And so it begins

Day 1 in Korea

“I don’t know when I count” I say to my husband. In this particular instance, we were aboard a bus taking us from the in-processing building on post to the DFAC (dining facility) for breakfast. The guy wrangling us on to the bus had called for a count off, and luckily in this case I was able to quickly enough discern they just wanted people on the bus and not specifically soldiers and blurted out “Three!” without too much confusion.

But this has been a theme of the past 24 hours or so and will likely continue to be at least during the in-processing ahead. Of the two dozen or so new soldiers who arrived yesterday and are doing “Day Zero” training all day today, not one seems to have a spouse along, though several have families as they've asked questions about how to address various issues when their families arrive. Overall, I’ve been either completely ignored or politely acknowledged depending on the situation, from the briefer giving me a warm “Good morning, ma’am” to the later comment I heard on the bus– “We have 25 people on the bus. But it’s not all military, there’s a wife.” (I can’t even really discern the reason for the last comment- it seemed to just be a statement of fact, but why did the commenter feel the need to differentiate?) There was even a small ruckus at said dining facility when the cashier at the front was insistent that either I couldn’t eat there or that I had to pay (the first was untrue, the second we were offering money for, to some confusion) which was only cleared up many minutes later after some tricky limited language conversation with the manager. And of course, after holding up many of the other folks behind us.

As I noticed when I stayed with Ben in the soldier’s quarters a few months ago at JAG school, none of the other spouses I’ve encountered seem particularly keen to jump into these experiences with their significant others. They seem to stay in hotels elsewhere, eat elsewhere, generally make themselves scarce unless at an official event where showing up and looking pretty is part of the package. It’s probably that they all know better than me, or have done this once and are now over dealing with the awkward looks, or perhaps feel awkward themselves walking around in soldier’s quarters and facilities like they belong (God knows I do). There's that whole "they're serving the country, it's a very special job," and technically we're not... but....

In some ways, this pisses me off that spouses who have likely given up their careers, homes, friends and familiar circumstances to move across an ocean to support their service member can’t feel comfortable in their new surroundings. But yesterday I also realized that in some ways I was the only spouse in attendance at Ben’s “bring your wife to work” day. If he were at my research office in Seattle, I wouldn’t want him interrupting my boss’s remarks or getting in my way when I’m trying to accomplish things. So should I be surprised that it makes the most sense for me to mostly be quiet and ask questions only when we’re waiting around?

The to-do list for today looks both terribly domestic and at the same time just awesome. After balancing school, work, thesis, student senate and school governance,  both past and upcoming wedding celebrations  and until fairly recently helping with a mayoral campaign, it’s strange to be by myself with no phone, no internet (yet) and a full day to deal with such a small number of things. I can understand how it would be easy in this life to focus on keeping the home in order and going to the gym, and I think I’ll enjoy it for a while and then enjoy getting back to work myself.

To do:

Call the sister

Go to mini-PX

Go swimming! A lap lane that's completely empty= heaven!

Enter ID in system so I can leave post

Explore- hotel, post, as far as I can walk?

Korean character flashcards

Buy a watch (so used to the iPhone ):

Work on rank/symbols

Vocab of the day:
Korean: 여보세요/ Annyong Haseo= hello (new goal to phonetically spell out as many Korean vocab words as possible in the future!)
Military: DFAC= dining facility