worth a thousand words

Just to peak the curiosity . . .

A Country Apart

I graduate in two weeks and will finally be 

home full time with Bo. Perhaps it is that, or perhaps it is partly due to the stories from abroad that naturally come from such an absence as deployment, but i am itching for the chance to travel once more.  After living abroad twice, and undertaking the stimulating challenge of immersing myself in different cultures, i feel claustrophobic and ancy if I am in one place for too long.  I had never had much of an interest in traveling to the middle east, but more and more i am intrigued by the curious pictures coming from Bo's camera.   No, the country does not have particularly beautiful monuments or "touristy" areas.  Even something particularly noteworthy is not easy to find.   These pictures belie a sense of something much deeper however.  How does a people forced to live  this ruggedly survive?  What would a women whose sole endeavor is to care for her husband and her children while obeying every law and mandate do for fun?  What are the lessons taught in these schools like?  How do these farmers make a living with their utter lack of modern machinery or even irrigation?  Who are these Afghanis?

      

Seeing the children

Listening to my podcast should give you a better sense of the guys' mission and what they were able to do while deployed. Its both interesting and painful for me to hear of the incredible amount of children being caught in the crossfire of this war every day.  The physical wounds are acute and desperately evident. There is also the more subtle would they all suffer mentally through the hardship and confusion of living life in a third world country and through a wobbly and distorted lens of the "outside" world that is often misconstrued and wharping.  To many of these kids, we are the enemy. Does that not cause you to flinch? For an overall mission who's goal is as much humanitarian as combative, the knowledge that many of these Afghani children are growing up learning to hate us is discouraging to say the least.

Not all feel that way, of course.  Hopefully not even a majority. For the pararescumen flying overhead there are many waves and excited yells, but there are also those kids throwing rocks and shaking their fists as a stoic reminder that even 8 years after the war has started the local people are not convinced their lives are any better.   War is not pretty, and the steps taken to secure our homeland are not always easy. However, trying to reconcile the fact that they are so bred to hate us is a bitter pill to swallow. 

I am proud and thankful for the military forces over there -- ours and the other coalition forces. The work Bo and his team were able to do, especially medically, is noteworthy.  For a country and an enemy who have no qualms using their own people and their own children as collateral damage, the job of rescuing and treating these wounded seems endless.  I can only pray that out of the horror of war, comes peace, and not just a peace with bondage and oppression, but a peace that stems from optimism and freedom.    

from the front lines...

The stories Bo had on his return gave me the chills-- both because of how real war has become and how proud i am of the work Bo and his team was able to do for the coalition forces and the local Afghan people.

Here is an excerpt from a look inside...

Bo White Podcast

The wait is over

He's home! True to form his plane was delayed even once more to prolong the anticipation of his return just a few more hours. I was told by other wives though, that as soon as I saw him, i wouldn't remember how frustrating it might have been and all my worries would fade into the distance. They couldn't have been more right. I have my baby back. It is an unbelievably good feeling.

24 hours

It's less than a day away now...i can't sit still, i can't eat, and i definitely couldn't sleep last night.  I feel a little like i did when i knew i was meeting him for the first time.

It seems like i've waited forever for him to come home.  Tomorrow will be an amazing day.

all butterflies

Bo is coming home so soon!  After  his arrival date changing four times and now a week to ten days later than expected, he is en route.  They left Afghanistan today and were traveling to Italy, Spain and then home to Nellis AFB.   I know they had a 16-20 hour layover in Spain, so i'm imagining him right now on the beaches of southern Spain sipping sangria and taking in the sun and civilization around him.   I know he was ready to come home....saying i am ready for him is an understatement.

Hearing on Friday that he was coming home not in a few days, but in a whole other week was like a punch in my gut. We had already made a lot of plans for the following week, including appointments with realtors, mechanics for his truck, etc.  Everything was able to get rescheduled however, and i've actually done well keeping insanely busy this week.  My broadcast reel is coming together and the third VUSN news show will hopefully be edited by tomorrow. It has been so challenging, but also rewarding this semester to push myself in the broadcast realm and do things i've never done before. It would be easy to say i couldn't because i've never been really trained at anything broadcast, or even had a real class on it. For me, its been a trial and error journey though, and i am proud of what i have produced and accomplished this semester.   We also just came out with the 10th and final issue of The Voice.  We put in an insane amount of work on this last issue and wanted so badly to go out with a bang.  It was great to see it come together and everyone really pull through. From the feedback we've gotten, it was out best issue to date.  THAT is a good feeling.   

Without Bo, I've really poured myself into my work this year. In part because it took my mind off the loneliness and the daily challenge of a strenuous workload was somehow soothing as I could never get out of my mind how hard Bo was working and what strain he was under.  Perhaps in that struggle, i felt closer to him.   Now that he is coming home, these last few weeks before graduation are going to be tough to maintain any motivation.