Day 92: Jet Lag

Is it Sunday, Monday, night, day? My body is very confused right now. Here is why.

Sunday 3AM--Loaded all of our bags and went to the deployment center at Ft. Riley. Here we had a quick meeting and then were quickly put onto a bus headed for Topeka.

Loading some of our bags into the staging area. Everyone labels their bags on the bottom with their own unique design. I chose to use a Sharpie--creative, I know.

LT Warner and myself waiting in the deployment center

Filing out of the deployment center and onto the bus

Sunday 7AM--Arrived in Topeka and then waited appropximately 1 hour until we boarded our plane at 8AM.

Waiting on the bus

Sunday 9AM--Left Topeka and headed to Shannon, Ireland. It was a 7 hour flight. There was my Navy class of 50 on the flight as well as 200+ Army guys. Consequently, it was a crowded and uncomfortable flight. On the good side, they did give us food and they had movies--things you don't see often on airlines these days. The flights were not military flights but had been chartered through a private company. We arrived in Shannon at 10PM Ireland time (2PM Utah time).

On the ground in Topeka

Finally in Ireland with enough time to stretch

This is my first trip to Europe. I'm sure those of you who have gone to Britain have enjoyed the different way things are laid out and are named.

Monday 1AM--This is Ireland time (Utah time is Sunday 5PM). We jumped on our previous plane and flew from Ireland to Kyrgyzstan--an 8 hour flight. Again we had lots of food and movies. However, by this time our bodies started to feel the effects of the travel. Physically we were tired and had had little sleep up to that point. It was dark outside. However, our internal clocks still told us it was early evening. This is the first time I've ever had to deal with jet lag and time changes like this. Obviously, my body was starting to feel the adjustment.

Monday 2PM--We arrived in Kyrgyzstan. We are on a small Air Force base that is attached to the airport. It is small but the facilities seem relatively good. After several hours of welcome briefs we went to our temporary barracks, had dinner, and then I headed here to the computer lab to give you all an update on what I am doing.

Waiting to get off the plane in Kyrgyzstan

A view of us deplaning at the airport. There was a deadly airplane crash here the day before but we saw no evidence of it by the time we landed.

Our accommodations for a day (actually overall better than it looks--or at least we tell ourselves that)

We will be leaving for Afghanistan on Wednesday morning (Tuesday afternoon in the US). Tomorrow I will show you a little more of our current home. For now, I am going to go put this confused body in bed and see if we can't resolve this jet lag thing.