Intro.

I'm a 32 year old Chinse female who has not quite followed the life track set for her by her family or her culture. I barely graduated college, served as a enlisted soldier in the army, and, instead of being married with 2.5 kids, I have a Caucasian girlfriend and we are as married to each other for the past 5 years as can be...just not legally. I've got a dog and two cats that I just adore, and we all live in a small duplex in Austin, Texas.

I planned this blog sort of on a whim, just kind of like thought to myself "well, tonight's the night!" My girlfriend has her own blog, and she has always encouraged me to guest write in hers. I didn't plan on writing this blog as any sort of self-promoting thing, rather, just a way to maybe share myself and if I'm lucky, get to know a few others in the process.

I came back from a tour in Iraq (not the touristy kind!) about a month ago, I served in the city of Mosul. It's quite a famous city, about two hours away from Turkey, Jonah (the one who was stuck in the whale's belly.) is said to be buried there, Mary, Jesus's mother, supposedly was from there, and as of lately, the hotbed of many insurgent-driven attacks. I was a supply clerk to a almost non-functioning company, most of the people in my group were Arabic linguists. It's interesting, because right now in the army, there are just about no more Arabic linguists ready for deployment, so we are semi-famous for being that "last group" of linguists who got deployed.

Don't get me wrong, I'm not the military type at all, in fact, I look forward to finally getting out in a few months! I am not very comfortable when I am in a large group of people, and I just about always question authority, more so when they don't make any sense whatsoever, and that's a no-no if you want to thrive in the military or any large company, for that matter. I am, however, grateful for all the neat things that I got to do while I was on duty, like learning to handle a weapon, do patrols, drive a 5 ton, operated a radio, and not to mention meeting some of the most interesting and creative people that I've ever known!

I'll come back later and introduce you to Beth, and the rest of my immediate circle. I will try not to bore you with a lot of military jargons and my own nostalgia, because this is not a military blog, but there will be hints of it from time to time.