Planes, Trains, and Helicopters

Whew!   Finally made it to COS Kalsu!  What a journey.  While "Army Summer Camp" at Camp Beurhing was fun...I was ready to leave Kuwait and get on some kind of normal schedule here in Iraq.  It took us 32hrs to finally arrive at Kalsu...a few from my platoon and some others all traveled together here.  Our 1st step in the journey was to load our bags onto a truck.  We then caught a bus ride to an airport in Kuwait.  We waited here for awhile before we hopped on an Air force plane to Baghdad International Airport at Sader Air Force Base.  We unloaded our bags here, then loaded them up into a trailer...waited around awhile...then caught a short bus ride to FOB Stryker.  Here we unloaded our bags again and got our assignments on how we were going to get to COS Kalsu.  Some people spent the night and caught a ride the next morning.  I lucked out and was told I would be riding in a helicopter (pic below).  By this time it was around 1130 at night... Mind you, we had our 1st baggage drop off at 1130 AM.  The people riding in the helicopter had to comb thru the freshly unloaded baggage to seperate their bags for our early morning bag drop.  We all took cat naps on our baggage looking up at the Baghdad night sky waiting for the bag drop...we then caught another bus back to Sader Air Force Base...and guess what, unloaded our bags again.  We  waited here for a few hours for the Chinook to arrive.  It finally arrived, our bags were loaded in the middle of the Chinook and we were sardined onto the sides for the trip into Kalsu.  We finally arrived safely into Kalsu and had to unload our bags again and load them into a container.  Luckily, our bags were dropped off by our living area and our last time (for now) moving our bags was into our CHUs (Containerized Housing Unit).  Right now I have a roommate, the Squadron PA.  This won't last long as we'll each get our own CHU once the outgoing unit leaves Iraq.
So in total, I think we moved our bags around 6 times prior to arriving to Kalsu.  Below are some pics from Kuwait and a few from the journey here.  We were tired, sweaty, dirty, and a little delirious when we arrived after having a sleepless night but happy we finally made it to our final destination.

There was a Starbucks at Camp Beurhing...pretty exciting!!

Who would of thought I'd find a Fighting Jayhawk in Kuwait.  ROCK CHALK!

This is me and my PT tech SSG Jamie Christensen at the range getting ready to verify our Zeros for our weapons.

With our powers combined...I am CPT Planet...I mean these are our bracelets we made with 550 cord at the USO.

The Army PT family is small, I ran into my professor from PT school at the USO in Kuwait. He was on his way to support a Combat Support Hospital near Baghdad.

These are 2 Med Troopers painting a mural to represent our Squadron at Camp Beurhing.

Da Plane, Da Plane!  Riding "First Class" into Baghdad.

People were lined up in the middle and sides of the plane.

This is the view from the Chinook.

32 hours later we finally made it.  This is me with 2 docs, a nurse, and PA I'll be working with at Kalsu.

I hope you like the pics.  There will be more to come soon! 

-Nicole :)