Saying Good-Bye is Never Easy (Korea) Day 0

Today started off like every other day for the past couple of weeks…sleeping in with my wife by my side. The only thing different was that I knew this would be the last time for a while that this would happen. I had a nice breakfast made for me by my beautiful wife, then I just kind of hung out for a while taking it easy. For lunch I had an awesome pizza from Papa Murphy's called the "bacon bacon bacon" pizza. With that kind of name you cannot go wrong! We did all my laundry and then started getting everything out of my bags so I could re-pack it. I laid it all out and then had to carefully pack everything I could into my duffle bag, my luggage bag and my laptop bag. After a couple of times pulling things out and re-arranging I was able to get about 95% of everything I wanted in them. I made sure I had my orders and all my paperwork that I needed in my carry on bag (the laptop bag). After some tearful goodbyes to my wife's family I headed over to visit my mom and sister before we headed to the airport. My mom and sister gave me some comfort candy to take with me on the plane :) (they know me too well). We left there about 7:30 to make sure I had plenty of time to get to the airport which is about an hour away. Even though the flight out is at 3:00 AM, I had to arrive and check in six hours in advance. I'm sure there is a reason for this, but it just seems like some more "hurry up and wait" that seems to be the army's motto. At the very end of the check-in terminals is where everyone for the chartered military flight was checking in. For the most part it was very similar to any other check-in only I needed to show my orders and they had to check me off a list. They took my bags and weighed them, then we were off to the gate. My wife was able to get a pass to the gate, then came and hung out with me for about three hours. That was a great surprise. I wasn't sure how far they would let her go because of security and such. Saying good-bye was tough. I hate that so much. It kills me to see my wife cry and there is nothing I can do to fix it. It's times like these when I wonder again "Why did I join the army?". Right now I'm still in the terminal at 1:27AM with a guy who is also a 25B heading to Korea. I went to basic with him (a terminator) and he also of course went to AIT with me at Fort Gordon. Nice to see a familiar face. There are people laying about the terminal trying to catch a little sleep before the flight. There are mostly military personnel, but there are also dependents flying as well. The flight is going to be long, hopefully I can get quite a bit of sleep while on the plane.