Freaky Fridays

Fridays are called 'Freaky Fridays' around here because Friday is the equivalent to our Sunday, or religous day. They're 'freaky' because we kind of get the morning off. It's the only break in the routine throughout the week. So normally scheduled meetings and briefs are at different times on Friday, thus making it 'freaky'. I know, it's the little things here. My Friday routine usually consists of sleeping in an extra 2 hours (until maybe 8am), organizing some laundry and maybe getting over to the South side to look at the shops. Once a month or so, you have duty and come into work at normal time. Even though we don't have to be in until around noon, by about 9 or 10 am, everyone's in to work because there's not that much else to do. Here's a quick picture I took the other morning. You usually can't see all of the mountains because of the smog/dust/crud, but sometimes in the morning you get a nice view like this one.

The last couple pictures I'll post is of my lovely sleeping area. It's really just a bottom bunk, with some improvised shelves (which I'm quite proud of) to try to organize some of my gear. I have probably two sea bags full of gear that I won't use at all while I'm here. They're full of extreme cold weather gear, gas mask, chemical suit, etc.

Two other quick things...I ran into General Conway today. He's the Commandant of the Marine Corps, the Marine Corps' top four-star General. I think he was in the area to serve some Thanksgiving meals to some of the Marine units in the area. He was very nice, I shook his hand and had a picture taken.

Also, I think I said it was a low of -5 degrees F on one of my other posts. I meant -5 degrees Celsius (only like 26 degrees Fahrenheit). You'd think I'd be better at all of the conversions after 2+ years in Japan, but..I'm not.