Hello, everyone! Or MarHaba as they say in Arabic. This is my first blog post so forgive me if it's a bit rough. I am currently training to be a Transition Team member to assist the Iraqi Army. I'm doing the training in Fort Riley, Kansas and will be deploying later this summer. The training, so far, has been rewarding. We are learning to speak Arabic in the Iraqi dialect and becoming immersed in their culture. We even had an "authentic" Iraqi meal this week and had a Q & A session with a retired Iraqi General.
This training will be great for the deployment and probably should be done by anyone that is deploying because it makes you realise just how similar our people are. There are also a lot of differences that need to be known before you go and the information would have made my previous deployments a lot more rewarding. I am going to be taking some extra Arabic classes and try to learn as much as I can so that I can be an effective advisor to the Iraqi Army.
The team I am with is great, but we are still new to it and I'm sure that the personality differences will start clashing soon. Hopefully it doesn't get too crazy!
I guess this is good enough for the first one, I'll be posting at least once a week, so stay tuned...
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