Eric Bernau

Well I'm back in the U.S. of A.  It was a long day of traveling yesterday and I am a little jet lagged (woke up wide awake a 05:00 this morning...) but looking back fondly on the trip as I organize all my pictures from the trip.  Now that I have internet, here are some pictures from the trip:

Me on the summit of Mt. Sinai watching the sunrise

Diving in Dahab with Saudi Arabia in the background

Riding camels in front of the pyramids

In front of the Sphinx

It was an amazing trip, I thank you all for following along with our journey, and hope you all can experience a similar amazing experience in the beautiful country of Egypt like we were all blessed to enjoy!

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I finally caught up on sleep and got 12 hours of it after I went to bed at 19:00 last night.  It was amazing...

Today we met up at 08:00 to head over to the Dunraven wreck, which accidentally sunk in 1876 when it crashed into to some it couldn't see.  it was an amazing dive, I really do prefer wrecks to reefs, but once again I can't upload any of the pictures we took because the internet is too slow here for that.  We did see an eel inside the wreck which was pretty cool.  Here's a link to the Dunraven wreck:  http://www.aquatours.com/wrecks/dunraven.htm

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I am exhausted...in a good way.

Last night after a full day of diving we let our hotel at 22:30 to take a bus to Mt. Sinai 2.5 hours away to climb Mt. Sinai, where Moses received the 10 commandments from God.  We got there around 2:30 after a few stops to pick other people up and proceeded up the mountain.  A few friends and I were dead set on one thing, riding camels...

We kept scanning the pitch black night trying to catch a glimpse of one or two and although we couldn't see anything, we could smell a strong odor that we deduced to be camels.  Needless to say our excitement rose.

A few hundred yards up the trail we found Bedouins offering camel rides for 80 Egyptian pounds (5.4 Egyptian pounds = 1 USD).  We paid as quick as we could count the money under our flashlights and mounted our desert steeds.  It was really hard to see anything and the camels weren't too accomodating so we didn't get any good pictures (sadly) mounted on the camels, but the next morning on the way down we were able to get some good pictures of us with camels in the daylight.

 Well...I just tried to upload the pictures I took, but apparently the internet here is even too slow for that so I guess I"ll just have to make links to other people's pictures that are similar to what I did:

http://www.travelpod.com/travel-photo/chadsteph/1/1258272045/hiking-mount-sinai-with-camels.jpg/tpod.html

We then watched this sunrise at the top:

 http://www.sacred-destinations.com/egypt/mount-sinai-st-catherines-monastery-pictures/slides/sunrise7-c-becklectic.htm

It wasn't as good when we went b/c it was partially overcast, but still definitely an amazing experience.  After that we explored St. Catherine's monastery, the oldest in-use monastery in the world (500 A.D.) before heading back.

http://inillotempore.com/blog/pivot/entry.php?id=799

I've only got about 10 hours of sleep total in the past 4 nights from all the adventures and early mornings we've had, but I wouldn't trade it for the world.  We were supposed to have a night dive tonight, but the waves were too rough so we postponed it tomorrow after our first wreck dive (Dunraven), which I'm extremely excited for!

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Well I tried to take a video of the entire hotel area to give everyone an introduction to where we were staying, but uploading it to facebook would take 4.5 hours.  As passionate as I am about this blog,  I do not have the motivation to guard my computer for that long in the lobby that has WiFi here, so I will have to wait until hopefully Cairo, or back in America (worst case scenario) to upload the videos I've taken.

Yesterday we arrived in Sharm el-Sheikh after an 11 hour flight to Cairo, followed by a 2 hour lay-over to Sharm.  There's a time difference of 7 hours, but I've adjusted alright so far.  We'll see if jet lag hits me later this week though.  After arriving we got settled in the hotel and then explored the local area to get our bearings.  We went out to the street markets and did some haggling, which I really enjoy.  I bought an Egyptian soccer jersey that's pretty cool.  We also ate some pretty good dinner and then walked around more before calling it an early night to get ready for the early wake-up the next morning.

 This morning we all met down in the common area for diving at 08:00 a.m.  with somre really great dive masters from the United Kingdom as our guides.  The first dive was really great, we saw a lot of interesting marine life and coral.  We ended up skipping the second dive because we decided to hike up Mt. Sinai tonight (riding camels, so excited!) so we can't dive because we risk getting the "bends" which is basically just a big can of badness to avoid the physics lesson.  I'm really excited to see this historical mountain and learn more about Egyptian culture.

Sorry again for not being able to get my video posted.  I'll try to get more pictures posted on later blogs to compensate.

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Long time no see!  For those of you who have followed this cadet thread you may remember that I blogged last December during Army-Navy week.  I really enjoyed sharing that week with everyone on armystrongstories.com and am very excited to do it once again with everyone as I prepare for my last Spring Break as a cadet.

I am a certified SCUBA instructor through the USMA SCUBA team, which I have been a member of since my Plebe (Freshman) year.  I am also the CIC (Cadet-in-Charge) of the Spring Break trip this year and after discussing with my teammates decided to undertake the most ambitious trip the team has ever done.  We decided to go to Sharm el-Sheikh, Egypt this year in the bottom tip of the Sinai Peninsula.  For those of you unfamiliary with Egyptian geography, you can find Sharm el-Sheikh on the bottom tip of the Sinai peninsula on the map below Southeast of Cairo.

 We depart tomorrow at 14:30 for JFK airport in NYC and then take off on a 12-hour flight at 18:30 to Cairo and then a short layover to Sharm.  There are 15 team members, 1 officer and his wife, 1 Sergeant First Class and his wife, and 21 non-team member cadets and civilian girlfriends going.  It's going to be an amazing time and everyone's been really excited for it as it draws closer to Spring Break.

For the past two Tuesdays we've held refresher pool sessions for everyone to refamiliarize themselves with SCUBA diving skills before we depart.  Below is a video of SFC Miller's wife, Sheryle Miller, practicing the "trace" method to recover a lost regulator while team member Cadet Joe Sattler, '12, supervises.

Here is another video from the pool session.  This one CDT Chrissy Rath, '11, and her boyfriend CDT James Whitler, '11, practice "buddy breathing," which is executed when one diver runs out of air. 

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So as I'm sure you all saw Army did not win the Army-Navy football game this year which is pretty disappointing because that makes my class the first class in the history of West Point to have never seen us defeat either Navy or Air Force in our four years at the Academy.  The team still played really well and were winning going into halftime.  It was a really great time and we got some pretty good pictures and videos that I'll post later.  Right now we all have to start studying for Finals so I don't have much time to post on this blog this week.  Constitutional and Military Law this afternoon, here we go...

A quick picture though of me and Kyra with Admiral Mullen, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, on the Army sideline at the game:

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So believe it or not, apparently that old phrase, "practice makes perfect," is actually onto something.  I'm not really sure if Navy actually practices their march-on, but from what it looks like year after year, they don't...

In order to repeatedly destroy Navy at marching like we're going to do again this year we do a couple days of practice with the entire Corps down at Shea stadium and I selflessly stepped out briefly to film what that practice looked like and you can check it out right here:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pmtF8nJH6I0

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zZ49AUlH6PQ

And here is the Corps favorite Spirit video this year, a parody of the recent movie "Zombieland""

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L5R0gqpcX3A

Lastly, a few members of the old Corps wanted to give their take on the outcome of the game this year:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EfNAS8KUxz0

Go Army, Beat Navy!!!

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Last Sunday we had our annual Army-Navy briefing/pep rally that kicked off our Navy week this year.  We had briefings from the First Captain, Brigade Tactical Officer, Commandant, Football team coach, and others.  The Corps was pretty excited about all the activities going on this week around West Point and this weekend in Philadelphia.

However, before any of the briefings happened we had to take care of some more serious matters...hot dog eating and pull-up competitions!  Each Regiment, 4 in total, had a cadet representing them trying to eat as many hot dogs as they could in 2 minutes, followed by doing as many pull-ups as they could.  The winning Regiment got out of WAMI (Wednesday AM (room) inspection) for the first two weeks next semester so they were pretty pumped for that.

There was also a part where a Zepplin-like mini-blimp flew around the auditorium dropping ping pong balls cadets with chances to win a new car.  Needless to say, cadets were pretty eager to get one of those balls.

We watched a lot of Spirit videos in between speakers and there were some pretty funny ones this year.  Look on youtube and I'm sure you can find all the videos from this year and years past.

Everyone left the auditorium looking forward to all the events of the week (maybe not the march-on practice so much...) and heading to Philadelphia on Friday to watch Army crush Navy on Saturday and get invited to a bowl game.  There have been some pretty good cadet rumors about what will happen if we get a bowl game, my favorite being that the Dean will cancel classes, but honestly I'm not exactly holding my breath...

I didn't have a nice camera down at the briefing, but I was able to take a few pictures with my iPhone:

Cadets eager to win a new car

hot dog eating contest, I hope they weren't natural casing...

pull-ups on a full stomach?  Always a good decision...

Cadet Command Sergeant Major briefing the proper wearing of the uniform as the First Captain looks on

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I guess this is the part where I introduce myself...

Confession: I've actually never kept a blog before, this is genuinely my first time publishing my thoughts to the world wide web, so we'll see how it goes.

My name is Eric Bernau and I'm currently in my fourth, and final, year at the United States Military Academy in West Point, NY.  This year I am serving as the Brigade Public Affairs Officer and having an absolute blast doing it.  My job is basically to personally, and find other cadets to, speak with the media, celebrities, public figures, and basically deal with anything external that comes to West Point and anything internal that leaves West Point in terms of media and relations.  It's a pretty legit job, but I actually think Public Affairs Officer isn't a very "sexy" title, so I've begun the process of changing my title to Brigade Propaganda Minister, which I think flows off the tongue a lot better and just sounds so much cooler...

I'm originally from Rochester, MN and never actually left the tri-state area (Minnesota, Iowa, and Wisconsin) more than a few times before I left for the East Coast to begin my West Point experience back in the summer of 2006.  I've basically been spending the past few years making up for lost travel time by exploring New England on my weekends and traveling to Belize, Honduras, Korea, the Air Force Academy, and taking 3 trips to China (one of which was a semester abroad).  As one could probably guess, my major here at the Academy is Chinese and I love it.  Languages and culture have always facinated me and China is so different from America I just can't learn enough about it to satiate (my favorite word) myself.  Another reason I love my major?  My title in Chinese is xuan chuan bu zhang which translates back to Propaganda Minister, how perfect is that?

Anyways, I'll be covering Navy week here at the Academy as we prepare ourselves to beat our rivals in Philadelphia this Saturday so hopefully everyone can follow along and experience it along with me!

Talk to you soon, Eric

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