First I’m going back to Egypt to visit a friend and to do a short Arabic course, then I’m flying to China. My brother conveniently moved there last year to work so now I can go visit and use him as a free hotel and a free tour guide.

January 5, 2012

Marshes? Somewhere near New York on the descent into JFK.

January 6, 2012

Unfortunately, the French airport employees lived up to the stereotype of “rude French people” but going into the bathroom and seeing a bright pink toilet seat, color-coordinated to match my scarf, made up for it. Since I’m flying on Air France, every trip I make between the U.S., Cairo, and Beijing has a layover in Paris where I can go broke buying snacks with euros.

January 6, 2012

I arrived in Cairo at 7pm after 18-some hours of traveling and since I wasn’t feeling particularly exhausted yet, I agreed to go out to a nearby hang-out place with my lovely hostess where she was meeting up with some friends. I COMPLETELY forgot that people still smoke inside buildings in Egypt and I thought I was going to die of smoke inhalation.

It’s now two days later and I have a sore throat and runny nose. At first I thought I was just getting sick because half the passengers on the last flight were coughing and sneezing but now I’m thinking maybe it’s my nasal passages reacting to the unfamiliar smoke, dust, smog, dust, smoke, and smog.

January 5, 2012

“They still played with me once in awhile when it was just the one kid. But now there’s TWO little humans! Nobody’s going to play with me anymore!”

It’s not my personal page, it’s one for the blog.

January 4, 2012

My trusty old camera is slowly dying, feature by feature. The latest casualty is the flash, so I broke down and got a new camera because I’m going to Egypt  tomorrow and then on to China  in a few weeks and I didn’t want my old camera to die mid-trip.

The new one is a Nikon D7000 for those of you who are interested.

January 3, 2012

Yep, this is a pumpkin leftover from Halloween. It was just hanging out on my porch minding its own business until this week when somebody decided it looked tasty. Also, check out what’s above the pointy top of the chomp mark: a perfect little snowflake!

January 2, 2012

My brother and my nephew hang out and eat junk food one last time before my brother heads back to China.

This is my tiny nephew looking out the window and through a giant snowflake decoration. I don’t know what he stopped to stare at though. We were at my aunt’s house today hanging out one last time before my brother goes back to his job in China.

I’m glad it was repealed, finally.

I think that people who are worried about gay people will get over it once they live with and work with a real, live gay person.

(especially if it’s someone they have already been living with and working with and they just didn’t know it)

People who can’t handle it won’t enlist in the first place, or won’t reenlist and they will be easily replaced.

I think that the Marine Corps might have a few issues with housing since they still enjoy jamming multiple people together into tiny barracks rooms. Not enough issues to postpone the official repeal though.

(I hated having roommates, regardless of who they were)

All those men who snoozed through sexual harassment classes and rolled their eyes when the sexual assault victim advocates were introduced are outing themselves every time they whine about what will happen if gay people hit on them or try to grab their ass.

(here’s a hint: there are already plenty of sexual harassment rules and protections in place but you just didn’t care before)

Just because it’s being repealed doesn’t mean every gay person in the military is going to come out the very next day. Why would they if their fellow Marines are running around unknowingly trash-talking them?

Generals should come out first, on the very first day, then colonels, then other officers.

Especially the infantry officers.

Then some sergeants major and first sergeants, and other high-ranking enlisted Marines.

That way everyone else will feel more comfortable doing it.

(leadership starts at the top, does it not?)

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I’ve been so busy with school this semester that I haven’t had a lot of time to do much writing, but here is a short story and two photos from Cairo, Egypt, where I was stationed for my last year on Marine Security Guard duty.

Every year during Marine Corps ball season the detachment has group and individual photos taken and a favorite place to do it is at Giza, where the famous pyramids and the Sphinx are located. As you might imagine, the area is packed with visitors and tourists from opening to closing so we made special arrangements to come early…so early that we had to wait around for the sun to come up before we could begin.

This particular year someone decided that photographs at the pyramids wearing our dress blues was just not spectacular enough anymore. (In other words, we needed to do something to make our detachment photo cooler than the ones that came before us!)

So the Marine in charge of MWR funds rented a herd of camels for us to sit on while the photographer snapped our pictures. Luckily the herd arrived with a handler for each camel otherwise we never would have been able to get lined up for the photo. The camels were not happy about this at all, they did not appreciate being forced to stand so close to each other and they were constantly squabbling like siblings in the backseat of a car.

After our camel adventures were over, we went back home to finish preparing for the ball that evening and I had to change into a new pair of dress blue trousers because the ones I had worn for the photos smelled like dirty camel saddle.

Sorry.

I’m happy to report that I survived this semester with 19 college credits, two part-time jobs, and a new blogging gig, in addition to the two others that I’ve been neglecting. The PBS blog has come to its scheduled end but I do sincerely intend to revive my own website and start posting on the Woman Marines blog again too.

Hopefully next semester I will get my homework load under control early on and have more time to do bloggy stuff.

Also, I may go ahead and switch domain names again while the visitor traffic is dead. I’m afraid to go look at my visitor traffic stats…

:)

From the YouTube caption: Jenny Miranda sings this classic with the 2nd Marine Division Band from Camp LeJuene at the Columbus Day Italian celebration in Bridgeport, CT, October 9, 2010.

I went to boot camp with her and we ended up at the same duty station for a little while at one point though we were never really friends. Now we Internet spy on each other via Facebook, which is how I found the link to this.

She’s pretty good, huh?

While male Marines must crank out pull-ups as part of a battery of tests that also include a three-mile run and crunches, female Marines are required to do the flexed-arm hang. Currently, female Marines younger than 26 must hang from the bar for 70 seconds to get a perfect 100 points on that portion of the PFT. However, regardless of whether a female Marine is strong enough to hold her chin above the bar or merely prevent her elbows from locking while dangling below, she scores the same number of points.

Female senior enlisted Marines who attended the symposium suggested the Corps should reassess how women are scored on the test, and whether the flexed-arm hang should be kept as part of the test, Kent said.

“They think it’s long overdue for us to conduct a study to see if this flexed-arm hang … is still the way to go, or should we look at it differently now,” he said. “The demands for female Marines over in combat right now are a lot higher, because they’re out there, and they have to carry gear, just like the male Marines.”

The commandant has agreed to form a study group that will be headed by Training and Education Command, based in Quantico, Va., to assess what options might be available to eliminate the flexed-arm hang or revise how that portion of the PFT is scored, Kent said.

“Before a decision is made, we have to say, ‘Is this fair for every Marine?’ and that’s to include our female Marines,” he said. “We’ve got females out there who can get up there and knock out 20 dead-hangs. But, we also have female Marines who cannot do that, so we have to be fair across the board.”

I’ve written about this before, more than once, so I won’t get into it too much here.

But I don’t think they will eliminate the flexed-arm hang because most women can’t do enough pull-ups to pass the bare minimum male pull-up standards, much less max it out. Heck, most of us can’t even do a single pull-up, myself included. (the article mentions female Marines “out there” who can do 20 pull-ups but I have yet to meet one of these mythical creatures)

More likely, they will adjust the scoring standards. Instead of the tiniest bend in your elbow counting as a “flex” they should switch to something more difficult to max out. I would suggest that your head falling  below the bar be the cut-off point.

Hmm.

I better go do some arm exercises…

As you will see if you go read it, or if you scroll down, it is published under my real name and mentions which reserve unit I am in and where I go to school. So…um…please don’t stalk me. I am highly-trained killer (and so are all my friends) and you will be sorry.

Also, for the impatient folks who want something to read now, here is the Q&A they had me do:

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Maria Saucedo joined the Marine Corps in 2003. After tours as a supply clerk in Okinawa and Albany, GA, she deployed to Iraq in 2005. She then became a Marine Security Guard and served at embassies in Finland, Honduras and Egypt. She is the author of the blog, The semi-normal, day to day life of a female Marine. Maria is now a college student on the G.I. Bill and has recently joined a Marine reserve unit in Maryland. In the coming months, she will contribute to Regarding War blog. As means of an introduction, we asked Maria a handful of questions about military life, her travels and her writing.

Where are you from?
Montgomery County, MD.

Why did you join the Marines?
I was tired of school because I didn’t know what I wanted to study, and I didn’t like my job anymore, and it seemed like it would be fun and interesting. I picked the Marines over the other branches because my grandfather was a Marine; it never really occurred to me to consider another branch.

Where did you serve and in what capacity?
My MOS is Supply Administration. My first duty station was 7th Communication Battalion in Okinawa where I ordered and tracked gear and parts. I then went to the Supply Chain Management Center in Albany, GA. From there I deployed to Iraq where I worked in Logistics Command’s forward post issuing out weapons and vehicles to other units. After my year in Iraq, I became a Marine Security Guard and was posted in Finland, Honduras and Egypt.

What was the hardest part about being a Marine?
For me it was always barracks life. Being able to hang out with Marines all the time was great, but I’m the type of person who needs her own little space, and that’s impossible for single Marine stuck living in the barracks.

What was it like to be a female in the Marines?
It’s a lot like being a male Marine, except I get to have longer hair.

When and why did you start blogging?
I started blogging in late 2004 while I was stationed in Albany. I’ve always liked writing and someone suggested I start a blog. So I did. Now I try to keep it up because there are so few other female Marines out there on the Internet.

What are you doing now?
I just got off active duty last October, and I’m about to start my second semester back at the University of Maryland, College Park. My major is Geographic Information Systems, and I may pick up Arabic as a double major or a minor. I work part-time at a garden center, and in June I began drilling with the 4th Combat Engineer Battalion based in Baltimore.

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