Personal Narrative: My Deployment To Kuwait

The moment of awareness that made me change my opinion on the world was during my deployment to Kuwait. I realized that there is so much that I take for granted every day without even realizing it. I also realized in that moment that we are so lucky to have the opportunities we do in the United States since not everyone is lucky enough to have them. There are so many great things that we have in America that other countries would be lucky to have. I remember taking the bus from the airport in Kuwait to Camp Arifjan and looking around the country side and realizing how diverse that country was right away. You could tell right from the start where the rich people lived and where the OCNs lived and how different their living standards were. The rich had these beautiful houses and the OCNs had these homes built almost in the countryside that most of the time looked run down. I also remember it being about 120 when we were in processing in the country and we were doing everything we could to find shade to try to cool down for a bit. Once we finally got to see our living conditions, we settled into the PCB (Pre-Fabricated Concrete Buildings). The PCB were a large open bay that about 60 people lived in with rooms made out of lockers. This would be the first introduction,

As soon as we got there, we could see buildings that was bombed during the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait. During that moment, it made me realized how nice it is that we hardly in America ever have to worry about someone coming into our country and trying to invade us as they did to Kuwait. It was nice seeing that most of the people in Kuwait were happy that we were there helping defending them. Also talking to the Kuwait Military it was interesting to see how they are treated like royalty over there and have people waiting on them. In addition, they really love their tea over