Half - Way

Today marks the half way point of my great adventure... It is interesting how the main theme from my classmates this week is we all are a bit weary of being away from home. The atmosphere is good and people are still working hard but there is only so much cafeteria food you can have before...well before you start repeating the menu to each other on the way to chow every day.. . or joke about the new food.. will it be chicken and fish? or fish and chicken? Can't complain, the food isn't horrible and the salad bar is pretty good....

I am still learning something every day and meeting new friends... Some of you may know this story... So here I sit in my room, typing my research papers and one of the guys next door, Hossom from Egypt asks if I could take him into town to an Egyptian restaurant where he is planning on buying food for International Night... To set the scene you have picture 27 students from all over the world that speak varying degrees of English, don't get to see their families and have limited contact with them... and most importantly don't have a car to escape... I feel bad for them.. All of them I have met are good people...

So I'm thinking Hossom needs to pick up some food for the group event so I tell him no problem.. "tell me when you want to go"... and I ask him how far away the restaurant is. He tells me it's like 10 minutes which was good because it was pouring rain.... So Hossom asks me a few minutes later if his friend from Iraq, MahMooud can come with us so I said sure no problem... A few minutes later he sticks his head back in my room with a big smile and asks if Alec from the Ukraine can come too... I laughed because I suddenly realized these poor guys never get off the base so I was the international tour guide for the night....

Hossom gives me the name of the restaurant and I plug it into the GPS and off we go... well its not 5 minutes away.. its in Fredricksburg about 25 miles away. This area of the country is beautiful but the biggest drawback is the traffic... its horrendous... 25 miles in the rain and traffic and I find Al Adin....

It was an Egyptian Restaurant alright.. at least during the day.. at night its a Hookah Bar.... Ya I know, whats Hookah? Well it is flavored tobacco smoked through a three foot water pipe... by all kinds of different people.. Hossom is a connoisseur of Hookah and that was his real motive... MahMooud, Alec and I don't smoke so we had soft drinks and tea while Hossom had nothing but a big smile and smoke coming out of his nose :)

Alec asks the the waiter for something but because this is a bar the noise level is pretty high and I cant hear but can tell that that something is up because the waiter has the "trout look" on his face... Turns out that Alec was asking for a "serviette"... It took me about 5 minutes and Google to figure out he wanted a napkin... Serviette is French for Napkin... funny stuff..

So as the night goes on and we are talking to each other about the differences in our countries, police work and generally having a good time laughing at ourselves for our communication issues I suddenly realize the crowd is changing.. the music gets much more modern and the tables start filling up with young American men wearing dark sunglasses and lotsa bling...

Without judgment but years of police work causing my instinctual hair on the back of my neck to rise I realize its filling up with gang types... Well, I made Hossom smoke faster as I saw where this heading.. once the international incident calmed down I'm sure I would get the blame as I "should have known better." ;) We left without a hitch and made the trek back to Quantico... with a guy from Egypt and the Ukraine trying to give me directions... Finally I told them to let the American take lead :) and got us to the dorm....

That was a fun night despite having to wash the smoke out of my clothes... I met three guys who truly are just like me only they live in other parts of the world... They have families and children, work too may hours for low pay and miss their families terribly... It is really neat to make life long friends from other places.. Who knows maybe future vacations could be to Egypt or Iraq or the Ukraine, or to Greece to visit Chris.. or to Barbatos for Ian, or Argentina, or Jordan or Finland or Germany or to the many other places represented here by other police officers.. just like me...

Well its late and I am running a 5K in the morning so it's time to sign off for now.... I hope all of you get a chance if you haven't had it already, to meet people from all over the world.. people who seek freedom, justice, safety and an honorable life....just like us... God Bless...