We love our FNGs!

I guess I’ll have to explain that… In English, FNGs stands for “F*ing New Guys”.

Our FNGs are from Virginia, and they are coming to replace us so we can go home.

Finally! Of course, we still have to train them, swap our equipment, ship our stuff out of the country, fill out mountains of paperwork, check out through our mobilization station, wait for flights, etc. So it’ll take at least a month before we can look at life through the warming glow a glass of beer again.

I did a few good things recently:

I have been in country for over eleven months. Only one to go!

And finally, I won my “100 kilometer Club 2007” T-shirt this morning! That is a T-shirt that the run organizers give to those people who log in for 100 kilometers’ worth of organized races in the year 2007. It may sound easy, but between days where I miss a race because of work, days where I forget to sign up, and days where the run is canceled because of dust storms or because the mandatory ambulance is on a mission, it’s pretty hard to get to the 100 kilometer mark. I am the only one in the battalion who made the mark. My times are a little worse than they were last winter (5 kilometers in 18 minutes and 22 seconds this morning), but I am actually surprised not to have lost more weight and speed than I did over the summer.

I did an Army physical fitness test while wearing my body armor and Kevlar helmet, and carrying my rifle (except for the sit-ups, which I couldn’t do with a rifle because my fingers have to be inter-locked). The APFT consists of three events: push-ups for 2 minutes, sit-ups for 2 minutes, and 2-mile run.

I completed:

- 49 push-ups, versus 96 on my last APFT.
- 56 sit-ups, versus 80 last time.
- 2 miles in 14:14 minutes, versus 11:14 on the last APFT.

My total score was 232/300, versus 298/300 last time, with the Army minimum being 180/300, and a “perfect” score being 300/300. A perfect score corresponds roughly to being in the top 10% of the US Army.

So I still passed the test, but the extra weight really did take a serious toll.

As for birds, I have been seeing all sorts of interesting things but it was mostly on two dawn patrols, where I still hadn’t grabbed my camera and binoculars from the trunk of the Humvee. The best bird by far was a white stork (Ciconia ciconia), but I also enjoyed a few harriers sp., buzzards sp., black kites, a pratincole, and an eagle Aquila sp. I also found a few dead birds – the best one by far being a little bittern (Ixobrychus minutus). It is kind of cool getting to hold a tiny little heron.

Sometimes it seems that life has been really interesting for everyone except for me. Julien went touristing around Spain, and explored a cool giant cave in Southern France, Laurent saw the great bustard in Estremadura, and my dad went to the Pyrenees!

It appears that I haven’t been giving explicit enough information about my plans through this blog. As it stands, here they are:

- Spend a few days in Sitka in the fall. Go kayaking weather permitting (just thinking about it I get all excited).
- Go to Chile until sometime in January.
- Move to Juneau in early January.

- Re-start classes, again, for the spring semester.
- Depending on what fuzzy math method the counselors elect, I am about fifteen to twenty-two semester hours away from a BLA with emphasis in English and psychology.
- That translates into two more years of study for a four-year degree that is the equivalent of a really good high-school degree.
- As far as living arrangement, I’ll most likely be renting a room from Jad.

And by the way, who is Jad? Here’s a picture of him from the last time we shared accomodations:



Of course, we had a bit more room there than we will in his condo in Juneau... Jad’s a floatplane pilot, an infantryman, a former sailor in the Navy, a dad (as of this summer), and a good friend. He was my team leader on the Southern Iraq mission last spring. We both like to drink coffee and talk about random things, exchange books, etc. So this should be a stress-free arrangement. Of course, the best landlady in the world is still Noelle, but there just aren’t enough classes offered in Sitka for me to complete my degree there.