What is it that you exactly DO?

Lately a lot of people have been asking me what Sam does overseas. It's a great question and I realized that I have no idea. Aren't I a great wife? It's like when people ask me what Sam wants to do with his Philosophy degree once he's finally finished I'm not sure what to say beyond, "be a philosophy professor". I'm not sure exactly what emphasis he is looking at (ethics? Metaphysics? I know it's not religion...hmmm, I think it's metaphysics. What is Notre Dame known for besides football?).

So, today when Sam called me wanting his father's phone number so he could call him for his birthday I asked him, "What is it that you are doing over there?". He had just told me all about going and visiting some 13th century castle and visiting the church of the Black Madonna where Mother Theresa received her calling. To me, it sounds like a great vacation, not work.

Here is what Sam does for the Army over in Kosovo. Sam's job is (oh crap, what was the exact title...?) basically to assess what the soldiers are doing with the locals. He is the Officer in Charge of missions, which means that people come up with a plan on how to help the locals in the area, then they go and put those plans into play. Afterwards they write up what they have been doing and Sam reads the reports and evaluates them and assesses what they are doing, seeing if it is what they should be doing or if they can be doing better things. Also, he does problem solving, working with the soldiers to see how they can work better with the other military presences over there (like the Greece troops and the Polish troops, etc.). Sam is loving his job, mostly because when he gets out of the office and into Sterchy (sp?) he does about 15 minutes of real work and then gets to go and play with the locals. This means drinking coffee, eating pastries, going and seeing 13th century castles...lucky duck.

So, that's what Sam does over there.

And, for the record, even though by the time Sam is finished with his time in the Army he will have 13 years in, he does not want to finish up the next 7 and retire. We HAVE looked at the benefits and weighed them with the costs and realize that the costs on our family and Sam's career goals are too costly. I say this because recently people keep trying to convince me that Sam should stay in the Army and retire since he's been in so long. We really don't want three more deployments and Sam is not an Army person at heart, he really is more of an intellectual.