Today I started my FACT (Foreign Affairs Counter Terrorism) course. This is a week-long course we take before being assigned to a war-zone. In the class today, we learned how to detect when someone is surveilling us. Then all afternoon we drove back and forth along a 3 mile route in town while agents were assigned to discreetly watch us, tail us, and plan an attack on us at a vulnerable point along our route.

We had to try and spot them, and document that we were being followed and monitored. We also had to document where along our route we were most vulnerable and show how we could change our routes and driving times to make us harder to hit. This was to simulate driving from our home to the Embassy and then back.

In the end we got attacked at the main spot that we knew we would, and had correctly spotted 3 of the 4 agents targeting us. We also incorrectly marked 5 others who we thought were watching us, but in fact were just regular people that were not doing anything.

- Tomorrow will be emergency medical care and disaster training. – Wednesday, we head down to Winchester, VA to learn how to use an assortment of automatic weapons. Megan enjoyed this part when she went to Baghdad! – Thursday we do evasive – counter terrorism driving training at Bill Scott raceway, also in Winchester. – Friday we learn about IED’s and go blow some cars up! Cool!