Army II

Since our son could not leave the Army base without us signing him out, we ventured back to South Carolina for our Thanksgiving break this year. On the first night we stayed at a very nice Homewood Suites Hotel on the west side of Columbia. It was a pretty long drive from the Army base which was on the east side of Columbia, but it was a much nicer part of town to be staying in. Our son wanted to shop for civilian clothes, so we found a mall on the northwest part of Columbia where we joined the masses of people shopping on Black Friday. I have no idea about the rest of the county, but at this mall on this day it was wall to wall people. So many people, in fact, it was hard to get around inside the mall in some places. The mall was very nice and fairly new and our son quickly found a store called Buckle that willingly took his $200 and gave him little in return. I have never enjoyed shopping and the only good thing this time was that I did not have to spend money. We even went into the really high end store Abercrombie & Finch just for looking around as we suffered from sticker shock and quickly left, besides the fact that the store was so dark you could hardly see the prices and the music so loud you could not hear yourself think.

On the second night, we went back to the location where we stayed the last time for his boot camp graduation ceremonies. It is right next to the Army base, but the area is not very nice. When we got to the hotel, our son told us that his sergeant told them to all stay away from the Waffle House next to our hotel. That was odd orders, but then we heard the details on why this was so. Apparently the Army had tracked found the location where some of the soldiers had bought cocaine and it was at this very same Waffle House. We have eaten in one of them and decided not to make this a first time for us!

On the last day in Columbia we had a mission to find a phone that could be used no matter where he would be stationed. He is listed as going to South Korea, but we learned that it could change many times between now and when he ships out on March 1st. For South Korea and Japan they use very high frequencies, so basically the only phones that would work with local service in those countries are the high end PDA phones. The Apple iPhone will not work there on local service, but he really liked the touch screen phones in the AT&T store. After playing with every phone in the store for over an hour, he finally found a phone he liked, but it turned out to be one that would not work in Asia. He finally decided on the LG Incite 3g phone. He enjoyed playing with it the rest of the day, in taking photos of everything and finding wireless networks and chatting. Sounds like a mobile computer to me!