Haven’t posted in a while… lotsa’  stuff happens in two weeks’ time.   Let’s see…

Wednesday, the 24th, we had a USO-tour come through Camp Hovey… some country band named ‘Bomshel’, though they were only marginally country (one of their set-numbers was a cover of No Doubt’s Just A Girl).   I got some good pictures.
Thursday the 25th was mandatory Cold Weather Safety Training all day… BO-RING!
Friday night of the 26th we had a Hail & Farewell for SGT Woods, one of our NCO’s who’s PCS-ing to Ft. Stewart.  I stuck around for the chicken wings, the ceremonial parts, and some of the toasts, but when it began turning into a drunk-fest, I had to leave.
 
Technically, I am now an actual Professional photographer.  Our company First Sergeant paid me for copies of the photos I took of the Bomshel concert… granted, it was only $1 to cover the cost of the CD-ROM I copied them to, but it’s my first dollar, dammit, and I’m getting it framed.  Annie Liebowitz, look out. 

This Friday, I go up to Brigade S-1 to get all my promotion points fixed, all my old records input on my ERB, and aside from that, the real excitement is enrolling for Tae Kwon Do classes here on-post (hey, the Koreans invented the artform… might as well learn it here).  The classes are free, but the uniform costs $160.00… thankfully they’ll let me pay for it after payday.  We tested for our Yellow Belts Friday morning, and I’m happy to say that I passed… I am now, officially, G.I. Joe with the Kung-Fu Grip.

This past weekend was a pretty good one for me; Saturday was another foray into Seoul with PFC Choi and PV2 Bernard, this time to visit Gyeongbokgung Palace and take Bernard to some music-store mall to shop for a guitar effects pedal.  The palace is impressive, even moreso considering that they had to rebuild much of it from 1949 on, to restore/replace what the Japanese had destroyed during their colonial occupation of the country (the second time the Japanese trashed the place… first time was in 1592).  The weather was gorgeous, many good pictures were taken, and the restaurant meal afterwards was only so-so.  Regardless, a good day.
 

Most Korean shopping malls are unlike American malls in-that they specialize in one variety of merchandise.  Dongdaemun was all about clothing, Yongsan was all about electronic devices, and Gyeongbokgung is all about musical instruments.  Next time I go to one of these places I’ll have to get pictures to post… imagine 60+ vendors inside a two-block-long building selling all manner of one thing.  It’s weird to see that many pianos in one location.

 
Otherwise, life is still going well for me… scuttlebutt today is that they’re looking to lateral-promote me to Corporal, and transfer me to Bravo “Blackfoot” Troop to take over as the medic NCO for that element.  It’s normally an E-6 position, which would look good on my NCOER, and it’s not like I’ve had a long time to get settled-in here in HHT… we’ll see what happens.  Hopefully, I’ll make the cutoff score for E-5 in December, and will have hard stripes soon.

And that’s pretty-much the story for now… gotta’ get some sleep; it’s 03:45 here.

Take ‘er easy, people.