I'm going to begin this off by saying, hopefully training goes better than my morning did. My morning was suppose to begin at 2:30 so that I could shower and make sure that I had everything. The alarm went off it was all good! Some how I thought I hit the snooze but I turned off the alarm...oops. I was woken when my cabbie called to make sure that I was coming down, it was now 3:30, the time that I had asked him to be at my place. I jumped out of bed and threw a few more things into the bag and prayed that I didn't forget anything vital. I quickly locked the door and ran down the hall with my bag. Jumped into the cab and off to the airport. All was well going from Ottawa to Detroit, we land in Detroit and I stop and have breakfast in an airport restutant with 30 mins to spare I wander over to the gate and then reach into my bag to get out the ticket and passport. Shit! Where's my passport!? I start rifling through my bag...what if it fell out on the plane or somehow fell out when I went to pay for the food. I don't have time to look for this right now but I need it. After what feels like an hour I find the passport in one of the pockets of my laptop bag. The flight from Detroit to Atlanta was fine.
I'm in Atlanta for my hostile environment training, the course is being done at a retreat type place with a bunch of living cabins and a main cabin for the course I guess. It's located an hour out of Atlanta. The living conditions are pretty tough, there's a fireplace in my room, a king size bed and oh yeah a jacuzzi...some how I don't think these will be the type of cabins we're given in Afghanistan.
We get briefed tonight on what to expect for the rest of the week. The set-up is pretty interesting; we being trained by Englishmen in hostile environments in a US retreat and the students are a bunch of Canadians.
It's going to be an interesting week.
Sunday, January 25, 2009
Saturday, January 10, 2009
Moment of true realization
This week I was sent up to CFB Petawawa to cover the trial or I guess custody hearing of an Army Captain that is charged with second degree murder of an "unarmed" severely wounded Taliban. That turned into the coverage of a member of the Dragoons that was killed in Afghanistan by an IED.
Peter (my reporter) and I went up to the base on Tuesday morning, easy enough day. The military as an organization were very welcoming to us...well I guess as welcoming as they can be considering we're there to cover the trial of one of their own. A few soilders weren't fans but overall it wasn't too bad. Little did I know that it was going to get worse. Peter and I left the base on Tuesday night and drove back to Ottawa. We knew that we had to come back to the base the next day and our office talked about putting us up in a hotel but I wanted to come back to Ottawa for the night...little did I know that there was a snowstorm coming. As we drove back our VP, News called me and said that he wanted to talk so we set a time for the next day.
The next morning we went up and enroute we got word that there was a lockdown on the base. A lockdown on the base means something is up, usually a death. Since 3 RCR is the company that is in Afghanistan right now and they're from CFB Petawawa, Peter and I figured that it was going to be from the base. We arrived and immediately we knew that there was something up, the mood on the base was very different. Short time later we learned that it was Trooper Good that has unfortunately passed away. At a little after 1 my phone rang and it was our VP. The trial was going on so I step away down the hall and sat on a table in the stairwell and talked to my boss about Afghanistan. In the middle of the conversation I realized that I was talking with my boss about formally going and representing the company in Kandahar and figuring out the details while on a military base, the base of the unit that's in theatre right now. That's when I realized that this was happening. It was a pretty cool moment.
A lot of people have asked me lately if I'm scared. The answer is not really, of course I'm sure that as soon as I walk out of the plane and see that I'm in Afghanistan I'll be a little freaked but I'm pretty excited! It's something that I've had a lot of time to think about and it's a chance that I can't pass over. It's a something pretty cool.
Let the adventure continue.
Peter (my reporter) and I went up to the base on Tuesday morning, easy enough day. The military as an organization were very welcoming to us...well I guess as welcoming as they can be considering we're there to cover the trial of one of their own. A few soilders weren't fans but overall it wasn't too bad. Little did I know that it was going to get worse. Peter and I left the base on Tuesday night and drove back to Ottawa. We knew that we had to come back to the base the next day and our office talked about putting us up in a hotel but I wanted to come back to Ottawa for the night...little did I know that there was a snowstorm coming. As we drove back our VP, News called me and said that he wanted to talk so we set a time for the next day.
The next morning we went up and enroute we got word that there was a lockdown on the base. A lockdown on the base means something is up, usually a death. Since 3 RCR is the company that is in Afghanistan right now and they're from CFB Petawawa, Peter and I figured that it was going to be from the base. We arrived and immediately we knew that there was something up, the mood on the base was very different. Short time later we learned that it was Trooper Good that has unfortunately passed away. At a little after 1 my phone rang and it was our VP. The trial was going on so I step away down the hall and sat on a table in the stairwell and talked to my boss about Afghanistan. In the middle of the conversation I realized that I was talking with my boss about formally going and representing the company in Kandahar and figuring out the details while on a military base, the base of the unit that's in theatre right now. That's when I realized that this was happening. It was a pretty cool moment.
A lot of people have asked me lately if I'm scared. The answer is not really, of course I'm sure that as soon as I walk out of the plane and see that I'm in Afghanistan I'll be a little freaked but I'm pretty excited! It's something that I've had a lot of time to think about and it's a chance that I can't pass over. It's a something pretty cool.
Let the adventure continue.
Saturday, January 3, 2009
Confirmation
Yesterday, I decided to forget about the world and take a day off. The weather was decent so snowboarding was where I was off to . The first few runs were a little intense but I eventually got the hang of it. It was a great day up at the mountain so much so that I forgot that I was going to be getting my confirmation on Afghanistan that day.
When I got home from boarding, I remembered and went and check my corp email so sure enough there was the email. It was from our Sr. Producer for Resources saying that I was going on hostile training on Jan. 20-25, I'm going to Atlanta and not England but it's still going to be cool. Whether or not I could get my hostile training was going to be the deciding factor on whether I was going on the rotation this round.
Now I have my answer.
When I got home from boarding, I remembered and went and check my corp email so sure enough there was the email. It was from our Sr. Producer for Resources saying that I was going on hostile training on Jan. 20-25, I'm going to Atlanta and not England but it's still going to be cool. Whether or not I could get my hostile training was going to be the deciding factor on whether I was going on the rotation this round.
Now I have my answer.
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