MRE

Joe brought back a special surprise from Korea that we enjoyed last weekend - a pair of MREs!  (Meal, Ready-to-Eat.)

Yes, it was about as exciting as it sounds.  But surprisingly enough, it was a hair tastier than expected.  We decided to enhance the MRE experience by having an "MRE picnic" at White Beach.



Oooh boy, here we go.




Lindsay's Veggie Lasagna MRE!  God Bless Evansville, Indiana for making these things.



MILITARY RATIONS ARE GOOD PERFORMANCE MEALS.  "I can't believe I performed like this for a month." - Joe

Lindsay's crackers, with peanut butter.  Both are items that are hard to screw up - these were not bad.

Joe's cheese spread and tortillas.

Joe's cheese spread and tortillas.

Warming up the entrees in the chemical heaters (just add a little water and, as the packet says, lean against "a rock, or something.")!

Joe's pork rib with barbecue sauce.  Could have been worse.  BBQ sauce is also hard to screw up in long storage, and covers many sins.

 

Veggie lasagna.  Mine didn't heat up quite as well as Joe's pork rib.  Unfortunate.



Our picnic site.

 

All in all, the MRE was not terrible.  Of course, I only ate it one Saturday for lunch.  Joe ate them every day for a month.

 





Korea

Ok, I'm going to try to tell you a little bit about Korea without overwhelming you with too many pictures! That being said, there are so many I'm trying to cram into this one post that I'll let the pictures do the talking and try to restrict my comments to shorter captions.


4AM departure = naps on concrete parking lots.



The happy dental team.



Our High Speed Vessel (HSV), the WestPac Express, was actually quite spacious. I was expecting the inside of a metal box, and this greatly exceeded those expectations.



Loading from the aft - cargo and utility vehicles main deck, passengers top deck.



The HSV had airliner-type seating, but wider and with more legroom.



A nice dining/lounge area.

Wide passageways running the length of the ship.

Finally it was time to leave Naha Port and take to the high seas.



Armed guard - this is the view out the very front of the boat, where we sat.

 

Spectacular dual waterjet engines.





HSV bridge.



After 24 hours of sea travel (no motion sickness, thank you dramamine), we got our first glimpse of Korea. Oh, Pohang.



If this scene doesn't get your spirits up I don't know what will.



Offloading the HSV - note the catamaran-like twin hull with dual jets on each side.

Arrival at Camp Mujuk.

The medical/dental team eating a cheery MRE breakfast.

My "pad" in our billeting tent. All the things I held dear: cot, MRE, light, envelopes and paper to write Lindsay.

Playing M*A*S*H.

Another shot of Medical Row.

The outside of Dental. What? Can't tell it apart?

Mobile dental (ADAL) setup. Don't ask me what ADAL stands for.

Lunch break during the first days of setup - lots of engineers working on our generator situation.

What would a post by Joe be without some local creepy crawlies?



Those dragonflies were everywhere, but this blue bug was special.



These giant slugs were also everywhere, and spectacular. They became disgusting when one marine figured out one salt pack from an MRE would make them basically explode. Guess what we had to watch out for as we walked up and down the hill every day.

Not to be outdone by Okinawa, Korea also had large spiders.

Korean beef barbecue. Enough said. Spectacular.

"Spicy pork." Similar eating style to the first picture, not as spectacular but still pretty good.

The ROK (Republic of Korea) Hard Cafe. Very unspectacular. I tried to stomach it for awhile (anything to mix it up from daily MREs!) but my last meal came when a friend found a hair, not on top of her shrimp tempura, but baked INTO the tempura batter. Yes, I still bought a coffee mug to remember the place.

On the third and fourth weekends we had the opportunity to go to Camp Walker (in Daegu, 90 minutes away) to go to the chapel. The drive through the low mountains was beautiful. These low mountains were everywhere in the region, and apparently everywhere in the peninsula (again, very M*A*S*H-like).

Writing Lindsay in the Starbucks at Camp Walker - a fully-equipped base with families rather than the more spartan training area of Mujuk.

Just to emphasize the beauty of Pohang, this is how it looked from the top of our hill at Camp Mujuk during the day.



It's even more beautiful at night.



I did shoot an M9. Perhaps I was pretending my target was an MRE?

Dental challenged medical to a game of basketball. I wore my IUSD t-shirt (big tooth on the back) so everyone would be sure of which team I belonged to. We kept it close but lost 21-19.

More beef barbecue. I loved that everything was over charcoal - mmm so good.

Any guesses what this beverage might be?!?! AND IN A GLASS BOTTLE, mmm so good.

So a little bit about our evenings. Our only opportunity to explore Korea came Friday, Saturday, and Sunday evenings 6PM-1AM, and we could only go to this little strip of Americanized stores, restaurants, and bars where everything was overpriced. The only exceptions to this limitation were the two trips to Daegu and one museum trip our last weekend.

Soju, the main libation of Korea. Three major kinds exist, apparently - a standard rice distillate similar to vodka, some sort of "flour" soju, and this kind - a bamboo variety. This one tasted similar to a white wine, was served in sake-glass-like portions, and was intended to be shot (lower alcohol content made this doable, thank you very much).

Food at the soju bar. I wish I knew more of what it was. The closer dish was termed something similar to a Korean pizza, and the far dish was like a pasta/gnocchi preparation in a sweet and sour sauce with sesame seeds.



Our one day of culture - Kyongju. This city is the site of the ancient kingdom of Silla, dominant 2000 years ago over the whole Korean peninsula.



The bell of Seongdeok the Great, cast in 771AD. Creepy legend about the origins of this bell. Ask me sometime.

Museum grounds.

Flowers. I figured I had enough bug pictures, it was time for some flowers for Lindsay. Mind you, flowers were much harder to find than bugs in Pohang!

Some were beautiful though.

Perhaps because Kyongju was a good 60 minutes from Pohang!

The artwork and colors on the recreated structures were stunning!

Finally time to head home. All our luggage is being "palletized" in preparation for shipping to the port and loading onto the HSV to Okinawa.

Back on the boat, heading back to Lindsay. This is another view of the very front of the boat and shows you how we slept - the boat had about 50 mattresses to spread around in the aisles. We'd share halves as big pillows and traded off naps during the day.

Sunrise over the East China Sea, full speed ahead to Okinawa.

I was really happy to be home with Lindsay! I have never been happier than when I saw her (and when I got to finally shower and put on clean clothes instead of the five-day-old already-sweated-in uniform routine)!

Thanks to all of you for your thoughts and prayers while we were apart.