Lori Fullbright Iraq Update – Friday, April 9

News On 6 Anchor Lori Fullbright and photojournalist Oscar Pea are embedded with the U.S. military in Iraq. They will be flying missions with SKYNEWS 6 pilot Will Kavanagh, who is serving his country in the National Guard.

Friday, April 9th 2010, 8:07 am

By: News On 6

By Lori Fullbright, The News On 6

IRAQ [2:55 A.M.] -- Hi everyone. We are back in Kuwait City. Our unit flew us here early this morning in the Blackhawk. We fly in about 15 hours. It will be a 15 hour flight to Houston and then home to Tulsa!

The sand storms have been terrible during our stay in Iraq. Today, I was amazed the pilots could tell the difference between the sky and the desert because it all looked the same.

Although we were on some dangerous missions, we never saw any action, were never fired on or anything like that.

The conditions and the work schedule are atrocious for these men and women and just doing little things like going to the gym or the laundry are huge hassles. It takes 40 minutes to drive to the gym (if you don't have to wait too long on a bus to come by), then if you work out for an hour or so and 40 minutes back, that's three hours out of your day.

Their days are already long and exhausting! We have a whole new appreciation for little things (and we've only been gone a week!). They don't have real milk, it's powdered. The cooks must crack the yolks of eggs (no one seemed to know why), so no eggs over easy.

We did encounter some camel spiders that were crazy. They can be the size of your fist up to the size of a laptop and no matter how fast you run from them or how much you zig zag, they keep up with you. The good news is they only want to be in your shade because of the heat!

We will download some behind the scenes videos and my pictures once we get back… stuff you won't get to see on TV.

We'll be home soon!

Lori