-So I've seen about 5 shooting stars the past few days in the middle of the night.....
-Been through the Suez Canal... with Egypt on both sides.... Got a pic of the "Welcome to Egypt" Sign in English and Egyptian...saw some cool statues along the way...got up close and personal with some cargo vessels...
-Survived a swarm of circling helos at 0100 that very well could have been hostile.. They engaged CIWS due to an unidentified aircode... (no IFF, Comms, anything.... 4 circling for 2 hrs!)....currently working on 3 hrs of sleep from last night....
-AND... I'm in Rhodes, Greece.. in the Mediterranean... with 3 cruise liner ships next to ours-- beautiful mountains with a castle and the Acropolis waiting for me tomorrow... you can see Turkey across the water...

I have duty today- OOD In-port Under Instruction.. watched all the stores, mail, and waste be taken up right after we moored. I have gotten a lot of work done this afternoon and evening. Finished the "Shiphandling" module on Division Officer at Sea software this morning while on watch in Aft Steering. I think I'm going to pic a movie and watch it tonight. Our tour is at 0800 in the morning until noon. Then the plan is to go to the beach, shopping and hit up the restaurants, bars, clubs. Should be a good day. You wouldn't believe the Suez Canal! It is about a football and a half wide and has to be dredged to be deep enough in some places for the larger ships to go through. There were armed soldiers stationed all the way along the canal about every 100 yds. We had a helo escort to begin with and then we had these large jeeps that drove alongside us on the land for security. We had the Egyptian pilots come on the ship to help drive us because they were the experts on courses to steer. We treated them and their escorts like Naval Officers and served them food on the bridge. We all liked this because routinely that is not allowed while standing watch on the bridge. We should be in Rhodes for a bit. The dates got changed because of the ships going to help with the hurricane relief in the Gulf that were supposed to come over here. So, we are probably going to have to pick up the slack for them.