The journy to Afghanistan

So now that I have slow Internet that I currently pay 80 dollars a month for (and that's the cheapest one) I can finally report to you how i am doing and how I finally got to Camp Blackhorse. for starters we left from Fort Hood Texas and as they say it is the only place that will make you WanT to deploy to Afghanistan. Well i can put that myth to the test: TRUE. it was fun while it lasted but we had enough of that place! For starters chicken every day gets pretty annoying after 50+ days there. And the 100 man bays didn't help either, and i rather not talk about the bathroom faculties. But i digress; yes we left in the afternoon and flew to Maine where i got to make some phone calls to my family and wonderful girlfriend. After a quick hr refueling stop there it was off to Germany!. About an 8 hr flight and my time zones later we landed in Leipzig! Could i tell you where it was in Germany? No but i was there and it was cool! i think it was in the morning that we landed if I'm not mistaken. From there about an hour later we lifted off again this time to Kyrgyzstan. Honestly can you be real for a second? Have you ever heard of Kyrgyzstan? Because i never have before but hey the army pays for my travels so I’ll go where they need me to. We landed at about midnight at Manas air transit center i believe it was called and it was really nice to know we were going to spend 2 nights there and get some actual sleep until i stepped off the plane. The first thing that hit me was the smell of something burning in the air, like a constant fire burning wood and trash. I was partly right, about the trash part. Not the wood. Apparently a lot of countries in the Middle East just burn there trash and it’s pretty disgusting. anyway from that point we stayed in about 50 man tents for that night and then another, not much going on just getting our body armor checked out and waiting for our flights. But the whole waking up at 3 am thing was not fun because it was really like 2 in the afternoon back in the states. From there we loaded up the entire company on a C-17 which is an air force plane. Anybody from western mass might know, there a bit smaller than the planes at westover that fly over your house all the time. It was a two hour flight a KIA, Kabul International Airport. Once we got there reality still hadn't really set in yet until we had to convoy our 10 people to Blackhorse. Getting in a convoy for the first time in a war zone is pretty nerve racking even if they said "this area is safe" let’s be honest war is not safe no matter what. As we drove i sat as close to up front as i could to get a look around. It was not a good site. Exactly what a third world country you would imagine looking like looks like. Rundown buildings, people everywhere on the streets, just pretty bad so we have it really well in the states. After a few miles we safely got to Blackhorse and it is a camp with in a camp, of many camps. We run the entire base but surrounded by us is units from all different countries, like Bulgaria, the turks, Spain, Canadians, and much more. That is our main mission at blackhorse, to run the base, think a small town; we are the mayors of a small town and have all types of responsibilities. But again i digress, it is time to stop writing and take a break for a bit i will try to put some pictures up with this post.....the pictures with this post were taken on the way to blackhorse. none were taken in country.  Until next time,
PFC Latino