Tuesday April 7th

Just got off of work. Got a little action, we had a C-5 land with Pax(passengers) and then take off two hours later with Pax. I drove the 44 pax bus twice, I need to get it on my license. I have 29 pax bus but not 44. It's a lot longer, like a greyhound bus. With being a crewleader back home, usually I don't get to drive the vehicles that often. I'm usually delegating, coordinating, and running the computer reports. I did a little Space Available Sign-up. To those who do not know, active duty members, and to a certain extent reservists, are able to fly free if there is space available on a plane. There are a lot of rules and restrictions that apply and it's my job to know them all. I thought I've seen just about every little wrinkle in the process but Osan has there own little ways of doing things, things that we don't really bother with. Oh well, it's just going to help me get more well-rounded I guess. Trust me, our job is not very exciting, but it is essential because things need to move and we're in the job of moving!! I'm going to go jog, see if I can sign up for a golf lesson at the Course, I have never officially golfed before and I want to know the basics. It's cheap here! I'm going to go shopping, want to get it done today so I can ship it tomorrow. Wednesday and Thursday I'm going to do some more sight seeing, probably solo. The base encourages you go with a buddy, our tour chief says we have to, but I know my way around here better then anyone so I'm not worried. I will write more tonight if anything exciting happens while shopping. Cao

p.s. someone asked what G.I. means. It's either "government issue" or "ground infantry". They soldiers in WWII, Korea, and Vietnam were nicknamed G.I.

9:30 pm:

Back from shopping, doing some laundry. It was real cool, just went two stops on the train to but saw some awsome stuff. The area near the train station was a huge shopping district. All sorts of wild, cutting edge fashions, mainly for skinny people! Took some great camera footage. Lotto mart wasn't all that. I did find some stuffed animals for my girls but they weren't anything spectacular. I noticed in a suberb like this, away from both the base and Seoul is the language barrier. Noone knows english, they don't even try to attempt to speak it. They start speaking in Korean to me and it's like, "Does it look like I speak Korean?!" Afterward got a tasty java, rasberry mocha, at least that was in english. I saw a enclosed outdoor market and decided to check it out. I remember a similar one when I was in Japan. It started out interesting enough, it was obvious this is where the blue-collared types go to buy things. It got luny when i got into the food section. I had to break out the camera. Some of the most disgusting stuff you'd ever see. I was so nervous filming, it looks like an alleyway but it's enclosed, and these Koreans are looking at me all crazy ($%$# G.I!) Gross dried fish, squid, blowfish, octopus, unsanitary looking chicken, pork. Live crabs in a tank, that was cool. What was so completely dicusting was a tank with some wierd looking eel. It looked like a giant worm! I got some great footage. Stopped at a noodle shop in the train station, ordered some noodles for about 2 bucks. The lady was very sweet, tried like crazy to communicate in english but it was pointless. I'm sure she rarely sees G.I in that area. I really don't get the dudes and dudettes that never, or rarely venture off base. You could go to a different train station a day and see very differing things. I wish i could have taken pictures of the market but being alone, I thought a camera might set someone off. well, goodnight!