Edinburgh Marathon

So, this will have to be a marathon post to catch up since the last time I wrote... sorry! I really have tried to get this blog written a couple times last week, but it just never got finished... so here's my attempt to summarize. :)

Well, I survived the Edinburgh Marathon. Didn't make my goal time, but overall I would have to say it was a good race. We took the train to Edinburgh on Saturday and arrived in the early afternoon, then walked around the race expo and the gardens in the town centre (it was a beautiful sunny day) before checking into our hotel. The pre-race dinner choice was the Hard Rock Cafe, where I carb-ed up on Twisted Mac and Cheese. :)

Race morning dawned cloudy, gray, and cool. The forecast was for clearing, however, so I put on sunscreen just in case. Martin walked with me to my starting area and took a couple pics before the race started. Don't I look excited?

My goal pace was a 10-min mile, and I started out comfortably running a 9:30. The sun came out around mile 4, and it started getting hot. Yes, it was only 70 degrees or so, but when you train in 55ish-degree weather, that is a big difference! Also, there was little to no shade on the course, so no escape from the heat. (Glad I decided to put on that sunscreen!) I managed to keep my pace under 10-min until mile 11, when the heat started getting to me. I probably should have started drinking more water earlier, but since I hadn't trained with it much, I thought I'd be good. I was wearing my Garmin GPS watch (one of the most amazing products I have ever bought in my life), and I knew I was in trouble when it seemed to take forever to get from 11.2 to 11.5 miles.

Almost without meaning to, I dropped to a walk, then immediately started freaking out. I can't start walking at mile 11! There are 15 more miles to go! I was supposed to run the entire thing! I know for a fact I can run 20 in a row, I just did it 2 weeks ago! I don't think I have ever had a real panic attack, but this was a pretty good mental breakdown. Luckily, somehow, I managed to tell my brain to STOP, calm down, and you will make this okay. The race is not over, nor is my chance to finish it well. After a minute or so of this forced calming, I started running again and mercifully came upon a water station quickly, where I drank a good amount of water and felt a lot more hydrated. I kept running until after the half-marathon point, where I excitedly noted a PR (personal record) of 2:07! My best time for a half-marathon previously had been 2:10, so the 2:07 was a great confidence booster.

It would make a great story at this point to tell you I didn't walk for the rest of the race and smashed my goal time, but the truth is, I really faded after the halfway point. The heat got to me physically and mentally, and I had to settle for alternating running and walking to finish the race. I had just passed the 25-mile point and was planning to start another walk break when I looked ahead along the side of the course and saw Martin with my camera. Now, I'll be honest, as much as I appreciated my travel buddy on this trip, my first thought was "NOOOOO!" Haha. Because the small bit of pride and competitiveness I had left would not let me take a walk break in front of a friend with a camera. :-P

Sooo... I ran the last mile to the finish, though it was not a very fun mile. Here is a picture of me close to the finish, and believe me, the smile was much more about being almost done than being caught on camera. ;-)

I finished in 4:58:07, which I'll admit was disappointing after a goal of 4:30. But on the bright side, it was 10 minutes faster than my Big Sur Marathon time of 5:08, and I managed to come in sub-5 hours, which is a small victory. When someone asks you your marathon time, it's nice to start with a 4 instead of a 5. :) I posted a bunch more pictures and one video from the race and the trip on Facebook, so check them out here if you'd like to see more: http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=433864&id=701905001&l=fcc8c9f7b2

After spending a couple days in Edinburgh after the marathon, I came back to a short but busy work week before Memorial Day weekend. Now, some of you dedicated readers (if there are any of you, haha) might remember that I was supposed to run the Dover Half Marathon back in February, but it got postponed due to the course being too icy. Well, it was postponed until May 31st, exactly 8 days after my marathon. Understandably (I hope), I decided not to run it, but Martin, who had also planned to run in February, decided to run the rescheduled race this past weekend. I was excited to go along as his travel buddy because a) he was such an awesome race buddy in Edinburgh for me and I wanted to return the favor, and b) I love Dover!!!

We drove down on Sunday and explored a couple new areas as well as visiting some old favorites. The race was on Monday morning at a park north of Dover. Unfortunately for the runners, the weather was not great - cold, wet (luckily not raining), and windy. A tiny part of me wished I was running (being around so many runners getting ready for a race just has that effect), but most of me was very happy to just be Martin's "race crew" this time. :) He ran a good race, didn't quite meet his goal but given that the course was ridiculously hilly (removed any reservations I had about not running, haha) and that he hadn't really trained for the event, still posted a very impressive time. We stopped in Canterbury for a post-race lunch at the amazing restaurant we found there in February, and it did not disappoint the second time around! :)

So now I am halfway through another short work week, with only two days until my parents arrive in London...YAY!!! I am very much looking forward to their visit, we have so many fun things planned. I will be driving down to meet them in London for the weekend, then they will come back here for the week. We will probably do a couple day trips to Bury St Edmunds and Dover, with a couple days of work (for me) mixed in, plus an OG softball game or two, haha. The next weekend, we are going to Paris on a base-sponsored trip, which I am really excited about. I have wanted to visit Paris ever since taking high school French, and the frantic rush through the Paris train and metro system on our adventure back from Italy did NOT count!

This also means I have almost no time left to clean the house before they arrive (oops)... so I might have to consider this post finished. 0:-) Thanks for the congrats and comments already on my marathon pics, and I hope you all had an excellent Memorial Day weekend!

Marathon in 2 days!

Yikes! The Edinburgh Marathon is this Sunday... 2 days away! I am definitely getting nervous, but also excited. I don't remember if I mentioned this before, but the OG Commander's wife, the OG Deputy Commander's wife, and the OSS (my squadron) commander's wife are ALL running this marathon too. So, pretty much my whole chain of command will be there when I run... no pressure, right? Haha. Actually, the wives (and their husbands) are all pretty cool, and have been really nice and friendly to me every time the marathon has come up in conversation. Just based on build, I expected them all to be faster than me, but actually the two I have talked to most are expecting to run about the same time I am, so we may even run part of the race together. It'll be fun to know a few people in the crowd of 40,000, plus Martin is coming as my travel buddy, so I'm definitely looking forward to the weekend.

We are leaving tomorrow morning, and I still need to pack (this should not surprise anyone). I think packing is the most stressful part of getting ready for a marathon... I am super-paranoid about forgetting something! I think I haven't gotten too nervous about the whole thing yet because I've been too busy this week to really think about it, and maybe that's not a bad thing. As long as I get packed up and get to Edinburgh tomorrow in enough time to settle in and figure out where I need to go on Sunday morning, I won't be too stressed by race time.

Everyone who has been to Edinburgh says it is a beautiful area, so I hope my legs will function enough on Monday to permit a little sightseeing. And maybe a visit to a spa? Haha, we will see... I really must get to packing since we have an early train, so I think that is all I have to say for now. Will try to post on Sunday night to let you know I survived! :)

Yay Weekends

You know how sometimes you just really need a weekend? This was a long, stressful, and frustrating week on so many levels... and as much as I love my job and the people I interact with on a daily basis, by this Friday I was mentally fried. I kind of wanted to avoid everyone and just sleep until Monday. But then the weekend arrived, and I was blessed to spend time with so many great friends who all remind me why I'm so happy here. :)

I am not going to go into detail on the low points of last week, because the details aren't really important... everyone deals with tough stuff every day, right? That's just life. I get accused of being "too happy" on a fairly regular basis, but it's not because my life is perfect or that I always get what I want. Really, is anyone's life like that? Doubt it. Life really hurts sometimes, and I don't think it is presumptuous to assume you all can agree with me. But at the same time, I have come to realize that even when life hurts, if I just take one minute to look around me, I'll find so many overwhelming reasons that life is, above all, beautiful. And the joy that comes from that is a light that can't be put out.

On one sad note, the Col and his family who have been leading OCF for the last 4 years are moving to Alaska this summer. Col W left yesterday, and his family will follow next month after one of the high schoolers graduates. The whole family has been such an amazing presence in the Lakenheath community, not just in OCF, and they will all be sorely missed. I can't put into words how much they have meant to me and the OCF family as leaders, mentors, and friends. It is so sad to see them go, but I know they will be just as much of a blessing to the Elmendorf community as they have been to us. I was honored to attend Col W's fini flight and farewell luncheon at the end of the week, both great events to honor a great man.

So, what happened this weekend that reminded me of how beautiful life is? To begin, we had a squadron hail and farewell on Friday afternoon after work. I got to catch up with some people I either hadn't seen in a while or don't see very often, ate some great food, and laughed watching a couple friends repeatedly sneak into the food line to grab more of my chocolate chip cookies. Sometimes it's the little things, you know? :) OCF that night was bittersweet... sad to say goodbye to Col W, but happy to know that the group will still be a family and looking forward to welcoming new members as others depart.

Saturday morning was a 5K/10K race on base, and though I tried to convince the weather flight to run with me, no one took the bait. Martin came (so nice to have at least one friend who actually enjoys running!), and there was a family I knew from the Mildenhall weather flight, but overall attendance was pretty low. The upside of this was... I took 2nd place in the women's 10K! Haha. I think I would have been 5th in the 5K (counted 4 girls ahead of me on the turnaround), but only one of them continued on for the 10K, so I won a T-shirt and $5 gift card for the BX. Sweet! Martin took 2nd in the men's 5K (and not just because attendance was low, he is actually super-fast, haha), then ran with me for the second half of my 10K. The weather was great and it was a fun event to get out and run with other people... the 2nd place finish was just icing on the cake. :)

I don't think I have mentioned this before, but I have decided (*cough* have been pressured into by Jose *cough*) to play softball on the OG intramural team this summer. For those who didn't know, I played on my church team in high school, and had fun but was never very good. I've always thought it would be fun to play intramurals, but have been too afraid of dragging the team down or embarrasing myself. The potential for those things is still there, but for some reason I have decided to give it a try this season. The first game is Tuesday, and unfortunately the only practice was held on Friday evening during OCF, so I couldn't go. I was terrified that the first time I would touch a glove or bat in 8 years (yikes, has it really been 8 years since I graduated high school?) would be on Tuesday in front of everyone (including our OG commander/soon-to-be wing commander), so I convinced Martin to run through a few softball drills with me after the race on Saturday. We went out to the field and I was relieved to find that I could hit the ball on a somewhat regular basis, as well as being fairly successful at throwing and catching. I will probably be one of the weaker players on the team, but it is really nice to know I will not be a complete disaster, so chalk that up as a positive note for the weekend!

Saturday night was a farewell dinner for CeCe, one of the weather flight forecasters. It will be sad to see her go (we shared many fun memories at Red Flag in Vegas), but it's always fun to have one last night out with the flight members before someone departs. And as a bonus, this dinner was at my favorite restaurant in Bury St Edmunds! Those sweet potato fries alone can make up for a bad week... ;-) Sunday (today) was pretty low-key, which was nice after a full Saturday. I got to sleep in, which is a major boost on the happiness meter. People say sleep is overrated, but I have to disagree. I really like to sleep. It makes me a happier, less stressed, more productive, and less negatively-emotional individual. Yay sleep!

All of those things may not sound too exciting, but I think the point I am trying to make is that it's everything together that makes me love my life right now. I love all the people that God has given me the opportunity to share life with, and I love the hope and promise of good things to come even when current situations feel hopeless. With all the joy that brings, how can I not be joyful?

Marathon Countdown

The Edinburgh Marathon is two weeks from yesterday (13 days away), and I am starting to get excited! It helped a lot to get my last long run, a 20-miler, out of the way this past Thursday. My training had been slightly derailed by all the craziness of April, and I had a couple bad runs trying to get back into it, so I was a little stressed that I wasn't going to be ready in time. I went out on Thursday with a goal of making it to at least 17 miles, since my previous long run had been 14. It was a great day to run - the weather was perfect (just a little windy), and my new mp3 player had arrived in the mail (thanks Mom!) the day before, so I was thrilled to have my music back, and I knew the daylight would hold out until at least 9pm.

I left my house at 5:30pm, and by the time I got to the point I could have turned around to finish at 17 miles, I decided everything was still feeling good enough to go 20... so I went for it, knowing I would feel a lot more confident going into the marathon if I hit the big 2-0. And I did it! It was a bit slower than I had hoped, but that's not a huge concern for me at this point. My legs completely gave out afterwards... I literally had to take a bath that night because they couldn't stand up long enough to take a shower! As I was sitting there contemplating whether my legs had ever hurt that much before, it occurred to me that this was the first time in my life I had ever RUN 20 miles. The longest I ran before Big Sur last year was 17, and in the marathon it was so mountainous I had to walk on some of the uphills as early as the halfway point. So the 20-miler was a milestone for me! :)

Saturday was a fun day, Jose hosted a Cinco de Mayo party at his house and I learned how to make real Mexican tamales! It was fun to hang out with people from the weather flight again, and there was a lot of great food. This coming weekend should be a good one too - On Saturday morning, there is a 5K and 10K race on base, which I am hoping to convince a number of people to run with me. Then Saturday night is CeCe's going-away dinner... sad that she is leaving, but looking forward to a night out with friends at one of my favorite restaurants in Bury St Edmunds. That's about all for now, otherwise just enjoying the beautiful scenery of spring in England and making fun plans for summer!

Relaxing, finally

Okay, so I didn't write the day after the last one as I had intended... sue me. Haha, just kidding. :) But I will finish talking about the excitement of Carrie's visit! I think I left off with us getting back to my house at 4a.m. Saturday after our crazy travel adventure, so I'll pick up there. We had planned on spending Saturday with Carrie's cousins Mark and Kathryn in Cambridge, and still wanted to do that, but sent them a message to say we would probably not make it down there until the afternoon. I think we made it around 2p.m., and we were blessed with an absolutely gorgeous day!

I had been hoping they would offer to take us punting (the British version of a gondola), and was thrilled when we arrived and were told that was the plan! When you go punting, you can either hire a professional punter (I am assuming that is what they are called, haha), or one person in your group can do the punting. Mark has become an expert punter while living in Cambridge, so he did all the work while Carrie and Kathryn and I sat back and enjoyed the ride, the sun, fruity drinks, and the beautiful sights along the river. Here is a picture of Carrie and me in the punt:

After a wonderful afternoon of punting, we went to a pub to get Carrie her first official British pint. Then Martin met us for dinner at a really cool pub called the Eagle, which used to be an RAF bar and has messages written on the walls and ceilings from WWII aircrews. We stayed at Mark and Kathryn's apartment that night and made Carrie's mom's famous buttermilk pancakes for breakfast the next morning... amazing! Sunday was also gorgeous weather, so we walked around the Cambridge campus and got Mark and Kathryn's awesome tour of all the beautiful buildings. Later that day, I took Carrie to Bury St Edmunds to see Abbey Gardens with all the flowers in bloom.

Carrie's flight back to Florida was supposed to be on Sunday, but thanks to the volcanic ash closing UK airspace, she was delayed until Friday. I had to go back to work on Monday, but when Mark and Kathryn offered to take Carrie and me to London on Wednesday, I immediately put in a leave request for the day off! It was another beautiful day in London, and we hit most of the famous sights: Tower of London, Big Ben, Westminster Abbey, Trafalgar Square, Buckingham Palace... it was so exciting to finally explore the city! I definitely feel more prepared to take my future visitors there for a day. Here is a picture of Carrie and me at the Tower Bridge:

It was so fun to have Carrie here for an extra week, it was like being roommates again! We went out to eat a couple times with friends, went bowling, and spent a couple evenings eating dinner on the couch and watching chick flicks. It was sad to say goodbye on Friday morning, but she had a lot of things to get back to in FL, so I am happy her flight went as scheduled and she made it back across the Atlantic. Here is the photo album with all of our fun times in England: http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=419891&id=701905001&l=5fce919509

I was on weather standby the weekend after Carrie left, and ended up working Saturday so one of our squadrons could make up flying time lost to the volcano. This weekend has been wonderful so far... I had a great time at OCF last night catching up with friends I hadn't seen in a month or longer. Honestly, as much as I love traveling and as many amazing adventures as I had in the last 4 weeks, I am really happy to be sitting still for a weekend! Today I slept in, sat in my backyard in the sunshine and read a book, went running, showered, made dinner... and that's about it. It was glorious. Haha. Tomorrow I need to be more productive and do some cleaning, but I definitely enjoyed being lazy today.

My next trip will be the weekend of May 23rd for the Edinburgh Marathon in Scotland. My training was derailed slightly by all the craziness, but I am pretty much back on track and am starting to get excited about the race! Also of note, the ballot for the 2011 London Marathon opens this coming Tuesday, and I am hoping to get my name in before it fills up. This marathon is so big and popular, you actually have to compete in a lottery to be chosen to enter the race, and you have to put your name in a year ahead of time. I know my chances are not great for getting into the race, but I'd like to at least get my name in the lottery! There are 125,000 lottery slots, and they were gone in less than 2 days last year. The lottery will be held in October, so even if I get my name in on Tuesday, I won't know until this fall whether I get to run. Annoying, yes, but it would be so awesome if I actually got to run it!

That's all from here for now, looking forward to a day of productivity and church tomorrow. :) Hope you enjoy the rest of your weekend!

Travels

Wow… where do I even start??? I knew April was going to be crazy, but thanks to our friend Eyjafjallajokull (the Icelandic volcano), I got way more craziness than I bargained for! I just finished posting two photo albums (one more still to come) from my last two weeks of adventures, and I couldn’t believe they began with Newcastle… that feels like it was a month ago. I know I didn’t finish narrating Poland in the last blog, but in the interest of trying to catch up, I’m going to hope that the captions of the photo album were enough to finish the story. We'll see how far I get on catching you up today, may have to divide and conquer today and tomorrow!


Newcastle was a great time – it is most famous for being a shopping district, but had enough historic sites, cool architecture, and scenery to keep me happy. Friday was a day off work, so Martin and I hopped a train from Bury St Edmunds in the morning and arrived in Newcastle by early afternoon. Our hotel was co-located with the train station, which was super-convenient and within walking distance of everything. That afternoon and evening, we walked around, did some shopping, and found an awesome Italian place for dinner where I had the best lasagna I think I have ever eaten in my life.

Saturday dawned clear, sunny, and warm, so we enjoyed breakfast in the sun at a pub with outdoor seating. Then we went to an interactive life science museum, which hopefully you have been to something similar so you will understand how much fun it was. Instead of staring at stuff on a wall like a normal museum, this one was full of hands-on exhibits like physics demonstrations, city-building, and even an amusement park-like spaceship ride through the planets! We had a blast and spent several hours “playing” with all of the exhibits. Here is a funny picture of me in an igloo:




That afternoon we did some more shopping (the mall was probably the closest thing to a US mall I have seen here), walked along the Tyne river and a couple of the bridges, and watched the famous Millenium Bridge lift up for a boat to pass under it. Exploring the town at night was also fairly interesting – Martin dubbed it the “Vegas of England” because we saw so many people wearing weird costumes (like a Storm Trooper in a tutu) walking around. Sunday morning, we ran 7 miles along the river (I LOVE places with great running routes!), visited the “New Castle” (city’s namesake), climbed all the way to the roof for some great views, and browsed a riverside market before catching the train back home. Here is the link to the Newcastle photo album for many more fun pictures: http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=418566&id=701905001&l=5d57006b9b


After getting back to my house Sunday night, I basically just switched out dirty clothes for clean ones in the suitcase and got ready to fly to Italy to meet Carrie! I worked a half day on Monday, then drove to Stansted airport for my evening flight to Trieste, where Carrie (my college roommate, who is also a USAF Lt and works as a developmental engineer at Eglin AFB, FL) was lecturing at an international physics center. Trieste is in the northeast corner of Italy, on the coast about 2 hours east of Venice. I arrived at the conference center on Monday night and met a few of Carrie’s team members before we went back to her hotel room to catch up on “girl talk”. :)

The next day, we went with several of her team members on a day trip to Venice. We took the train into the city and spent all day walking around, sightseeing, and shopping. There are no cars in Venice, so the "streets" are either pedestrian walkways or waterways. We saw plenty of the famous gondolas, but did not ride in one since they are super-expensive (80 Euros, about equivalent to $150). We saw the famous San Marco square, with the beautiful cathedral which unfortunately had scaffolding obstructing half of its face. Here is a picture of Carrie and me on a bridge in Venice:



That night, we had dinner back in Trieste with a bunch of people from the physics center at a really good pizza place. On Wednesday, Carrie and I did a walking tour of Trieste with audio guides (yeah, we looked like tourists). There were plenty of interesting historical sites and beautiful views along the coast. We walked through the gardens of the beautiful Miramare Castle near our hotel, and planned to tour the inside of the castle the next morning before leaving for the airport. Here is the photo album from our adventures in Italy: http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=419009&id=701905001&l=4896962e6d



So, Thursday morning... I took the first shower, and turned on my laptop to check my email while Carrie was in the shower. My internet home page is a UK news site, so when my browser opened, I saw the headline "Icelandic Volcano Eruption Affects UK Airspace, Cancels Flights" with a picture of an erupting volcano. I thought, "you have GOT to be kidding me..." I read the story, and it said that most of the flights canceled were to and from Scotland, and that you should check with your airline to find out whether your flight was canceled. I immediately went to the Ryanair home page, and found a looooong list of canceled flights. Ours was NOT on the list. So, Carrie got out of the shower, I told her the funny story about the volcano, we laughed and then checked out of our hotel and had a great time touring the Miramare Castle before heading to the airport.


The travel nightmare began when we got the airport in Trieste and found out our flight was cancelled, along with all flights in UK airspace. We decided that if we could get to Paris, we could get across the Chunnel, so we tried to get train tickets to Paris. The station in Trieste was booked full, but they put us on a train to Venice in hopes that we could get Paris tickets there. When we got to Venice, they were also sold out of Paris tickets, but put us on a train to Milan and gave us a train ticket to Paris out of Milan the next morning. In Milan, there were zero hotels available because of some international furniture show being held in the city, so we spent the night in the Milan train station with approximately 200 other people. It was freezing cold and the floor and benches were cement… definitely not an experience I ever want to have again!


We got on our train to Paris Friday morning, and found out from people sitting near us that Eurostar tickets through the Chunnel were booked through Monday, and ferries out of Calais were booked through Sunday. Not good news… Miraculously, there was a British guy sitting across from us who was on the phone with his wife, and she found ferry tickets out of Cherbourg (in northwest France) to Portsmouth (southern England). He offered to get us tickets too, and we jumped at the chance to just get across the water SOMEHOW. There was an Australian girl named Carley sitting near us who lived in London and also joined our little traveling group, and she ended up being a lifesaver when we got into Paris – she expertly navigated the Paris metro and various bus and train stations to get us on the train to catch our ferry in time.


Carley also offered to let us stay with her in London overnight, since we would be getting into Portsmouth after 11 p.m., too late to get a train. Her boyfriend, who also lived in London, was going to drive down to Portsmouth and pick us up. This little plan somewhat fell apart just as we were boarding the ferry, when her boyfriend called and said he wasn’t getting off work til 3 a.m. (he’s a DJ)... and so we were going to be stuck in Portsmouth with no train and no hotel. Carrie and I did NOT want to spend another night in a train station (we weren't even sure the Portsmouth train station was open 24 hours) and decided it was worth the price of a 3-hour taxi ride, so I called Martin to see if he could Google a phone number for taxis in Portsmouth so we could get one back to the London-Stansted airport (where my car was). When I explained the situation, he instead volunteered to drive down to Portsmouth to get us (an 8-hour round trip), which was absolutely amazing. I definitely owe him big time! After dropping Carley off in London and getting my car at Stansted, we got back to my house at 4 a.m. Saturday morning.


Sooo… just in case you weren’t keeping track (and because I left some of the minor craziness out), what should have been a 2-hour flight on ONE airplane turned into a 40-hour chaotic nightmare on 3 buses, 4 trains, 1 ferry, and 1 car ride. What a mess, huh? And it turns out we were actually some of the lucky ones – there are still people trapped places a week later! Carrie was supposed to fly back to Eglin on Sunday, but she was stuck here with me all week until UK airspace opened back up on Wednesday and she was able to get a flight out on Friday.


Whew, I am exhausted just from telling that story again, as I am sure you are from reading it! I'll stop here for tonight and post again tomorrow with all of the fun stories and pictures from Carrie's time in England.

Big News!!!

NOTE: I am posting this early Friday morning before leaving for Newcastle for the 3-day weekend. I have been writing this over about 3 days and was hoping to get it finished before I left, but no dice. However, I am posting it half-finished because I can't wait any longer to tell you the big news and if I didn't post now, I have no idea when I would... because as soon as I get back from Newcastle, I leave for Italy and then Carrie comes back here with me! So here is half a blog... all you're really missing is the second half of the Poland story, so enjoy and I'll catch up when I can!

So… remember a couple blogs ago when I said I might have some big news soon? Well… I got it yesterday!!! :-D I know the suspense is killing you (haha), so here goes: My request to extend my assignment here from 2 years to 3 years was approved, and I got the official notification yesterday that my new DEROS (end of the assignment) is now July 2012 instead of July 2011. WOOOOOHOOOOOOOO!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! :-D

As you can tell, I am ecstatic, and I don’t even think the news has really sunk in yet. It’s such a huge relief… I have been so worried that my time here is flying by and that I will run out of time to do everything I want to do and have the experiences I want to have. Now I can relax and breathe because I’m not moving next summer. As of March 29th, I have been here 8 whole months (2/3 of a year!)… and it feels like the blink of an eye. I mean, at the same time, I know I have done SO much in those 8 months, but I think I still have trouble believing sometimes that this is all actually real. Does that sound stupid? Sigh… I wish I could think of a better way to explain it.

This extension also means that I will likely be deployed Jun-Nov of next year (2011). Nothing else to say about that right now, really, just putting it out there because that’s how the system works and it will probably happen. No reason to worry/elaborate until it does… just plan on visiting outside of that window. :-)

On to the Poland trip… what a blast! It’s so nice to have people to travel with. I’ll never give up a chance to travel or sightsee for lack of a travel buddy, but having one or two is definitely the preferred situation. Alex and Martin were so much fun, and both of them were way better at navigating the streets of Warsaw than I was! Our flight took off from London late Friday morning, and landed in Lodz, Poland, in the early afternoon. We caught a bus from the airport to the train station, then got on a train for the 1.5-hour ride to Warsaw. I was really excited that the train had compartments just like in the Harry Potter movies!

When we got into Warsaw, it was rainy and getting dark, so we took a cab to our hotel and checked in before heading to dinner. The hotel was really nice, and our “room” was more like an apartment. We were right off one of the major city streets, and there were an overwhelming number of restaurants and cafes to choose from. We picked a traditional Polish restaurant and enjoyed dinner including pierogies, kielbasa, and potato dumplings. Exploring further down the main street, we came upon a huge open park where an outdoor Good Friday service was being held. There was a huge lighted cross, a stage, choirs singing, and crowds of people packed in as far as we could see. Alex explained that Poland was very Catholic, so this type of event involved the entire community. We watched for a while, then explored a little more before heading back to the hotel for bed.

Saturday morning, we had breakfast at an incredible specialty chocolate store/café. The place was beautiful, and we were served a 3-course breakfast including croissants (plain and chocolate), yogurt and granola (with chocolate sprinkles), and rolls (with chocolate spread). And then there was the hot chocolate… want to know exactly what it tasted like? Imagine drinking a cup of warm brownie batter. Yeah, it was that amazing… and smelled like baking brownies! One thing I forgot to mention up to this point is that the exchange rate for the Polish zloty to American dollar is about 3-to-1, so everything is really cheap for us. Our fancy breakfast cost less than $9. Cool, huh? :-)

And this is where I run out of time... on the positive side, I did get pictures posted, so check these out for more from Poland: http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=409265&id=701905001&l=e8cd2222ff