Aaron in Jordan

Just heard from Aaron via satellite phone compliments of the US Marine Corps from the Jordanian side of the Red Sea. They had an hour and a half layover in Germany for fuel and new air crews, then straight to Jordan on the same DC-10 airliner. He said his tent city is on one corner of a Royal Jordanian military base. His tent is about 50 yards from the shore of the Red Sea (awesome!). He can see Israel on the opposite western shore. They are letting the troops acclimate themselves to the hot temperatures and the jet lag. It's 110 degrees there and very humid.

He gets liberty this weekend and plans on going to Petra to sight-see. They will start training tomorrow. He said the Jordanian troops are no where near as "sharp" as the Marines and the Jordanian uniforms are kinda rag-tag right now. Hey, you gotta start somewhere (LOL). He said most of their officers speak English and the regular troops are a mix of little or no English, mostly Arabic. He didn't know how much longer the satellite phone battery would last (I could have talked to him all day) so I asked him to call Mom while the battery was still good.

It was great to finally hear from him. He sounded fine but you could hear the "tired from the heat" in his voice. He said as far as he knew, the Internet access was iffy at best but he would try later for emails & pix. He said he already had several good pix to share.