2/3rds

well it’s been forever since my last blog post. Army life moves on, inspections and field problems and tests and such. I’ve pretty much made up my mind that this will be my last blog post from Korea, if you want to stay in contact with me than there’s always my e-mail and my phone number (I have it set up so that it won’t be an overseas call if you call me, it will be like calling the states). Uhm, still getting a lot of days off for all the ones we missed back when we were going to war. College goes well, the Army’s medical facilities have rid me of my acne. I continue to read books, find anime, watch movies, and play pc games. I continue my walk with God and can’t wait to see what he has for me after the Army. Can’t think of anything else to say so this is PFC Ulrich signing off!

PV2<PFC

my humble library

As a new college term looms we find ourselves with a lot of days of to make up for everything we lost during the holiday season. Everybody who left on leave for the holidays are coming back and our First Sergeant (widely regarded as worst than the last 2) is leaving the battery and we’re getting a new one so that’s a wild card. The Seahawks have also won the last game they played, meaning that they’ll be going on to play the Bears, of whom my section chief is a huge fan. Other than that, shoveling snow, breaking ice, spreading salt, layouts of gear, inspections, maintaining vehicles, idiotic formations, range detail, ammo runs, mos certifications, pt, same ol’ same ol’. Anyways, I’ll be posting some pics of our motor pool by popular request. Oh yeah, and I got promoted, again. Hopefully this doesn’t keep up or pretty soon I’m actually going to be responsibile for soldiers!

2 hrs ago there was a lot of snow here

Hello World

Well, things got pretty crazy there for a while, I can’t tell you how crazy but let’s just say that when they have to send in ninja squads from Japan, that’s when you know things are bad! But it was very tense for a while, fortunately we are now back to our normal schedule and I can relax a bit. Christmas has come and gone and I have received a working camera so be expecting some more photos finally!

Kind of frustrating when all this war stuff is going on because I can’t tell you about all the interesting stuff we’ve been doing, I’ve got a short break in between college classes and I plan to see the new Tron movie tonight!

Fun fact: How do you wheelie a Hemmit? I don’t know, ask my friend Harvey who managed to break the drive shaft and hit his ground guide with shrapnel while accomplishing this feat!

The Ascension and Incarnation of Jesus

Well, I was feeling a little depressed because we just found out that our 3 day (which would have begun tomorrow) was cancelled due to all the antics lately. So instead of getting off of our tough field weekend, we just do more work. Plus, I have an essay for my college class that I was planning to finish off on my now nonexistent weekend! You can probably see why I was feeling a bit down, so I get back to my room and begin opening my latest package from my family and the first thing I find is some study guides from our hometown church (and written by a good friend of the family). The title of the first study guide is the title of this post by the way, so I glance at it and I see a striking painting titled “The Second Coming of Christ” by Ron Dicianni and that just put everything in perspective for me. I guess I’m more of an image oriented guy, but this painting helped me remember that despite the looming threat of war, and whatever tough stuff I have to do for my job, God is still in control and the final victory is His.

P.S. we’ve gotten about 2 inches of snow so far, sure is beautiful!

How to cut my hair and play computer games at the same time?

Yeah, it’s too hard to attempt the above… Well, good things and bad, the Army really is a cool place, where else are you forced to keep healthy, exercise, and are rewarded when you contribute to charity? But there are downsides to it, like the run we had to do yesterday which will probably rank in my top ten worst runs in Korea. I had an interesting problem crop up recently, interesting in that it’s not my fault and it’s sort of advantageous to me, it appears that the Army is paying me too much money, couple hundred extra. I may have to give it all back but it’s still an interesting situation!

hopefully my farmer’s tan makes it through the winter, it’s my first tan so I’m kind of fond of it! We’re going to be going to the field this week so I’ll be very busy, cold weather training on Wednesday, basically we sleep outside with just our sleeping bags. As to our current situation, I’m okay but every time I look at the news it sounds scary so we’ll just wait and see.

Fun Fact: keeping your gear clean can be a hassle, especially washing your helmet cover, you have to take off the rhino mount and the strap assembly and the 550 cord holding your band in place and than put it all together again, well one clever guy here figured he’d just toss the whole helmet in the washer and skip all that. I can only imagine what it sounded like!

First Snow

Yep, it’s been cold enough for a while but now we have our first in a long line of snowfallsfromtheskies. Eventually I’ll be hard at work with a snow shovel, it’s better than raking up leaves I guess… The first half of December is going to be pretty busy what with another college term ending and going to the field for another week. After that hopefully we’ll have lots of half days and free days because of the holidays.

hmmm, I’m already up to 100 words… maybe I should devote this writing time to my essay instead, have it done in no time… So, I know Korea’s been in the news and unfortunately I can’t say much other than I’m okay, and the U.S. Army in Korea is closely monitoring the situation.

5 Months!

And the time has simply flown. Well, when I joined the army I was expecting a lot more possibilities than the average recruit, lots of people in my MOS believe that they were deceived on one aspect of their job or another, I have no such illusions. However, when I joined I never expected that the Army would want me teaching english to Korean citizens! They carted me and a couple other soldiers off to meet the mayor of this korean city and then teach Koreans english as best we could. Now this wasn’t in the job description at all when I signed up but you do all kinds of odd things in the Army. It turned out okay, me and this other guy just talked with our group (fortunately they were advanced enough to mostly understand us)

Yeah! Check it out! I’m putting a break up there! Pretty sophisticated, I know. Anyways, I’ve moved on to another term in college, I’m taking a history class that starts at the reconstruction plus whatever weekend classes I pick up. I’m really hoping for the days in which we get online textbooks because prices for books these days are RIDICULOUS! They’re just paper for goodness sakes! You don’t need to charge 100,000 Won for a book! So during the 4 day we got for armistice day (excuse me, veteran’s day) I worked on my 2,000 word essay and neglected my studying for my quiz even though the former is due in december and the latter is due yesterday! But even without doing any of the assigned reading I breezed through it so cool! I would have studied except I lost my study guide, with all my notes, yeah I’m probably going to need those, oh well.

So yeah, I’m feeling pretty confident in PT now, I’ll never be good at it but now I can have fun with it! I doubt I’ll have said ten complete sentences to a female my entire year in Korea, that’s how little contact I have with females. Well, we have a Full Dress Uniform inspection tomorrow so I get to dress up all fancy and stuff, I also get 2 new ribbons to add onto my 2 from AIT so yeah, eventually I’ll be one of those soldiers with hundreds… nah, I just want the Antarctica Service one! Hopefully I’ll get some photos of that to y’all

Peace Out!

Long Absence

yes, yes, I know what you’re thinking, I haven’t done a post in 2 months. Well what with college and work I’ve been busier than normal. I hope to get back to a post a week though. Check out my youtube channel, I posted a vid of soldiers going through the HEAT trainer. So it’s getting colder here, not much rain though. I’ve been shopping for christmas gifts and let me tell you, bartering is not dead! I think the conversations between storekeeper and shopper are so awesome when there’s no price tags. And the old standby of pretending to leave can actually get you a 50% discount! Went to the field for a week and participated in a live fire, as a driver I got nvgs while in the field (night vision goggles) and let me tell you, those things are amazing! Just the thing to pass the time away while you’re up on roving guard from 0200-0400. We also got a lot of contact with the ROK army while in the field, we traded a lot of food with them, I traded dogtags with one, and we even traded helmets for a photo! They’re pretty lucky in that they have these really light helmets and no body armor to lug around (for those not in the know the ROK army is SK’s army). It sounds like we will be more off work this month than we are on so I’ll have plenty of time to do blog posts. It’s hard to christmas shop computer games for my family because most are either too graphically advanced, or too mature, or just plain lame. So the medicine I’m taking for acne has been drying my lips but not much else. I’ve officially been promoted to PV2 which is very annoying because I was already getting the correct amount of money but now I have to change my rank on my class A’s, PT vest, ACU’s, PC cap, and much more. And of course the Army doesn’t pay for any of this. My digital camera’s LCD screen is quite broken so don’t expect many photos…  Anyways, probably written enough for now, PV2 Ulrich signing off!

Fun Medical Fact: If somebody has suspected brain damage and there’s fluid coming out of their ears than you can just taste the fluid, if it’s sweet than it’s cerebro-spinal fluid (because our brains run on sugar among other things)

delicacy excercises at the motor pool

College!

More close-up photography

Well I missed dinner today by 1 minute because I had flag detail and by the time I was done and had caught a bus and got there it was exactly closing time for the dfac (dining facility). Ah well… Recently finished a strategy game called Fire Emblem for the DS, now I’ll try it on hardest. I’ve made a deal to help my roommate with his internet bill and share it with him in exchange. I actually have been forgetting to talk about the NK IEDs for about a month now. You see, NK has been floating down IEDs on rivers into SK and I’ve heard about at least one person killed by them (can’t remember if it was a soldier or not). So we were told not to touch any boxes in rivers while we’re hiking. When I’m in the civilian world I’m probably going to regret not taking advantage of free movie theatres in the army… So we had a typhoon coming in and because of that we moved all our trucks and trailers to a higher motor pool and back down when the typhoon ended. I’m really lucky in that the General here is really supportive of education so I can get off work early to go to my college classes. My professor is really intelligent and lively so our 3 hr class is very stimulating. I’m also taking something for my acne that will annihilate it, the downside being that it had all kinds of nasty side affects. Tomorrow I’m off but I still have to wake up at 0540 for flag detail, ah well. Please comment if there’s something you want me to take a picture or movie of, I’ve also updated my “currently consuming” page and that’s all, signing off!

A Colonel at the opening of the Ed Center

Military Driving

Top of "stairway to heaven", popular running destination

 

The last 2 weeks people without military driving licences have been working on getting them, the first week was death by powerpoint and the HEAT trainer (Humvee Egress something trainer) The HEAT is a humvee mounted on a machine that spins you around simulating a vehicle rollover, for those who don’t know two of my family were recently in a car crash that resulted in their vehicle flipping so I guess I got a taste of what that feels like (except I bet they didn’t have body armor or a helmet on). The next week I drove a forklift, ammo truck, and rocket launcher vehicle. These were required for my MOS. The last thing I did was drive a humvee for basic road skills. Leaves are just beginning to fall here and the monsoon season is giving its’ all before winter comes. I’d talk more but I’ll have to hurry to get dinner on time!

Our room during a TA-50 layout