Almost whole again

Well Amanda is on the road as I'm writing this. I (obviously Nathan) am finally settling down in Monterey, California for a long 63 week course in Arabic. I feel like it's been forever since Amanda and I have been together. During this past week I've been able to organize a pickup and delivery of our household goods from our storage facility and I've found us an (suprisingly large and nice) apartment. Amanda ought to be here on Wednesday of this next week to sign the lease with me. Granted, I'll still need to fill out some paperwork in order to get permission to actually live off base, but that shouldn't take long. Also, we'll be living without most of our personal belongings, which should follow about two weeks behind us if I understand correctly.

I've only been here about two weeks so far and already I've done things that I cannot wait to show Amanda. The second day I was here I decided to go whale watching with my roomate. If you've never done that before it is simply amazing. Especially seeing those humpbacks jumping not far from your boat. But, be warned, take dramamine every day starting about two days before you go up until you go. Very important. I learned my lesson the hardway and, uh, provided a lot of chum for the fishes off the back of the boat.

My actual language course doesn't start until October 29th. Yes that's right. I'm here for two months before my class starts. What will I be doing? Night CQ. Basically CQ (charge of quarters) is the office responsible for what goes on in the squadron area on a daily basis. It is manned by about 5-6 people (like me). CQ is operated on 12 hour shifts with 2 days on then 2 days off. For example, I'll be working Saturday night 545 pm - Sunday 545 AM and then the same thing Sunday night, but I won't work again until Wednesday night. Leaves me a lot of free time. I'll have my first shift Saturday night, so we'll see how I like it.

I'm pretty excited about learning Arabic. Getting paid to take a course like this is just cool. And, they issued me a 32 gig ipod touch with the whole Arabic cirriculum loaded onto it (I can keep the ipod as long as I graduate). I'm trying to get my hands on anything that'll give me a bit of a head start for my class. My roomate actually checked out Rosetta Stone from the library here for a week and it's actually a pretty cool little program. It has a unique way of teaching you the language that's kinda based on matching sounds with pictures to get the point across. But now I can say that I speak (some) Arabic! "Bint wa welled fee sa yahre" (phoenetically, Arabic has a different alphabet) means "Girl and boy in car".

That's prettymuch the update for now. I have internet now (not many options available for internet out here). I got one of those wireless usb modems from verizon. Yay.