Small World

The saying, “It’s a small world” could never be more true. I cannot even recall the amount of times I’ve performed an embarrassing action, like tripping over air, in front of a crowd of people only to have my friends say, “Oh you’ll never see them again anyways.” Nothing could be farther from the truth. Just today I met a girl who attended a Doddea school like me. What are the chances of meeting this girl in my freshman seminar class? We were randomly partnered up and, after talking about our history together, we found out that we had the exact same friends. It’s crazy. There were only 54 students graduating from Rota, Spain, and 94 from Naples, Italy. Often we would go compete at volleyball championships in Wiesbaden, Germany, and never met each other.

Sig.org

Of course we bonded immediately. Just by laughing how everyone think that we are either foreigners of enlisted in the military provided an opportunity for many laughs. We have both been stationed in Sigonella, Italy. Referred to as the Mediterranean Hub, it housed a few more people than Rota. That was my favorite base. Being so far south, it always seemed to be sunny. Even though it was a U.S. Naval station, it housed all units, and testing sites for numerous aircrafts. Sometimes it was annoying to hear the aircrafts overhead when it was so early in the morning. The most frequent aircrafts that rip bye are the  U.S. Air Force C-130, C-17 and C-5 airlifters, KC-135 and KC-10 tankers. For the size of some of those aircrafts, they could shake the place up at times. Since there was so much empty space for air landings, much of the terrain was cleared for running paths. I had no excuse not to be fit then. With all the hills I was in the best shape of my life.

Since this was an island base, in order to travel we need to fly to other bases. It sure beat nine hour buss rides, and we were lucky enough to reserve out own planes. The only demand? That we bring back some sort of medal. We were fine with meeting those demands