Well, I'm back "home" from my vacation on the carrier, and have been for about a week and a half now. Though it's felt like a month. Yes, I'm now one of those people who draws Xes through the days on my wall calendar, which saddens me but not enough to make me stop. I'll try to give you a quick rundown of the last month that I've been blogless. Oh, and the title of this post is named after kemp's mix cd of mostly disney songs from the drive to the ship the day I left for deployment.
I think I explained life on the carrier fairly well in the last post, and if not, well too bad, and on to the more interesting stuff. I got to spend 4 days in port Jebel Ali, which is about 30 minutes from Dubai, so essentially we were in port Dubai (this was in May while I was on the carrier). It was awesome. My friends on the carrier were awesome liberty buddies and we coordinated it so we all had duty the same day and spent 3 nights at a spectacular hotel on the beach, and not doing much but eat and drink and smoke hookah and relax. I saw some of Dubai and walked around a bit but it was so hot (not to mention we have to wear long pants) and dusty and there honestly wasn't a whole lot to do that we didnt get to do. Spent one afternoon walking around the Gold Souk, where you can bargain for gold at really good prices and that was a fun people-watching and gold-ogling day, though I didnt get anything. Then the last day a big group of us did the MWR "sunset safari" tour where we drove for a couple hours across the dunes- more like a roller coaster or thrill ride than transportation, and fun at first but definitely too long- until we got to a bedouin campsite where we rode camels and went sandboarding and smoked hookah and finally had a big giant traditional arabic dinner (salads, kebabs, hummus.. etc) and a belly dancing show. It was fantastic. I posted a bunch of photos of the whole dubai trip on facebook and will try to add a few of them to this post in the near future, but I make no promises.
After Dubai I had about 10 days left on the carrier to eat, sleep, workout, and work a reasonable number of hours each day, and then I flew back to Bahrain and met the ship there. I was actually very excited to fly off the carrier on the COD (the transport planes they use for pax and mail), though even the catapult shot where you go from something like 0-120mph in 2 or 3 seconds was not as exhilarating as i expected. And the ride itself was pretty anti-climactic, but still kind of cool. Well I was not looking forward to going back, especially since my first day back we had a full day of pretty rigorous maintenance scheduled, but it wasnt so bad. It was a working port so I didnt have much time off, though the one day off I did go to another souk (I gather "souk" or sometimes spelled "souq" means something like marketplace) which included both outdoor stalls and tiny stores and a big mall. As I write this I'm eating these delicous and addictive arabic roasted pistacios I got at a nut/candy/miscellaneous food store down there, and I am really very disappointed I didnt get more because I'm almost out. They also had a lot of gold, and also rugs, tapestries, other jewelry, crafts, knock off watches and purses, and so on. I actually did get a few trinkets there since it was generally much cheaper than Dubai and I wasnt sure I'd have another chance. One night in Bahrain our whole wardroom went to the villa of another Navy guy stationed there for a "rug flop". It's something the guys stationed in Bahrain host for all the navy ships that come through, where the owner of a rug store comes with a hundred or so rugs (almost all handmade, from various places but mostly iran and india), provides a ton of delicous middle eastern food (and the hosts provide beer), and showcases his rugs for purchase. Worth it if only for the food and drink, but also intersting to talk to the Navy guys stationed there and check out rugs. About a dozen people ended up buying rugs, anywhere from $100 to $3000. But generally much cheaper than you can buy them in the states.
And now I'm back here on the ship, in my relatively tiny stateroom, getting not enough sleep or exercise and barely accomplishing a fraction of the work I have to do. There are good things-- I missed some people here, and it's nice to be standing bridge watch again, seeing the light of day, etc, but it's weird, I feel like a stranger sort of. I'm actually in a fantastic mood right now because it's Sunday so not much was scheduled, I actually got a good run in, and then we had a steel beach picnic, so I'm feeling pretty happy... but still time is going very slowly around here. In other news, I am working on getting my paperwork through to the detailer to transfer to the oceanography pipeline, so I should be getting orders within the next month or so. I have no idea where I'll be going but I'm hoping to stay on the west coast somewhere, and I don't think I can be any more picky than that because there arent really that many options as it is. And I really don't want to go to Mississippi, where most of the jobs are. But I'm sure I'll let you all know in here as soon as I know where I'm headed. In the meantime I'm getting excited to have at least a couple of months back in seattle after deployment before I have to move.
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