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Thursday, November 25, 2004

I hope you're all having a happy Thanksgiving. Out here in California, it would be too expensive to fly home when I would have to fly right back three days later. I'm going home for Christmas instead. It reminds me of those political commercials where the old person is trying to decide whether to use their money to buy groceries of prescription drugs. However, I'm not completely alone out here.
I had dinner with the American people tonight. Well, about twenty of them. We were mostly strangers to them. All they knew was that their nephew whom they never met was bringing two Marine friends of his to dinner. They treated us like family, and seemed very glad to have us. We were certainly never in want of anyone to talk to. One guy who talked to us a lot was an 87 year old Army/Air Force veteran who was in China during WWII ("I'm older than the Pope!", he said). They had some other relatives over, as well as the neighbors for about four houses in either direction. We had a great big table outside which we ate on. At first I thought it might be weird eating Thanksgiving dinner outside, but then I thought wait, it's almost certain that they ate the first thanksgiving dinner outdoors. You have to, when you invite the Chief and a couple of braves over for dinner and 90 Indians show up.
We had a really good trip out here to California. We were all traveling in Service A uniform, and everyone knew we were Marines. At every airport, especially Atlanta, people would come up to us and just say thank you for the job we do (It was sort of awkward, given that none of us had been overseas yet). Many would try to pick up our checks. "These two are on me", says the man behind me, as a friend and I buy some ice cream at a TCBY. I heard of one guy who went into a restaurant at the airport and paid for about 20 Marines meals. People are always very nice to us. On Sunday, I was waiting forever for a bus to get to a place called the South Mesa Chapel, which the first bus driver I talked to had never heard of. Eventually a guy on base pulled up and gave me a ride in his pickup. On the way back, I was again waiting for a bus when a lady who sat behind me in church saw me and gave me a lift back. Then yesterday, as we were getting ready to wait for a bus to take us to Oceanside Transit Center, an army nurse on base gave us a lift there.
I like Camp Pendleton so far, but I have to leave. Apparently they jacked up my orders and sent me here to be an amphib assault crewman when my contract assigned me to be a Ground Radio Repairman. I wanted AAV so badly, and now their sending me to the desert to tinker with PRC/19 radios. Not only that, but this school is considerably longer than AAV school. But it doesn't look there is any alternative to 29 Palms for me.
Posted by: Joe Wagner / 11:12 PM

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