Good-bye for now USS George Washington!

Glenn and I made the drive down to Yokosuka to the USS George Washington to onload his things for deployment for hopefully the LAST time last weekend!

He's only got a few more weeks on board until it is time to check out of Japan and head for shore duty! Woo woo! Three years of no deployments coming our way!

Welcome Home, Glenn!

Together at last!

USS George Washington Visits Thailand

By Mass Communication Specialist 2nd Class Juan Pinalez

LAEM CHABANG, Thailand – After 56-days at sea, the nuclear powered aircraft carrier USS George Washington (CVN 73) and her crew of 5,500 Sailors arrived in Laem Chabang, Thailand, Aug. 6 for a well deserved rest and relaxation port visit in the coastal city of Pattaya.
“The crew has worked very hard since we left Japan back in June and they deserve every opportunity to enjoy themselves,” said George Washington’s commanding officer, Capt. David A. Lausman.  “I fully expect to see them out in full force shopping, enjoying Thai food and taking tours.  They’ve earned it.”              

The port call marks the ship’s second visit to the partner nation of Thailand since George Washington arrived in the 7th Fleet area of responsibility (AOR) in 2008.            

 During the visit, more than 250 George Washington Sailors will participate in eleven community service (COMSERV) projects to help further the relationship between the U.S. Navy and Thailand. Sailors will also have an opportunity to experience Thai culture through numerous tours offered by the ship’s Morale, Welfare and Recreation (MWR) program. 

“It’s exciting to see how many Sailors have signed up to volunteer their free time ashore helping others,” said Cmdr. Brian Haley, George Washington’s Chaplain.   “You’d think with being at sea for so long, they’d want to relax but they’re actually more interested in helping people and making a difference.  It’s wonderful to see.” 

The COMSERV opportunities will allow Sailors to contribute to the beautification of local schools, temples and pay visits to elderly residents at an area nursing home.          
  “I’m very excited to spend so much time in Thailand. Not only will I do the usual tourist stuff, I’m also going to volunteer my time and participate in a COMSERVE with a local school,” said Information Systems Technician 1st Class (SW) Bobby Anderson, from Houston. “There is so much to do in Pattaya and with as much time as we’re given, I look forward to doing it all. There are elephants to ride, tigers to see, temples to visit and a really cool zip line in the middle of the forest to go on.”
        
George Washington will also welcome aboard nearly 300 representatives from Thailand and provide them with guided tours of the aircraft carrier. These honored guests include children from a local orphanage and government leaders.  The tours serve to educate the public on the inner workings of the U.S. Navy’s only forward-deployed aircraft carrier.          
  “I am thrilled to have people tour our ship.  It’s a great opportunity for them to meet our crew and learned about what we do.  That’s the secret to securing stability in the region; opening the doors to minimize misunderstanding,” said Lausman.
  
George Washington returned to patrolling the waters of the Western Pacific on June 12, 2011, departing her forward operating base of Commander, Fleet Activities Yokosuka.  Onboard are more than 5,500 Sailors from George Washington and Carrier Air Wing (CVW) 5. George Washington’s mission is to ensure security and stability in the 7th Fleet AOR and to be in position to work with our allies and regional partners to respond to any crisis across the operational spectrum as directed.
-GW-

41.667 Days!

Yesterday Glenn received his 1000 hours patch! That means that he has spent 1000 hours or 41.667 DAYS flying the E-2C Hawkeye. Wow! Congratulations, Mr!

Glenn at Work

I finally got a few pictures from Glenn at work. Here he is with his LSO (Landing Signal Officer) team helping bring the planes on board. They grade each airplane as it passes/lands which is why they all look rather intense. Although, I'm sure in the sunshine with blue skies and few clouds like this day, they weren't so stressed. I'm not sure how they get a guy on board in the pitch black, with low clouds and he's already boltered (failed attempt to get on board) twice! Better you than me, Mr!

There he is! And the E2 too!

Glennjimen

Glenn had been gone about 2 weeks now. I'm hitting the usual slump of it settling in the he is gone for a long haul. I'm trying to settle in to my summer routine, but with the end of most of my English classes in sight, it is not my usual busy schedule. A lot more pool time instead!

I should have mentioned before that Glenn cannot check his hotmail or fe.navy.mil account while on the ship so if you would like to send him an email, you can reach him at Glenn.Smith@cvw5.navy.mil. They keep a pretty busy schedule, but I"m sure he'd love to hear from you.

Mail can be sent directly to the ship via the US Postal System at:

LT Glenn Smith

VAW-115 Unit 25428

FPO AP 96601

Care packages and cards are always appreciated, I'm sure. It will be "awhile" til I see Glenn next. With an earthquake and mass evacuation in the spring, this year is a little atypical unfortunately. Of course, I can't mention when or where he is or will be for security reasons.

I miss you, Mr! I'm off to watch my girly summer TV shows that I only watch when you are gone!

And so it begins...

I dropped off Glenn at this squadron this morning to officially begin our Summer 2011 Deployment. Blah. After a week of packing, piles and sorting, the house looks pretty empty now. Just a single suitcase of things that I will leave behind in Japan for when he returns later this summer (if all goes as planned, I'll be gone already).

This summer is going to be extremely busy with visitors, finishing my classes, packing, moving and many fun things in between, but it doesn't make it any easier. It does help me pass the time knowing that when I see him next, we will have plans for where we are moving and we will be surrounded by friends and family at his next homecoming. He'll be coming HOME to America. Yay!

Stella and I are going to be travel companions later this summer, but she's not quite the conversation partner on a 12+ hour flight. Maybe she'll get her own seat in business class. ;) I'm glad she's hear to keep me company though.

Here's to a fun summer and a safe deployment! Miss you already, Mr!

Mustached...

 

Here's an old picture from last year while Glenn was on deployment. The ward room decided to all grow mustaches. It's pretty sick in my opinion. They then decided to take pictures of just their mustaches and send a "Name that 'stache" game to the spouses club. A whole page of just mustaches? Even sicker.

Wordless Wednesday: Homecoming!

 

He's Home!

Glenn's favorites

Glenn's favorite beer... in the fridge:

Glenn's favorite sheets... on the bed:

Glenn's favorite food... in the drawer:

Just sayin'.

Thailand: Day 4

My last day with Glenn. Sad. Why do port calls go by so fast? We started the day with breakfast at the hotel. They had eggs. Exciting. I love when Asian countries actually have western-ish breakfasts. Rice and fish for breakfast is something I don't think I'll ever learn to adapt too. Give me some bacon and eggs!

So yeah, we had breakfast and then we walked down the street to the main road to catch a baht-bus. We learned that if you get a driver from the hotel they charge you pretty much 500 Baht ($18) but if you catch a baht-bus, you can ride as far as they are going for 20 baht (75 cents). So we caught a baht-bus and Glenn managed to not fall off the back (since the seats were full, he had to stand and hold on to a railing overhead), we pressed the doorbell when we saw our destination and hopped off and paid. Success, $15 in my pocket!

Our destination: the floating market. So it's a knock-off of the real floating market near Bangkok, but fun souvenirs to be found anyway. I always have to come back from vacation with gifts for my students. It's a Japanese thing for sure. Gifts for everyone! I guess cause they couldn't go? A small trinket or candy will do, but it's polite to bring back something.

We wandered, we shopped, we sweated, we attempted to order some food, we sweated some more. This was the only really hot day Glenn and I had in Thailand. While we were waiting for our food, Glenn was talking about lounging in the pool and relaxing back at the hotel before he had to depart for the bus to take him to the ship.

"I really wanna ride an elephant," I blurted out knowing that it was the opposite of what Glenn wanted to do at that moment. "I'm sorry, I can't come to Thailand and not ride an elephant!"

"Really? I wish you had mentioned this earlier."
"I know! I'm sorry, I did, kinda, not really. Can we ride an elephant."

Being the wonderful husband that he is, he made my wish come true!

We attempted to get a ride from a taxi at the market, but they didn't really seem to know where we were talking about. We decided to head back to the hotel first, I made some phone calls and got an Elephant Village driver to come pick us up! Ya ta!

We even had some time for lounging before they picked us up.

Elephants! I think Glenn enjoyed himself feeding the elephants bananas even though he was watching his watch to make sure we would be back in time. We fed them, we rode one for an hour (30 minute would have sufficed) and we pet the elephants! :)

 

Thanks Mr! We made it back in time to pack (quickly) Glenn up and order some room service. Relaxing would have been wonderful too, but all I can ever think about on the last night is saying goodbye in a few hours. Maybe staying busy until the last minute is the way to go? Miss you so much, Mr!

122? Do you really have to remind me?

The USS George Washington has a Facebook page. Have I mentioned how much I love Facebook? No? Well, it's right up there with boots, Skype and things wrapped in bacon.

Anyway, each day they (aka some pulic affairs guy with a fun job) post photos of what's going on aboard the ship and I check occasionally because maybe I'll see an E-2C or maybe Glenn! Neither of this has happened yet.

I'll get to my point now. Each photo album is titled. Today's: '2010 Summer Patrol Day 122'. Awesome. Thanks for the reminder. 4 months down. A little more to go. Why does the end always take the longest? I don't even know what happened to July or September. August goes by pretty fast when you leave on vacation for 3 weeks. October though, you're killing me. Could you move a little faster already?!

Thailand: Day 1

 I arrived at Bangkok airport around 5:30 pm. There was one other person that I knew on my flight and we were both headed to Pattaya City to meet our husbands. I had hired a driver ahead of time via the internet and, luckily, he was there! He was waiting with a sign with my name and hotel name. Success!

Two hours later, we arrived at my hotel. We dropped off Lauren, said hi to some friends eating dinner at the restaurant and the bell boy whisked me off to my room. Glenn. Finally. A 2 hour trip to the airport, 2 hours of waiting, 7 hours of flying and 2 more hours in a car. Totally worth every minute even for those first few minutes. It had been 6 weeks since I had last seen Glenn. I know that's not a 6 month deployment and thank goodness. He was waiting with bottles of wine and cheese in the fridge. What a good hubby.

We were invited to a "Wet Down" (aka promotion party) that night, so after several hours blissful hours together, we headed in to the city to find the party.

Free t-shirts! Hookas! Free drinks! Thailand is fun.

Thanks for a fun party VFA-102. This is Christina, she and I did some traveling together later in the week.

After the party, we decided to head down to Pattaya's infamous Walking Street. I won't even attempt to describe what I saw there. Ok, maybe a little describing. Pattaya was made famous during WWII when many American GI's stopped here during the war. When a bunch of lonely sailors stop by, what is bound to happen? Thailand's capital of sex tourism. Not kidding. Thailand is also the capital of Lady Boys. Glenn found it a fun game to point out all the "boys" to me. I had a much harder time telling who was a boy and who was girl. They all looked like girls.

Walking Street is full of shows and bars and clubs. We saw some shows. Yes, I added money to their famous industry, but you can't help but be curious. Buy me a gin and tonic and I'll tell you all about it some day. How one learns those skills, I'll never know, or ever want to know.

It was hard to ignore the obvious prostitution, the sleazy guys and general nastiness of the place. It made me glad I had Glenn by my side. We went to Walking Street one other night and enjoyed a pretty decent live band and no topless girls (in that bar) so there were some ways to enjoy yourself without needing to cover your eyes every few minutes..

Around 3 am, my 5 am wake up call was getting to me and we headed back to Jomtien Beach where our hotel was located. We found a Baht Bus aka tuk-tuk aka open-air taxi to take us back to our hotel.

 Welcome to Thailand!

I'm off again!

I got up this morning very early to catch a van to the airport to fly about 6 hours to see Glenn. He has already arrived so I'm sure if you Google it, you can find out where. I can't wait to see him and visit a new country! This is why I love living in Japan- seeing new places and seeing Glenn mid-cruise!

Only a few more hours, Mr! I can't wait!

PS. This is our hotel.... with our own private pool! Can't wait for that either!

An oldie but goodie

This was my first ever Navy function. The Navy Birthday Ball at Iowa State in 2004. Weeks after I started dating Glenn. I think Cheryl, my mother-in-law, was right to ask, "Are you ready for this life?" before we were even engaged. I'm not sure I was then, but it's here now.

I'm missing you a lot, Mr. A lot a lot. Come home soon! We're waiting for you.