The good news is that I’ve psuedo-successfully completed my first 4-day training class and got something to show for it.

It’s the Commander’s Award for Public Service complete with matching medals.

I shook the General’s hand, stood there & smiled for all the pictures and thanked all the women for coming.

It made Eric happy to hear because we had been arguing over whether or not I would do it – whether or not I would stand there & do the “thanks for all you work” portion of the program.

I’m not one for the spotlight & if I had a choice, I would’ve bolted before it happened. And I did everything I could to avoid the PAO (public affairs officer) taking interviews.

That’s not why I did this.

I did this because I’ve seen & continue to see first-hand how hard the adjustment is for women coming to Korea with their soldiers - well, specifically Humphreys.

Because I’m telling you, after spending a week in Yongsan here in Seoul, it’s felt like I’ve been stateside. Not once has it struck me that I’m still in Korea – which is a fact you can’t get away from down at the Hump.

I’m not sure if it’s the close-knit base layout that makes the difference, the beautiful landscaping that’s everywhere, the fact that everyone here smiles or just that no matter where you turn you don’t see any mud or dilapidated buildings. But it’s something.

The class mix was interesting, too - all officer’s wives, O5 & up - that would be Lieutenant Colonel, Colonel & the Generals. So let’s just say “women of influence” & leave it at that.

And I must admit, the majority of the time I felt like a Social Anthropologist. All that I was missing was a field guide.

Social Anthropologist: The study of how contemporary human beings behave in social groups. 

They investigate, often through long-term, intensive field studies (including participant observation methods), the social organization of a particular person: customs, economic and political organization, law and conflict resolution, patterns of consumption and exchange, kinship and family structure, gender relations, childrearing and socialization, religion, and so on. [thank you, wikipedia]

While I felt comfortable relating to them on an intellectual level & even an emotional level – since that’s really what we worked on all week – it was still quite apparent that there was a…shall we say gap?…between us.

Which really began to pique my interest. Like at what point along the line of our husband’s rank ascention did perceptions change? Just what rank did he have to be to go from, for example…

A wife flying home for a family emergency & being responsible for getting herself a rental car & driving back home…to say, flying home for that same emergency & being completely offended & put-out when there wasn’t a driver there to meet her at the airport? That mental shift had to occur somewhere.

I may talk more about this later…but let’s just say I learned a lot.

The other thing I got out of all of this was…

the 2-star General’s coin.

For those of you at home – if you’re a fan of any military show, then you’ve learned along the way that there’s a drinking tradition that every military soldier, marine, airman or sailor lives by:

If you’ve got the highest ranking coin, then everyone else buys you a drink.

There are a couple of variations on the coin traditions & games, but either way I’m in the game now, baby.

[And no, I'm not selling it for 50 bucks.]