Monday, October 4, 2010

small base woes

So, it's no secret, this is a TINY base!  If I'm not mistaking, there are around 4,000 people working on the base and less than 1/2 of them are soldiers, some American civilian contractors and more than 1/2 are local nationals (this info is all available on a google search, so don't think I'm breaking any opsec rules!).  That means we had more students in my high school than there are soldiers here.  Yeah, like I said, TINY!  It's nothing like FLW where you could go to the commissary every day for a month and not once see a person you know.

There are definitely pros & cons that come along with this.  One of the cons?  Going to a party and spending an hour chatting with a guy who turns out to be the only OBGYN on post...yeah, that's not someone I care to know on a personal level! (no offense, to any OBGYN's out there)  Another?  the gossip!  I haven't experienced it yet, but I know it's coming, it's just a matter of time.  So many women swimming in the same little pool of water?  Yep, it's going to happen!  I'm sure it's only a matter of time until the whole base knows about this blog, which is fine, but I will have to be extremely careful what I say on here (I have NO filter, so this is going to be challenging).  Lucky for you, this means no more venting =)  I have considered going private, but then I think of all the amazing women I wouldn't know if this blog had been private and I just can't do it.

There are positives too. It's nice to see a familiar face everywhere you go and being able to walk/ride my bike (that I don't have yet) means I have NO excuse not to get some cardio in.

I will say, for  the size of the base, there is definitely not a lack of activities.  Pretty much every single day/night there is something going on.  Whether it be a special dinner or activity at the community club, a bible study, or a day trip provided by MWR, I've never seen a base with this much activity AND participation.  All the other bases we've been to could have had stuff going on but here, people actually take advantage of it.

Wow this started out as me telling you all about the OBGYN thing and I just went on and on huh?  My bad!  I'll stop now =)

2 comments:

hmb said...

LOL about the OBGYN...that's somebody I only want to see ONCE per year :)

Julie Danielle said...

That is funny about the OBGYN. Our first base had 3000 soldiers and I did enjoy the close community we had. But it did get frustrating at times. I felt really strange when we first moved here because it is a whole division. It's so different!