Preparations and things....

So for the last few days I have been getting ready for my leave. As I have noted before, I will be travelling to Australia for two weeks. This is the leave that I get while I am deployed here in Iraq for a year. I don't know how the whole process will work, but I do know we will be flying to Kuwait. From there, who knows. I will be keeping things up to date on this blog as I go through the process, and then the fun I hope to have in Australia.

In the meantime, I have been preparing for the trip. Getting laundry turned in and back, buying the bag from the local shop so I can get packed, making sure all the paperwork is completed and turned in. I haven't booked anything yet, but we are looking to stay in Cairns for a full week.
That is the main town/port for tours to visit the Great Barrier Reef. There is also a tropical rain forrest, a zoo, and all sorts of other things to do while there. So we will spend a couple days in Sydney, the week in Cairns, and then a few days in the Gold Coast area before going back to Sydney to fly back. Should be a fun packed adventure, to say the least.

So the plan is to write in the blog everyday about what happened. I want to use this venue to keep track of things for my own memory. I did this for the trip that my wife and I took to Belgium, and it was pretty fun to do. Unfortunatly, that was on Yahoo 360, and they deleted that tool. I forgot to pull off the old blog to save those posts, so most of that information is lost. I think I have some of them saved on a hard drive somewhere, but would have to look.

Anyway, things here are going pretty good in Iraq. I have a great job in providing communications for the command elements so that they can maintain control of the theater. I have a room with one roomate, air conditioning, internet in my room, and basically things are very good overall. I figure by the time I get back from leave, the deployment will be about half way over, and it should be all down hill.
That is about it for now. I don't have too much to say, but look for regular updates as my travels begin.

Until next time.....