon Villas.
1. I keep coming home expecting a dinner to be ready, or one the stove, or planned at the very least. The Korean stove must not understand my English instructions.
2. Every time I open my closet there are less and less clean clothes in it. That was never a problem in my house on Oklahoma. On a related note there always seems to be an abundance of clothes in my laundry basket.
3. There is an ominous lack of cartoons playing in my place at any give time. Gone are the days of "Mickey Mouse Clubhouse", "Handy Manny", and "Yo Gabba Gabba" (which I was beginning to understand and enjoy).

Truth be told, while I would love a "man cave" back in the states that would allow me to get away for a period of time, I would not trade living every day with my family for anything. I love my job and even though it takes me away I love that it makes me appreciate everything I have...including my beautiful girls.

So we finished our big exercise "Ulchi Freedom Guardian"- cool name huh? It is a mostly a computer simulated war (the largest computer simulated war game in the world) with our old nemesis North Korea. We won, because we are awesome. But there was no drinking, and conversely, no partying for the duration of the exercise (almost a month long). It ended Friday and we decided to celebrate by going to Seoul. I told Melissa that we are going to do some sight seeing and that WAS the plan, originally. But you know how three guys sometime will find a bar (which, if you have never been to that particular bar, could be considered sightseeing) and never leave. Later in the night we went to a nightclub. It sounded like a good plan at the time even though we are not the (ump ump ump) night club type. Thing is they wouldn't let us in. This wasn't the first time I have experienced that, three dudes rolling up to a club sans hot chicks will usually get turned down in the states too. But the bouncers (Korean bouncers are smaller than me) pretty much said we were not getting in because we are round eyes, westerners, Americans. That kind of grinds my gears. Korea is a nice enough country, so I wouldn't talk bad about it. But it is not necessarily the most sought after overseas assignment for an Army Officer. Further more, after spending almost a month working my ass off, not drinking, war gaming how Americans would defend their (the Korean's) country it was just not a real high five moment for ROK-US relations. Seriously though, we went to and got into another club (Club Volume shout out) and I realized how much I truly hate nightclubs. Our twelve hour booze bender ended with three dudes sharing a California king, but like I said, three dudes is a bed is a drunk Saturday night, four dudes in a bed is gay.

Blogger Melissa > Blogger Tom

I know that I have been slacking...I'm in a very weird place where the newness of Korea is wearing off and I am just trying to knock out the days and weeks to get to the end of this tour. Not that I am complaining about the opportunity. I always welcome a chance to work in another part of the world. Its just that I am not on vacation here, and coming home to an empty apartment day after day gets more than a little old. There is good and bad in everything here. I get to drive a '94 Hyundai Sonata...which, is rad, except that the seat belt likes to unbuckle itself as I drive.

Melissa and Ella are coming to visit...we will be a whole family again for a pretty extended period of time (five weeks). Since it will be at the half way point of the tour it will break it up nicely. I am pumped to have my girls with me. I'm sure Mel will want to see the whole country.

That is all for now...big exercise starting this week... it will last through the end of the month...busy times.

Taking aim at some (notional) commies.

Happy August

256 days remaining in this country. It seems so long, but I am already 25% through my tour in Korea. In two weeks it will four months in country, or a solid 33%. I miss my wife, I miss my kid, I miss my life. Though not facing the dander of an operational deployment the family hardship is just the same.

A couple of weeks ago I pulled off the greatest sneak attack of my life. Melissa was in New York and I jumped aboard a big blue Korean Airlines 777 direct to JFK. The surprise was priceless as many of you have probably seen from the video. For those who haven't check it out:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FFDCJqu5ZUE

Getting ready for one of the world's largest military exercises. It will be taking up most of the month of August.

Until I blog again...TVP