Musings on deployment.

When I first thought I would be deployed to Kuwait, everyone who had been here before told me that it was no big deal; as far as deployments go, it is easy.  There is a pool, and a gym, and little taco bell huts....even a Starbucks hut.  I was a little nervous because, even though these people told me not to worry, it was the fear of the unknown that kept me completely stressed for three months before I left for deployment.

Then I arrived in Fort Jackson, SC, where they told me that my complacency would lead to my death.  They told me the second I felt safe, the enemy would prey on me and those complacent soldiers and sailors around me.  I clung to the Army training, making sure I methodically approached each situation as if an IED was one step away.  While I thought a lot of the Army training was a little redundant, I was almost confused why they were scaring me and making me petrified to come even to Kuwait. 

And when I first arrived, I did my IED checks every time I exited a vehicle.  I assessed each situation from the second I got off the plane to even walking to the gym on Camp Virginia.  Here it is, three weeks later, and I am already wearing my flip flops to church across the street.  How quickly we get comfortable in our new surroundings.

The whole point of this is that I was very scared before I deployed, and in reality, I am in the safest deployment area I could be in.  Those men who died yesterday were in the real danger, and while I know they were never complacent, they did give their lives for all Americans in this fight against terrorism.  I owe it to them to never become complacent but to be ever vigilant...not only here while forward deployed, but also in honoring my country and the ideals that they died for.  I pray for their souls and their families, who lost husbands, sons, fathers, and brothers.  I am proud to serve my country but even more proud to be deployed and to be of any help. 

Americans back home are concerned about the budget deal, and the politicians are having temper tantrums back and forth between parties, slinging mud at each and becoming engrossed in arguments to either make or break their respective campaigns.  I wish some of them would take a step back and not focus on the politics for one second, but instead focus on the individual soldier or sailor, willing to give their life for their home and the safety of their loved ones.  God bless every American service member, and the sacrifice of their families.  I am honored to say I am in the military, but I am even more proud to be in the company of those with whom I serve.

Life in the desert

I never thought I would wake up in the morning and think, only 93 degrees this morning?  Kinda chilly.  But it's true.  In the morning, when I walk the sandy hill up to the hospital, the weather is a nice sunny, mid 90's temperature.  By the afternoon, the sun has hits its peak and the wind blows sand into my eyes.  I know eyelashes are meant to protect your eyes from things getting into them, but honestly, when your eyelashes are full of sand, what good is being done??

The hospital here is amazing.  It is surprising what can be done with limited equipment and resources. The nurses here are top notch, able to scrounge around and think outside of the box when it comes to supplies.  The patient population is pretty stable; active duty Army are most of the clientele, but there are some Navy and Air Force service members thrown in for good measure.  I am pumped that we get to wear scrubs tops with our desert cammie bottoms...but I never in my life thought I would be so ok with wearing my boots everyday.  I have become very close to my "glow belt"...since this is an army base, we have to wear the refelctive belt pretty much at all times.  The old Maura used to rebel against things like this, especially since the effectiveness of a glow belt in the glaring sun won't make me any more visible to oncoming traffic, but the new Maura is just trying to acclimate to Army life with as little difficulty as possible.  No, I will never use "tracking" or "hooah" in normal conversation, but I am at least understanding the implications of "hooah" when used in the vernacular by soldiers.  In context, the word can be used so many ways.  Be it positive, negative, a war cry, a sound for anger...soldiers embrace the "hooah" mentality with a surprising love.  I, myself, continue to say va bene instead...not many people know what the heck that means, but for me, it's a little way to stick to the man.

I am off today and thank goodness I was.  It was the first time I got to sleep in and so had a regular nights sleep since I arrived in this time zone.  Here is hoping I can sleep again tonight!

Day three in Kuwait.

As I walked home from the gym last night, and I saw the red ring around the full moon, blurred by the sand in the night air, all I could think was how remarkable it is that I am here.  I never thought I would be in the middle east and yet here I am.  I woke up this morning slightly more adjusted than the morning before, and in the very least, the sun at 0700 is far less blinding than at 1400.  As we walked to the DFAC (it means dining facility in army-ese), we walked by the port-a-potties and Starbucks, and I realized that smell of stale day old bread and sand is not all that endearing. 

Excitingly enough, I have found some similarities to Italy to make me feel just like home.  First similarity?  Neither the Italians nor the Kuwaitis wear deodorant.  As I walked through a bazaar complete with hookahs and belly dancing outfits, I smelled a scent as familiar to me as standing in the funicular on Capri.  So if I had just closed my eyes for a second, I could have been in the decadent vacation spot of emperors instead of dusty bazaar inside Camp Arifjan.  Another similarity?  Kuwaiti men love to stare at American women JUST like the Italians!  No shame, they just look...and look right at you when you stare back.  And shocker!  Kuwaitis ALSO throw trash in the street.  They also share a love of Italian techno music.  That was a surprise today.

I have also learned that I like Camp Arifjan better than Camp Virginia because Arifjan has lights in the bathrooms.  I had almost perfected a routine though with the bathrooms in Camp Virginia.  First: Swing open the port a potty door quickly to fully assess if any snakes or scorpions are in there peeing or pooping before me.  Second: after ascertaining that I am indeed alone in the dark port a potty, I hold open the light from my Ipod, holding it in my mouth so as to not touch anything.  Thirdly, I scan once more with the light from the Ipod...(it sounds neurotic but I am so super quick now it is like three seconds.)  These are skills that boy scouts have acquired when they are like 10 years old but I have had to learn it in my old age.  Good thing fear of snakes makes me a fast learner.

Tomorrow is check in at the hospital.  I am just excited that I don't have to wear body armor.

We're not in Naples anymore, Toto.

This is my first attemot at blogging since March of this year and oddly, I last blogged right before my whole world flipped upside down.  I found out I would be deploying to Kuwait and, five order modifications later, as well as many different departure dates, I finally left to process into Norfolk for the beginning of the predeployment stuff.

The Lord, in His wisdom, gently led me into the heat that I now realize is my future, by letting Norfolk be hot and humid the whole week I was there.  The smell of sweaty khakis is pretty putrid, as all officers (and owners of wet dogs) know, since it smells like just that: wet dog.  I walked myself dutifully to NMPS where I was poked, prodded, sent on various wild goose chases and then sent lickety split down to South Carolina for training.

When I described Fort Jackson to my mom, it sounded like a mix of summer camp and my worst nightmare.  I 1) hate being dirty and 2) hate being sweaty and 3) hate other people seeing me in either of the above states.  I had always wondered what it would take for me to not even want to wear mascara in the morning....I found out that it was very simple; sweating my booty off in 100 degree temperature in full body armor and out in the South Carolina woods was just the catalyst I needed.  I became so free without makeup that when I put it on to go to dinner last Saturday night, everyone in my barracks was shocked and amazed that I could be a pretty girl!  My poor eyelashes revolted against the makeup; it appears my face likes to be au naturale.  One bad thing that occurred, and I never thought I would say this, but my kevlar helmut strap left me with an outbreak of pimples along my strap line.  Darn that kevlar! 

After three weeks of hustling around in our body armor (where I won the "looks most like a turtle" award from my buddies) and shooting guns, I became a hardened killer.  Just kidding.  But I did qualifiy on the weapons, and I did get rather proficient at clearing my weapons and walking with a swagger like John Wayne and I did start to feel that I was just a little bit tough.  After I had all that under my belt, we loaded our three seabags (and a ruck sack) with our kevlar, body armor, equipment, gear and all sorts of fun Army goodies and set off for Kuwait.

When I walked off the freezing plane, I realized that the hot air wasn't just something blowing off the plane, dang it...it was Kuwait!  Crap.

So here I am, day two of captivity, where I have found a new definition of hot.  And no, I don't mean hot good looking, because I still haven't worn any makeup for a week, I mean hot as blazes.  I feel like poor Luke Skywalker, stuck on Tattooine...just waiting for Uncle Owen to let him go off world. 

But for me, it's Uncle Sam holding me back.

Oh well!  C'est la vie!  On with more briefings in the morning!

It appears we have now entered into what the locals call "the rainy season."  I do recall last February, in Portsmouth, VA, when my street flooded.  We stared at pictures on weather.com of High Street, covered in 3 feet of water, with cars stalled left and right.  People driving so slowly that it took three hours to drive 30 miles, and darkness setting in the early afternoon.  The draining system in the Hampton Roads area leaves something to be desired and I remember thinking that I needed to allow for an additional 30 minutes to drive the .5 miles to work.  

Well, in Naples, more specifically Pozzuoli, drivers do not feel that need to drive slowly.  As I drove myself home from Capodichino yesterday, in a torrential downpour, I was driving as cautiously as possible, and was rewarded for my safe efforts by the general disdain of the Neapolitan population.  I was slowing down traffic, and as the Vespas sped by me, cutting me off to prove a point, I realized, this place is almost unreal to me.  A man was riding his bike in the middle of the road, wearing all dark clothes, no helmet, in the middle of a vicious torrent, and he just kept weaving in and out of traffic.  Cars driving down shoulders, Vespas driving up on sidewalks, anything to get them just one inch ahead of the next guy, horns beeping, headlights flashing, these are all the sights and sounds of a rainy day in Naples.  

Things I never thought I would see have turned into the norm here.  People texting on the scooters, families of 4 on one at a time, people holding umbrellas while driving their Vespa in the rain....all these things are part of the quirky uniqueness of my adopted home.  I have learned to fit my car into inches of space I never thought possible and driving defensively is taken to an entirely new level.  

One thing is for certain: Drivers here have guts.  They fearlessly attack driving like a ravenous animal having caught his prey.  They are so tenacious, that they always have the right of way, no matter who they are, where they are, or what they are doing.  It's the attitude that gets them by.  

It's also the same attitude that makes them slow down when I am out running to call things to me, or hang off the Vespa to get my attention as they drive by....but these are stories for another day.  Til then, I will grab my Duomo umbrella, and keep my fingers crossed.

Back from the dead

It has been brought to my attention on more than one occasion, that I have been remiss at updating the Maura-in-Italy-weblog.  I have to admit, it is truly from my own speechlessness.  I have had so many adventures that it has been difficult to sit and assemble some sort of coherent chronicle to the different things that happen to me.  So fast forward 4 months from my last post, and I will try and pick up where I left off.

I remember back in my teenage years, when for me, true heaven was the dream of awaking in the Mediterranean sunshine, with the cypress kissed breezes blowing through my gauzey curtains.  I could picture so clearly the fresh, unsalted bread, the mounds of delicious butter, the glasses of clear red wine, the pasta with fresh tomato sauce, so fresh it seemed to taste like the sun.  I remember the days when the romanticism of the Italian hill towns spoke to me and when the thoughts of riding with a handsome Italian on the back of his classic Vespa were all that could get me through to my adulthood.

Well, thankfully, reality has checked in and I am slowly realizing that Italy is so much more than romance.  It's a new way of life.

I picked up my mom and Margaret at the Leonardo di Vinci airport last Friday in shockingly little traffic.  The road from Napoli to Roma has always been a trial for me.  I do not respond well to stressful driving conditions; as most of my friends know, I would prefer to never drive.  I got up the gumption to drive in to the Eternal city and, with the help of singing loudly to Frank Sinatra and Ella Fitzgerald, I actually got to the right terminal, parked in the right parking garage, and picked up the right family members, all without hitting anyone, yelling things out the window at nearby drivers in my butchered Italian, or scaring my mom too much.  As I gracefully rolled through my first stop sign, my mom tasted the sweetness of the Italian way of life.  Va benne, my favorite expression which means "it's all good," has become her mantra as well.  While this is mainly because she has no choice, it is also because Italy has reeled her in, as it has for so many of us before her.

Days spent in Rome, Naples, Assisi, Florence and Verona were capped with gelato, pasta, wine, pizza, and Italian pastries.  I think I have inadvertently brought my mom and sister along with me on my gastronomical journey throughout the country.  The delights of different tastes have made me revel in the differences of the regions, and my guests plunged into the happiness that is Parmesan cheese and Mozzarella.  My mom is reeping the benfits of the Campania region now that we are home in Naples; Mozzaerlla di Buffala and ripe red tomataoes were the homemade antipasti we shared last night.  Margaret is enjoying her pizza namesake, the orginal pizza Margherita.  Here in the home of pizza, we are sampling our ways through the menus of the small ristorantes below my apartment and down my street.

While I am pleased to have shared my love of food with mia mamma e mia sorella, I sometimes miss the salads of Panera Bread and the ease with which we Americans can eat healthily.  My new year's resolution (two months in the making) is to try and learn to incorporate healthy eating habits with my love of Italian foods.

Who knows?  Maybe it will work.  But for now, I think I'll just have a little more gelato.

Life North of Naples

Gloriously this weekend, I made my first Italian road trip more north than I have ever been been before!  In an odd twist of fate, when I first arrived in Naples, I was working almost every weekend.  Seeing Italy is a difficult feat when you are 1) trying to make new friends who are only off on weekends and 2) not sure where anything is and 3) not sure how to get there.  But now the tables have turned.  I was off on a weekend (huge plus) was able to hang out with three of my friends (another huge plus) and took a road trip through the rolling hills of Tuscany, up to Parma, Verona, and San Marino.

The hilltop fortress town of Orvieto was the first stop and the first meal.  I know I tell stories by the food, but honestly, each mouthful is so delicious, I catch myself with each bite to savor the different tastes.  I love the way the Italians complement the foods with the wines.  Even with the antipasti, the waitresses, who are usually the restaurant owners, point out the wines they recommend and allow us to sample a truly complete meal.   A brisk walk around the town capped with a tasty gelateria stop made for a wonderful afternoon.  As I stood in the massive shadows of each new duomo, I felt dwarfed by the beauty of these buildings that have stood long enough to have watched centuries of visitors walk the streets on which they sit.

Parma was the next destination and what a delight to behold.  The city streets were lined with banners heralding the nearby Verdi concerts and tiny vias were abuzz with shoppers out, I can only assume, to begin their Christmas shopping.  The main piazza in Parma is a promenade of beautifully dressed men and women, which seems only fitting as Parma is the most affluent town in Italy.  The beauty of the winter coats that topped the leather boots worn by every feminine shopper seemed the dress code of the evening, and as we southern Neapolitans huddled together for warmth, they braved the dropping temperature with grace.  We discovered that most restaurants closed early, but blessing of blessings! The wine bars each had their own free buffet of antipasti and pizze!  Perfetto!  As we grazed on the tasty dishes and gazed in the store windows, we all agreed that Parma is one of the cleanest cities in Italy.

After a breakfast of fresh prosciutto di parma and cheese, we set out to the Parmesan cheese factory where I smelled a little too much Parmesan.  The tasting however, FAR made up for the initial smells and I learned two valuable lessons: 1) never purchase grated cheese at stores.   Apparently this is the third grade cheese that most Italians wouldn't even feed their pigs.  And 2) Parmesan cheese mixed with honey or balsamic vinegarette is a heavenly marriage of tastes. 

From then we journeyed to Verona, the land of Shakespeare, Montagues, Capulets, and balconies.  Poor Parma was replaced as my favorite city the second we arrived in fair Verona.   The streets are helplessly lovely and the castles the lovingly protect this old city surround you as you walk up and down the streets.  We had another excellent lunch of risotto, steak and antipasto and the finest wine, I think, I have ever tasted.  An indepth walking tour of the sights, as well as a visit to Juliet's famed garden, made me fall madly in love with the place made famous for its star-crossed lovers.  How could I blame Juliet for her love when I myself was breathlessly captivated by the city's charm?

The weekend came to a close on Sunday as we left Verona.  After asking the concierge where a Catholic church was and he replied, this is Verona! Look on all street corners and there is the church! Waiting for you!  I ventured out early to Mass on my own then met up with my friends to stop at San Marino.  This small country on the eastern shore of Italy was probably the most surreal experience I have had in my life.  The clouds landed themselves delicately on the rolling green hills of the Italian countryside, all viewed from my perch at the top of a castle.  After somemore purchases of more souvenirs I could not live without, we were off again, heading back to Naples.

And thus ends the narrative from the weekends adventures!  Stay tuned for more Roman and Tuscan adventures at then end of next week!