Picture Time

First of all, I need to tell you the CORRECT address again. I was told yesterday that we were given the wrong address again.

SGT Strader, John
CJTF-101, CJ-1
APO AE 09354

Well, I came down to the "Pat Tillman" USO center to use the free internet so that I can post some pictures for you all to see.

The one above was taken by mom at the building where I work on Fort Campbell. It was great having mom and dad to there to help me and spend time with them. I can't wait to see them again. I know that I cannot thank them enough for what they have done for Jeremy and me.

Here is a few pictures of the plan ride from Manas, Krygyzstan to Afghanistan. As you can see, it was not a normal civilian plane ride. We were cramped in there tighter than you can imagine. Like I said before, my big butt would not fit in the seat and I was not the only one that had problem. We were delayed over 4 hours leaving there and it put us in here early in the morning after the sun was up. As you can see from the pictures I took out of the window of the plan, we are in some serious mountains.

































Here are some pictures from outside and some inside of the building of where I am living right now. We are moving soon to some other buildings. The idiot in the picture is PFC Jesse McCollough.





















But we are moving to buildings like this pretty soon. There is not insulation or heat in theses, but I will have my own room. I am actually looking forward to moving to these soon.











Here is the infamous SGT Alex Howard talking on the phone that he bought last night. He ruined my section for over here. He got some one pregnant and she was not able to deploy, so I will be giving him hell for the entire deployment.















Here are a few pictures of outside of the building. The mountains are huge and gorgeous.

















The weather here is pretty nice right now. I am in T shirt and long PT pants and I am confortable all except for the fact that I have a head cold. That is really sucking right now. I also slept for about 16 hours last night. We all fell asleep pretty early and slept till 7am today.

The reality of the deployment has not set in yet. I am dreading the day that is happens. I know that will happen soon and hopefully I will be strong enough to handle it.

Overall, it is not that bad. I have some good friends here, and I will make many more. I have been in a lot worse conditions and a little better. I am pretty excited about being here. I know that will be in a great shape by the time that I leave here. We are walking everywhere we go, but the base is only 8 miles around. We have not walked all the way around, but we have found all the important stuff. I will be buying a cell phone later on today so that I can call and wake up people in the middle of the night. I am going to keep trying to get the picture up here so that you all know what is going and see it. It is taking a long to get the pictures up. I wrote this whole thing in the time that two uploaded. It is killing me. I will get what I can up and edit it later.

I love you all and miss you all. I hope that I here from some of you soon.