Welcome to Waegwan

August 20, 2010

Day 1

After a much anticipated arrival, I have finally made it to my new stomping grounds for the next year. Yesterday after packing up my bags once again, I got on a bus to the Seoul train station and then boarded a train to Daegu. After arriving, we were greeted by members of our unit who then loaded us on another bus and drove us thirty minutes or so to Camp Carroll situated in the city of Waegwan. My lessons learned from the travel of Thursday morning/afternoon are: pack lighter next time you have to spend two weeks traveling across the world and around a foreign country and the train system here is awesome. The train stations are clean, tickets are very cheap, and there are few stops on your trip, which makes for very expedient travel!

Upon arrival, we dropped our bags and were brought straight to the housing office to see if there were quarters available for officers, unfortunately the man in charge was out for the afternoon so we were asked to return the next day. I went back to my unit and started in-processing at my unit. It mainly consisted of turning in a large amount of paperwork and filling out some forms. And then I made the day of second lieutenant, when I went in and introduced myself to the current Human Resources Officer. She was beyond excited that I had arrived, knowing that she would only have a week or so left and then she would be heading back to the states. My only comparison was while I was deployed; I can’t even explain how exciting it was when the unit who replaced us showed up on the planes.

I didn’t stay long at the unit because I still needed to go get settled into yet again another hotel. Do you have any idea what it feels like to have been living in hotels for pretty much the last 5 months of my life…it’s crazy. But here I am again in Army Lodging in a room comparable to the one I had at Fort Jackson.

Day 2

Although I call it day 2, this was really the first full day of in-processing and the first full day for me with my new unit. I say that so you can see just how hectic it is for a transitioning soldier. I woke up this morning at 0430 so that I could wake-up and stretch for the diagnostic PT (Physical Training) test I had to take at 0530. Lucky for me I am what they call a PT stud and despite the ungodly humidity, I still surpassed all the standards for my age group and maxed the test! This was a good thing because I found out that I would be meeting with the Commander on Monday morning and it will definitely give me a leg up to walk in there and tell him I got a 300 on the test. From what I hear, like most commanders he loves to run!

For about thirty minutes after the PT test I cleaned up, changed, grabbed some coffee and began my busy morning. First I dropped off my medical and dental records at the different clinics here while filling out more paperwork as I went to each. Next I headed to my unit and was briefed about all the online trainings I had to complete. This was probably one of my favorite parts of the day as I got excited to present them all my certificates and say “bam, I’m done son!” But no sooner then taking them out of my folder the sergeant in charge told me that the website I had gone to was the wrong one. How could that be I wondered when I got the information straight off of the Korea website, but apparently the information was not updated so I will now have to redo 7 online trainings. I would not have been that irked about it until later I found out the training is exactly the same, the only difference is the training certificate will have a different emblem on it. This is ridiculous to me that I have to sit through the same ones just to get a different looking certificate but the Army really doesn’t surprise me in its ridiculousness anymore.

My next stop was a shuttle back to the city of Daegu where the train had brought us yesterday. Daegu is another one of the metropolis areas in Korea, it also holds three small Army camps that we travel to relatively often because they host larger stores, a bigger medical facility, and all around better resources. I had to travel there to go to the transportation office to fill out more paperwork so that my household goods and baggage will make its way to my future living space. Once we were there we had to wait a good hour and a half for the next shuttle to be heading back to Camp Carroll so we went to the PX and I was excited to see they sell my hair care products! This may not seem like a huge thing but when you are in a completely different environment sometimes the littlest things like that make the world of a difference.

Soon I found my way back to Carroll and took another trip to the housing office. Here’s the big catch 22 of the day, a space in the officer quarters on base doesn’t open until the 6^th of September, once I get that place I can then call transportation to get all my stuff that has already arrived in Korea, it will then however take 5 working days to arrive. So I won’t be able to feel at “home” and settled in until at least the 11^th of September. My other option was to move off of base but I can’t take a license test until next week so I can’t get a car for at least another week so I’d have to take cabs back and forth constantly until then if I did move off post. What to do? As of now I have my name on a wait list but will also be calling a realtor this weekend to see some places in town. Heck if I get a car I may move a ways a way, some people even live all the way in Daegu and commute to work everyday especially families because there is no family housing at Carroll, its all in Daegu.

The last part of my day was spent in my new office. I was there until after 1930. Apparently everyone in my shop works late most nights, I am going to do my best to see where the wasted time in the day is and make everyone more proficient in their time management. There may be a rare day here or there where some might need to stay late but its pretty ridiculous that the day shouldn’t end by 1800 at the latest, especially on a Friday! Heck at Fort Hood its mandatory that everyone leaves work by 1700 except if there is training exercise or people are in the field. So we will see where I am at with this situation in about a month.

Everyone has been very helpful so far. I met the commander today, Lieutenant Colonel Skaggs, he seems nice, already started pressuring me into signing on for another year. We have our official first meeting on Monday so we will see how that goes…lol

All in all it was a busy but good first day. And I had to explain to over ten people that my last name is Chan because a lovely Asian couple adopted me. I love the facial expressions I get…I hope they don’t find me out because I love the new identity. Just kidding everyone!!! Well I do tell people that but then a few minutes later tell the the truth J Makes for more fun in life, right?