11/30
I had a nice Thanksgiving in Rota, Spain in port. The doctor that was TAD to our ship for most of the Green Osprey Exercise is stationed in Rota at the hospital there and invited his corpsmen over and then extended the invite to the officers. There were 5 girl Ensigns that went. It was a wonderful time! We spent late morning and all afternoon there! Had a delicious traditional Thanksgiving dinner.. turkey, veggies, mashed potatoes.... 4 kinds of pies!!! It was certainly sooo much better than the ship that we were all in a daze. He even shuttled us to and from the Mini-Mart to pick up some end of deployment necessities for onboard the ship and transiting back. After that he dropped about half of the girls back at the ship and took the rest of us and walked around downtown Rota at night and grabbed a Café con Leche. Fenomenal!!! Also-this was all with his wife and 3 boys. They were hilarious. They played football in their backyard and also snagged a lizard out of the mouth of one of their cats. The little boy about 5 named the lizard... Spotty Lizard Delgado (their last name).. and he created a habitat for him in a tupperware container! Their entire family was really entertaining and the girls and I were able to call our fams too before heading back to the ship!!

So we are sailing across the Atlantic about to inchop into Second Fleet tonight. You can't imagine a more boring thing to do. We have gone about 3 days without seeing anyone out here on the high seas. We had to deviate from our Path of Intended Movement because of the Tropical Storm/ Hurricane Delta and E. Doesn't matter, we are still getting back as planned. We should be moving to our new staterooms here shortly... we had to move because of all the Marines that came onboard. We have an over abundance of officers onboard already and we were staying in the Marine Officer spaces. I'm trying to push and get my Officer of the Deck Inport Qualification done before returning, the CMS User, and a few more Division Officer at Sea Modules on the Surface Warfare Officer CD-Rom. We filled out our customs forms today for everything I have bought. I didn't realize I had spent and bought so much! It was all worth it though. I now have wonderful treasures!!!.. haha... and gifts to give! It's going to be weird being back.. but good. Probably will take a short time to adjust. I was thinking about it the other day on watch in the middle of the night.. that it is really almost like we have been in jail for 6 mths. No outside world really and what there is ... is hardly anything... no sleep.. not so great food... wearing uniforms... ITS TIME TO BE BACK.... Must see TV!!! AH! Hah....

For those of you in Cville-I'm planning on driving up the afternoon of 6 DEC for the Jubilate Concert at UBC which is at 630pm. Let me know if you are interested in grabbing some dinner before or after. Also-I'll be in Cville.. definitely on 17 DEC for Andrew's Wedding, but also perhaps the 16th as well. Let me know if you want to get together either of these days too! Other than that.. it looks like I have duty 31 DEC for New Years! AHH! That kind of sucks....

AHHH... almost back!!