Kandahar

Oh boy, getting a nice whiff of the poo pond right now.  Feels like you're sitting inside of a septic tank.  Thank you British.  I'm in Kandahar now.  So, conveniently on the boardwalk here there is some decent free wifi.  Funny thing is when I was pulling up my site here everything on the top banner bar was in Arabic, or something (what we like to call 'durkas').  I think I may have flagged my site accidentally when I was trying to log into my dashboard to create this post.  I couldn't read the durkas to find the link to click.  So, for all of you reading, this is not an inappropriate site.  I hope any flag doesn't stay there.  I may have to figure out how to clear it.

I haven't took as many pictures of KAF here yet, but when I get some I'll post them here if I can get a good wifi connection to upload them.

Kandahar...what an interesting place so far.  This place is coalition ran, so a different country runs it in a rotation after a certain period of time.  Right now the Canadians are running it (Kanada-har, ha ha!).  All the food here is European based.  Us Americans are naturally guests here since we don't really run the show on base.  The food here isn't the best because of that.  At the least, the selection isn't as good.  There is some good stuff - I've become a master at the panini grill for sandwichs - but it doesn't compare to the good food and variety in Bagram.  However, I had a really great steak last night thanks to the chaplain BBQ.  I'm in a transient tent that is meant only for people staying a few days either waiting for R&R, leave, for a job trip, or to get into permanent housing.  We're waiting for permanent housing, but the tent has become "permanent" to us for the time being.  I've created my own little fort/man cave over 2 bunk beds trying to keep privacy and security.  The rest of the guys have a large man cave compound.

Who would have thought, after going through Kyrgyzstan and Bagram having hot showers there, that they can't figure out how to keep hot water to the showers here in KAF.  I've had luke-warm and cool showers a few times since getting here.  Thankfully, this morning I had a nice hot shower.  That was nice for a change.  You don't want to know what the condition of the showers & bathrooms are like either.  Hopefully soon we will be getting into permanent housing in a mod or something.  Mods are like converted metal container buildings.  The rooms are setup 4-6 people to a room, I think.  They have indoor plumbing which is pretty sweet.  They also come with internet connection packages.

Something that is nice about this place being coalition ran is there are different PXs for different countries.  There's a small French PX, small British PX, Dutch PX, American, and there's even a duty free shop.  It's pretty cool to be able to get some European favorites if I want to try something.  Chocolate in particular.  The Brits have their own nice cafe' and coffee shop that has a Starbucks feel.  It's a pretty nice place.  We have something called Green Beans Coffee.  Their coffee is pretty good despite where we're at.  They have gift cards you can get through their website and send to us.  Feel free to hook us up, if anyone is interested in sending gift cards www.greenbeanscoffee.com.

Cheers for now,
Aaron

New Guitar!

On Thursday I had a few packages come for me in the mail. There was a really big package. Inside was a brand new Takamine G-series acoustic/electric guitar! It is a beautiful guitar and sounds really, really nice. Thank you to the wonderful people at Guitar Gallery www.guitargal.com and the donor that was able to make this happen for me here in Afghanistan! The guitar will be used well. I actually used it this morning to play in the worship band for the chapel service.

Saturday Rain and Sunday Clouds

Last Saturday, a week ago yesterday now, it rained pretty hard.  Below are a couple pictures from right outside the Bagram office.

This was a pretty cool shot at the end of the day last Sunday.  The sun was setting and the beams shot out over the clouds that were blocking the sun.  It was pretty.

I also got this cool shot of the knarly thunder clouds rolling in.  These clouds provided a nice lightning display as it got dark.

This is a shot of the moon Sunday night.  On my way to get some dinner I took this shot.  It was really cool because the thunder clouds were blocking part of the moon out, so it seemed like the moon was rising from the clouds.  The picture wasn't the best to show how cool it looked, but it did turn out better than I thought it would.  It is hard to get good night shots.

Cuban

Friends of ours that we work with in a unit from Puerto Rico were nice enough to share some good cigars. A pic of the cigar before smoking it last Sunday night, and a pic of me smoking it. It was a good Cuban cigar.

Macro Shots

I had to post these two from today. I woke up this morning and stepped outside of our hooch about to head to breakfast. My buddy was smoking right out front and called me over to look at this bug on the wall. I was able to get really close to it without it moving and took this shot. I have no idea what type of bug it is, but it looks like some large grasshopper.

After work I took this shot of the razor wire all wrapped around the perimeter line.
I call this 'The Razor's Edge'.

Sunday Afternoon

This is a picture I took outside of my office area Sunday. It rained some that day. There was some lightning and thunder also. The power went out in our building for awhile too. This is looking West. You can see the cool clounds with the layers of mountains in the background.

View of the mountains

These are a couple photos I took of the mountains to the East when the sun was setting yesterday. The sunset was pretty and it was really clear. Since it was clear I was able to get a couple good pictures of the mountains. This is a view from an outdoor stairway entering into the stack of 40' containers which are the shower and bathroom for us men!

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