thank you

I want to write about this before it slips away and becomes one of those things that goes into the category labelled "I'll eventually write about" and then never do.

This month is Asian Pacific Heritage month. On base we celebrated it tonight. Not wanting to miss out on good foreign cuisine, I went. All by myself. By the cool thing was that when I sat down at a table alone, I had others join me. They weren't military. They weren't DoD civilians. They weren't even contractors. They were Filipinos that live and work in the area -- part of the group that travelled through checkpoint after checkpoint with children in tow so that their children could perform for us as part of our celebration. By the time I finished my meal (it was delicious, by the way), I had explained the usual why I'm here, what I do, what I'm getting out of this deployment, and how much this meant to me that they came to base and celebrated with us.

For those very brief moments, I felt like I was living my ordinary civilian life again. Good food, good times, families and children and smiles everywhere.

Thank you.