Lincoln

We got Christian at kitty for an early birthday present. Early, because they were going to put some of them down because they had way to many. As soon as I heard, we went up there to look. Chris gave me the OK, and that was that.

They brought out a bunch of them. But from the moment that Lincoln came in the room, he was all Christian wanted. We brought him home, and you would think that he has lived here forever. Most animals are scared at first until they adjust. NOT Lincoln. He just came struting in, and has been man of the house. He follows me and Christian everywhere. Like our little Guard Kitty. LOL. But at least we have a cat friendly home.......a.k.a. hamster and fish.

Ramadan, not just for locals.

Well Ramadan is slowly coming to an end, now realizing i may not have explained what Ramadan is, i shall now. Ramadan is the ninth month of the islamic calendar, it is the islamic month of fasting. So the participating muslims must refrain from eating, drinking, smoking, sexual activities, and anything of ill nature from sun up to sun down. We as guest here have to abide by the same customs per say, while out in town that is. Not to smoke, eat, drink, and to wear pants. Who ever thought of having to wear pants in 120 degree weather is a little on the crazy side. When me and my buddy had went to the mall a while back, those pics i had posted with the silly-ness stuffed animals, we had our back packs and inside was a few bottles of water, we would walk into the head(bathroom) walk in a stall and quitely drink them. So for the most part, during this time, the majority of us never really travel outside of base til it is over. Most places are closed during the day anyway, hence the reason i am constantly here at the dome everynight, it sits just outside of base and plus the coffee twister is freaking awesome!! Now when Ramadan is over, i will once again be able to travel outside wearing shorts, yay. I will also be going over to the souq to buy some purses, amazing how most things here are so cheap. Oh yeah the purses are not for me if you were wondering. I dont roll like that.

Were Back Manama, Bahrain!!!

Well we have returned to port, after a tiring underway that consisted of alot of minesweeping. We participated in an excecise that included a few british minehunter ships and even one of our LHDs the USS BATAAN, a multi purpose amphibious assault ship, and of course our dinky little minesweepers. This excercise gave us some valuable training, both personal onboard training, as well as training jointly with one of our bigger decks and the british minehunters.



We also managed to gather the ships that were still participating at the end of the week to form up for this photo. Tooken by a helicopter off the LHD. I managed to take some pics with my personal camera on deck of the ships as we were forming up, but have yet to remember to transfer them to my pc.
We arrived in port early morning, cleaned up and prepared to go on liberty, only to find out that we were having to prepare for another underway the following morning, we had been tasked again. The fact that we managed to refuel, resupply and get back underway with no problem the following morning on short notice is an accomplishment that shows the abilitys of our crew at maintaing our ship and always being ready. This capabilty is shared throughout the U.S. military, standing by, always ready.