this is probably going to be huge but hey, its the pictures. oh cool, click to enlarge! perfect.
my good buddy brandon from minnesota at the near completion of a large puzzle. its boring on a ship.
My 24th birthday on the uss bataan. somewhere in the ocean. it was a sunday,so it was a "steel beach party" its like a little picnic thing on the flight deck.
  
a random picture of the atlantic ocean, its blue. well 2 random pictures i suppose.
 
leaving the bataan on the lcu to do the damned dutch marine training for a loong time. i wont be on a ship for awhile after this picture.
leaving
approaching curacao
    
a dutch frigate (they look cooler than ours in my opinion)
some thing
I thought it was so cool that they use wind and solar power just for their street lights that i took a picture. i see no reason that we dont do the same, except for vandalism, and the fact that the big wigs here thrive off of oil usage.
so we got to go out and hang out on the town and yaddayadda the first night, was decent times. we thought this was our only night of libery (free time) on the whole trip, so we had as much fun as possible.
my good buddy brandon again
avi
tim
AMIR!!! i miss you bud!
hilarious bathroom signs
then we had to go back to the dutch marine base and i went to the bar there, where another fellow team 4 member was, will. hes pretty hilarious. he kept taking my tips because he thought they were excessive, and buying us more rounds.
the next day we went to the beach where we would be working with the dutch marines. here are various pictures from said beach. nothing too big except that house was a strange abaondoned.. thing. and i hung out there and skipped work every day and layed on a hammock and played gameboy.
    
mike (scimnet to trevor)
sub-par sunset picture. i always missed them by the time i got my camera.
some vacationing dutch. i think its like their hawaii.
and finally, the freaking dutch marines. wow at these guys.
 
steve, john, brandon and i on a fairly large hike.
pictures from the hike (oh i made them do that "look over there" pose)
    
this is still the hike, but that craft you see down there was the lcu and thats where the house, and out camp was.
and the strange abandoned mine
    
they actually went down here later that day. i was napping and i told them i didnt want to go. it was really freaky to look down. they say it went down about 200 feet to some strange little cave with a ton of bats.
sunset that i got closer to catching, from the house.
 
nightly bon fire, beers when we were lucky.
 
there is one and only one picture from the 10+ mile hike brandon and i went on this day in search of beer, and flippers. i took this picture so we could refferance it for directions. that didnt work. all we did was buy ice cream. and when you hike that far in carribean temperatures, ice cream is the most amazing thing ever invented. ever.
things ended up changing a lot after that 2-3 week period, and the team split up into 2. (it was 2 before but that was previously irrelevant to the pictures since we were basically together other than the first night) my team half was, of course, the luckier of the two. and we got to go to another ship, and go out in curacao every night for a week. the other team stayed at a new, even worse beach. this is all of us there. my half team only stayed one night. they stayed an extra 2 weeks i believe. one beach to the next. no showers.
my pictures start to get scarcer even though more was done. annoyingly.
a picture from THE curacao bridge. i suck at this picture thing or i would have taken a picture of the bloody bridge itself. its iconic of the place.
a picture of me sitting drinking iced tea with a couple guys. in the background (you cant see it, but this is why i took the picture) was the other half of the team sitting on an lcu. poor guys. then they finally got to come to the beach i showed you and we basically left right away. i got so lucky its amazing.
the same one day we spent at that beach. the lady couldnt get over how funny it was for us to take pictures of her chickens. my spanish speaking teammates translated for us.
i finally caught a nice one
 
the time line is messed up because of downloading, uploading linking, but this is finally us heading to the uss fort mchenry. this is probably the biggest beard ill be able to grow in my entire enlistment. yes, i was proud.
so were they. (oh thats eric the guy i havent mentioned, from kentucky)
the place i took the other picture from, from what would have been their perspective. were leaving to go on the ship. the others are displeased.
i had to shave but not before i snapped a picture of a goatee! it looks like im posing which annoys me. but there are like 2 pictures of me in the whole thing screw it.
random pictures on the ship
  
aruba
      
the dutch vehicles cant transit over sand which i think is hilarious, them being marines. we had to yank almost every one out with our dozer.
and finally, back in curacao for that week of hanging out there i mentioned earlier in the strange timeline. it was the world cup.
    
i love this picture. tell me if you know why! random bar! (ah lame i just looked at it and its totally obvious)
bar we frequented that week, we were regulars sadly. she, like most waitresses in the area, was from holland, and just came to curacao for awhile. wild accent.
the end
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