Avatar -- Navy Style...

Today we had visitors on Camp. Jon Landau, Sigourney Weaver, Michelle Rodriguez, and Stephen Lang visited Camp Lemonier on a Navy Entertainment tour for the movie Avatar. It was pretty cool getting to meet each of them. We are going to screen the movie tonight in the base theater.

That was about as exciting as it gets here on camp.

More to come after petting the Cheetahs later this week..

Kurt from Camp Lemonier, Djibouti... OUT

Getting in the flow

Well I have been here in Djibouti for almost 2 weeks and I think that if I owned this place and hell I would rent out this place and live in hell...

Getting into a rhythm, but not what I had wanted to be in. Sleep, work, read/watch tv for a couple hours and start over again. I need to find a way to work the gym into that, but it is very tough. I have been pretty successful watching what I eat, as the food here isn't that great, and salad and fruit are in plentiful supply. Usually one meat and a big salad and some fruit for each meal.

Next week we have some cool things planned that I enjoy updating you on. We will be going to the Cheetah refuge here to see some big cats. Apparently they are so tame that they will eat out of your hand.

Other than that it is pretty boring here, not much to write. I miss home a lot. I miss the Sarge but know that he is in great hands. I look forward to coming home in about 6 weeks or so.

This is Kurt from Camp Lemonier Djibouti.. Signing out..

Out on the town

Yesterday was the birthday of one of the contractors we are working with here and my buddies Tim and Tom who are the Dell account team for this region are in town so we ventured off post last night for dinner. It was quite the experience. The restaurant was pretty nice, you totally didn't realize that you are in a 3rd world country. What was amazing though is the hotel that the sales guys are staying at. I would have never realized that they would have a hotel that nice here, of course it is stupid expensive too.

The real kicker though was the taxi ride back to the post. The three of us all packed in this tiny little Toyota that was pretty loose on the shocks for the 10ish minute ride back to the base. The cabbie was bobbing and weaving the whole way back with some crappy hip hop blasting on his speakers.... It was pretty obvious he was high out of his gourd on Khat (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Khat)which is a drug that is in common use here on the Horn of Africa by the locals.

We got back ok and got a good night sleep after a good meal.

More to come from Camp Lemonier... OUT..

CLU Living

Most of you probably have no idea what I mean when I say CLU. A CLU is a "Clustered Living Unit" that is used for housing on many overseas military bases. The CLU is a standard CONEX style shipping container that has been split into two dual occupancy living quarters. The long term residents are often lucky enough to get what is called a wet CLU which is a CLU with a shared head for the two "rooms". The majority of us however get a standard CLU and have to walk to the latrine/shower.

Now that I have explained that, welcome from E Block of CLUville Camp Lemonier, Djibouti. E Block is approximately .7 miles from my work area, and I find myself making the walk round trip 3-5 times a day. Great exercise. Each block is made up of 3 rows of 26 CLU's with 24 of them being quarters, one latrine/shower CLU and a laundry CLU. To be perfectly honest it isn't a bad living arrangement at all. It could be much worse, if one person hadn't left right before I arrived the title of this update would be TENT living and that my friends would suck.. :)

Anyway, until next time, I miss y'all....

In Transit

Well a couple days have past since my first entry.. they have been interesting ones....

Saturday was an awesome day, we spent the day oggling at the life of excess of the people of Dubai. The malls that were there probably have no rival on the planet. The first mall we went to The Mall of the Emirates has an indoor skiing area, you believe that. An entire run with a chair lift and everything. The stores are amazing, we learned the lesson really fast that if the door to the store is closed and the person working there is wearing gloves that you probably can't afford what they are selling.. On the flip side I looked at a watch that would sell for about $8-10k in the US that was about $6300 there. The Dubai Mall where the Burg Kalifa is located is one of the largest malls I have ever seen. We walked about 2 miles just walking around the mall. We had an amazing Steak Dinner before we went our seperate ways on Sunday...

Sunday morning was remarkably easy going. It is obvious that the people of Dubai, which is totally a melting pot country, are used to making it easy for people to pass through their country. Left Dubai at about 1230 local time and after a 3ish our flight landed in Djibouti.

Djibouti is an interesting country. It will be an interesting couple of months. More to come in my next update.... CLU LIVING

The Adventure Begins

Well this is my first day of this interesting adventure into Africa.

I landed last night in Dubai and will be spending a couple nights here with my friends Tim and Dawn. A few thoughts about the flight... 17 hours is a long time to be on an airplane... Emirates has pretty ok economy class, but don't believe the hype that it is in any way equivalent to others business class. Oh and it sucks royally to sit behind the engine in a Boeing 777.

I already miss my dog Sarge a lot and my new friend Kelly even more. More to come later, doing the sight seeing thing today.