last night we had dinner on base. I had a more traditional hamburger (with bun, and all its attendant hassles for me). Didnt realize til this morning that I’d eaten hamburger twice yesterday.. once japanese style, once american style.
As I mentioned earlier, Dalton got orders to come back from leave early to go on the boat. He is really pissed about that, and Michelle’s a bit disappointed because she doesn’t get to see her son on Mother’s day. After dinner we went to the a movie playing at a theater on base and saw a movie called “Black Snake Moan” with Samuel L Jackson. Interesting movie, not one that I would have chosen, but i liked the story of love and redemption.
Afterwards, we went back to his barracks because he’s having to scramble about, packing for the boat. He needs to have that finished by Thursday, I think he has to be off at 5:30 AM. I now have a color map that shows the trains I will have to use to get to the drumcircle. D may need to sort of pass us off to one of his friends because we need an escort to get on and off base. We met one of his friend’s parents while there. The scene at the barracks reminded me a lot of a college dorm.. I’ve said that before, but it was more so. Early on, I noted that Dalton kept introducing his friends by their last name only (common in the military). I had said something about “dont these people have first names?”, so now D introduces them by first names, sometimes learning them for the first time.
We ended up at a bar on base caled Trilogy where we had a few drinks while hanging out with his friends. I had a run & coke and a Long Island iced tea that tasted pretty good. I think I actually got a little bit of a buzz.
We returned to our room where I watched “Borat”. Ths movie itself was pretty lame, but for me it seemed to speak to alientation and misunderstanding of culture I’ve been feeling just below the surface here. One of the kids I talked to last night said that he hadn’t been off-base in three months. This base isn’t very big, so that seemed particularly insular to me, but I guess I can understand, if you don’t know any of the language, it’s pretty scary out there once you get off-base.
I’m a little unsure about this weekend about going on the trains myself without Dalton.