Living Conditions

Some of you might be curious as to how we are living over here...

Not that bad, actually. We are two to a room, most of us have air-conditioning in our rooms (the rest are being installed soon.) Due to recent constuction, some of us do not yet have lights...but those should be delivered Real Soon Now (TM)...this means that no one has the foggiest idea when they will arrive, but they should be on their way...maybe...

We hope. But for now...having a working air-conditioner in our room is truly a priceless treasure. Temps are already reaching into the 90s+...and that will only get worse.

Where we are...

Without going into specifics... We are in a valley in western Afghanistan. Our compound has mountains visible all around us...some of them as close as 700 meters. It is both majestic and desolate. Today we saw a huge dust devil blow up and run up the mountain side...Yeee...there is a lot of dust around here.

Even in the midst of all this desolation there is wildlife. Jackals prowl the night, weasels or mongooses run through the city streets, swallows and other birds fly in the day, and bats at night. We have seen mice, snakes, camel spiders and at least one cat in our compund.

A note about snakes...here in Afghanistan you never have to wonder whether or not a snake is poisonous...

They all are...sooooooo...we leave them alone!

Anyhow....that is enough for the now...

Y'all take care and God bless!


Mik

The Big City

Today I went "outside the wire" for the first time. We went into the provincial capital...it was a study in contrasts. The roads make the tank trails at Ft. Hood look like German Autobahns...most of the construction is mud bricks...apparently when vehicles break down, rather than repair them, they are stripped for parts and left in place...old Soviet vehicles are everywhere...

But...everywhere there are signs of new construction and growth...shops are open -- everywhere! The children are friendly as all get-out...waving to us as we drive by and crowding around us for candy and water and whatever-they-can-get. Even the teenagers and adults came up to us to try and chat. The language barrier reared its ugly head, but most of them seemed to be trying to learn English, and I will attempt to learn a bit of Farsi, as it is common to both the dialects spoken in this area (Dari and Pashto).

I will try to get some pictures of the scenery and post them, as well as more descriptions of the landscape soon.

God Bless

Mik

Here...finally

Well...after nearly a week of travel, 6 flights spanning 5 countries on three continents we are here.

Here...is a western province of Afghanistan...many miles from anywhere. Here, furthermore, is a walled compound that is about 200 yards on each side. We have fairly decent living areas...soon to feature actual air conditioning, as much dust as you could dream of (or at least have nightmares about) and flies galore. But it is our home for the next year...yay...


Heh.

Time for chow, more later.

Mik

Travellin'....

Well...We made it...mostly.

We left Texas at midnight Saturday morning...and travelled to Maine, Ireland, Turkey and finally ended up at an American airbase in Central Asia. We will spend some time here waiting for a flight to Afghanistan.

It was an uneventful flight...which was good because airplanes are just not designed for big men with lots of equipment...the flight was a wee bit crowded. Now we are just waiting for our bodies time sense to catch up with us!

Well... more later.

Happy Belated Mother's Day!!!

Mik