The Great Chicken Transition

With a splash I entered. With a whisper I exited.

On Thursday night, I ate chicken for the first time in 16 years.

My decision to become a vegetarian came in my early teens. It was my version of a teenaged rebellion - a sort of moment of taking control in the midst of a time of many changes in our family life.

I did not gently ease into vegetarianism - I did it with a bit of a splash. Translation - what better day to make my announcement - than Thanksgiving Day, a day in which there is an unmistakeable focus on foods of a less than vegetarian sort.

But this time was different. This decision was a means to an end; eating chicken would prepare me for consuming more protein with the US Army as I prepare to embed with them in Afghanistan as a journalist. I also want to be ready to accept local hospitality in the form of meals and meats that I'm less than familiar with - hoping to make inroads with people, and give them less reason not to talk to me.

Oddly enough, after all this built-up anxiety about 'going-back' like I was afraid of being misconstrued as a sort of back-slidden religious zealot coming to terms with her own humanity, it was really quite simple to eat a bite of a chicken.....then another.....then another.

I can't say I enjoyed the newly-discovered texture, but I did chew it up and swallow it, and there was enough spice at the time to make it worthwhile....what can I say? I guess I'm finding out that where there's a will, there's a way. And on this trip - it's going to be one heckuvawild ride - so I might as well dive in....GI tract and all.

Putting the Money Down

So - last week, I nearly had a heart attack, as I purchase a new mac, and my plane ticket.

I purchased a brand new MacBook Pro - and just in time for this assignment, Mac came out with a 13" laptop which is super small and light....like the headline says -- I'm in love. I mean, she's absolutely gorgeous, great quality sound, uplit keys, and zero gravity feature so if I drop it - it sense that it's in zero gravity and shuts down the hard drive so when it hits the ground the disk won't be spinning....now that's great invention! It better be - it was more than $2k...so I hope I've finally met a machine that I can keep for awhile...as they say - once you go Mac, you never go back....I hope I wont' have to.

I am blessed to have a wonderful travel agent in my life, and she found a flight through Delhi that will save about $800 dollars off flight costs...It means an overnight in a hotel there, but that still keeps the cost lower than going through Dubai or Ankara as some of my freelance friends have done.

So - I leave July 18, and the return flight is currently booked for September 7...we'll see if that bears out or not.

These two investments were definitely heavy duty - so much so that my credit card company put a temporary freeze on my account, fearing that someone had stolen my card...

GOIN RADIO

Then this weekend, I started putting my radio kit together. I'm going with a Marantz pmd 620

for the recorder and a EV 635-B for my interview mic. I still need to buy a shotgun and maybe a few other attachments. A contact at NPR told me this is what they're using...but it's only got a 1/8" input, so I have to get special cables...and cable can go bad, so gotta have extras of those. My house mate is still on the hunt for a good digital camera for me, and I've also gotta price video cameras, but all of this is coming along. I feel like I have good advice from the professionals. The next hurdle is to price satellite Internet - if the military's internet goes down or is too slow - this might be necessary. Trouble is it's VERY expensive, and it's heavy. Two very bad things - so I've gotta hope I can rent it from someone or pick it up heavily discounted on ebay or something. Please keep that in your prayers. I don't want to go completely broke before I even leave - ya know?

AT CENTURION NOW

http://www.centurionsafety.net/Courses/Hostile_Environments_and_Emergency_First_Aid_Training_(HEFAT(r))_(5_days).html

So - this is the safety training course I'm at now - in the Shenandoah valley.

I'll keep you posted how it goes.

Thanks for being on board with me for this adventure.

J

All in

So - now it's gonna get busy. With less than 2 months to go, I'm planning on several fronts from logistics to physical, emotional, spiritual strengthening and conditioning, to drumming up the business. FOX News.com has signed on by the story, and I expect to finalize with FOXNews Radio next week. I still need more clients - local newspapers, maybe a more specific angle for a network like Bloomberg or AP. So - if any of you know editors/news directors at small stations that I could pick up the phone and call, propose a rate and method of transmission - that would be great! Basically, the biggest push now is looking for clients and stories. My current clients have already asked me to begin developing story ideas so I can get them pre-approved. This is a huge hurdle (or so it feels) as I am not completely aware really of what I'll be witnessing within my unit. So, feel free to throw those my way too.

TRAINING
I am borrowing everything I need from a recently retired SF guy who has made me his project. This is saving me gobs of money, and giving me army issue stuff which is great quality. I started training in my flak jacket this week - an additional 18 pounds. I need to add the helmet and the gloves, eyewear and boots soon to get a real feel for it. I hope to do that Sunday afternoon after I return from a trip out of town to see my cousin graduate high school. My SF friend has promised to work up a work-out schedule that will at least help build my endurance since the heat and lack of good eating really can take a toll on concentration. And again -this is my first time solo. I've always been in collaboration with someone, so I need to be in the best shape I can be. I'm now getting up every morning at 6am, and either walking in my gear or running about 3-4 miles. I'm hoping that I can keep this up - so feel free to check in and see how I'm doing. I can always use the accountability. The last week of the month - I'm signed up to attend a Centurion Hostile Environments and Emergency First Aid course in the Shenandoah Valley - about 90 miles from here. It's taught by the Navy Seals, and designed to better prepare me to assess risks and orient me for the battlefield. This course costs about $2500, but there's a scholarship in the UK for freelance war correspondents that I've signed up for - and I think I stand a good chance of getting. I so hope I do, because it would pay for 2/3rds of the course, leaving me with $700 to come up with -- relatives - I'll be hitting you up ;-) Watch out!

The next step will be buying/training on all my equipment. I'm planning on buying a MAC, need to load it up with editing software, and already have my radio kit picked out. I just need to settle on still/video cameras at this point, and it all gets so expensive so fast! But honestly - at every turn of this, God keeps dropping these angels into my lap to help with expertise. It's really great! Then - it's just practicing with the equipment -- need to know it as well as possible because again, the conditions won't be the best. The great news is that they'll be a lot better than they used to be. Most FOB's have working Internet, and the country has cell service, so I can purchase a local cell phone, and it works like a track phone (my one in France 10 years ago did the same. You just buy cards.) A friend has just been made bureau chief in FOX's Kabul bureau, and he's done all this already - so he's walking me through a lot of it.

Well, that's it for now. I'll let you know my finalized dates. And try to continue to update this so you'll know where I"m at. I suspect I won't have a snail mail address, so the best way to keep in touch, unless you catch my work -- is jessicathereporter@gmail.com.
My website - www.jessicaweinstein.com will have my work updated (I hope.) Most of all - please keep me in your prayers. This is the hardest thing I've ever done.
Yours,
Jessica