The hardest part...

...is the waiting...

Everything is packed...

Everything is set...

And now...the wait...


I hate waiting. I am not a very patient person, at times...right now least of all. I was not so stressed the first time. The second time holds a lot more stress...especially as I do not know if it is certain sure that I am going.

Oy....

Makes me sick just thinking on it. I'd rather know now...one way or t'other, I don't much care...

Just...to know...

And so...

The waiting is the hardest part.

Heh...

Smells like dust is in the air...more to come.

Bah

First they took away my tank...then they sent me to Ash-Can-istan....and now....

Now they want me to be an MP?!?!?!?!

WTF?!

oy

Medical

Howdy y'all!

Sorry for the long delay...much oddness in life...

The army is done with us...even those of us with medical issues. The army does not want to keep us on AD any longer...so trying to get stuff looked at by the army docs is like pulling teeth...blech

More to follow!

Home...

Soon...

The journey begins...

More when I get there...

God bless!

Winding down...

This year is almost over...Dank Sei Gott!!!

Its been....

Many things...a very many things...

Mostly though, its been a year of learning...learning things about myself, leadership, cultures and interactions...Not all of the lessons have been pleasant...but most of them have been...

Now it is time to pass on what we have learned to those that follow us, and then turn our thoughts to kith and kin...to home...

About time

http://www.military.com/opinion/0,15202,93376,00.html?ESRC=eb.nl

Recognizing a true American Hero

Pictures of the Shamal

Here are some pictures taken of the Shamal.

One:


And a second:

Soon

Wow....

I have now been on Active Duty for over a year...hard to believe...so much has happened.

For those of you that have been checking my infrequent updates at AnySoldier.com you know that my cut-off for mail was 15 Mar 06. Packages or letters mailed after this date are not guaranteed (where they ever?) to reach me. We should be rotating out in the next couple months. Not sure when or to where...*shrugs* But all I know is that time remaining is now weeks, not months...and that is a good thing.

Shamal

I know, I know...two months with hardly a post, and now, two in one day...wow!!!


The other day, I was working the gate and I happened to look out to the back side of our compound. I could see the clouds in the sky threatening rain, but the horizon behind the hills had an odd brownish tint. As I watched, that brownish tint turned into a swirling, turbulent wall of brown sweeping behind the PRT. It looked as though most of it would pass, until I looked off to the left of our compound...and there it came, sweeping over the hill that had blocked it until this point. Like a pair of pincers, the dust storm (aka shamal) swept over the PRT from front and back. The dust got so bad that we could not see 100 meters, about the length of a US football field.

Taking cover in the base of the gate tower, I watched the dust blowing along the sidewalk that runs along the outside of the wall. The wind was blowing so hard that it kept about one foot of the sidewalk closest to the wall scoured clean, but it made ever-shifting patterns on the remainder of the sidewalk. The shamal lasted about 30 min...afterwords there was dust coating every horizontal surface.

Like most things here...the shamal was starkly beautiful.

But I hope not to be out in the next one!

Camels and Cameras

This is a post that I have been meaning to write since before I left on leave in Jan. Unfortunately, I never quite got around to it....so here goes...

It has been my experience that it is nigh impossible for me to get pictures of camels. This seems to break down into 3 main reasons. 1) The camels are too far away. With the disposable cameras that I have had up to this point, this would result in a panoramic picture with indistinct, possibly camel shaped dots in it. 2) The camels are obscured. This often happens when we are travelling, and the picture is either blurred by speed or the dust thrown up by our vehicles hides the camels. 3) I don't have my camera. When this is the case, we will invariably pass, at low speed and close range, a camel caravan that is gorgeously beribboned or a nomad group travelling with their worldly possessions on camel-back.

I had hoped that my bringing a digital camera back from leave with me would help to rectify this situation, but unfortunately this has not yet happened...

Stay tuned!

I'm Alive

Back from leave...will update soonish

I'm Dreaming of a Brown Christmas...

Well...winter is here, and with a vengeance, especially compared to our summer temps. Those of you from north of the frost belt would see this as fairly mild, but temps have been dipping down to freezing, especially in the wee hours of the morning. Which is not much fun when you are in a guard tower at that time...no sir.

The army, in its infinite wisdom, actually managed to get us some pretty decent cold weather gear. These include light-weight, yet very warm long underwear, known affectionately as 'silks'. These are comparable in warmth to the older, yet bulkier, poly-pros. We also have fleece overalls and jacket, and Gore-Tex pants and parka. All of these together make us look like overinflated balloons, yet are pretty warm.

No sign of rain, much less snow, but the desert floor takes on a nice seasonal sheen when viewed through our night vision goggles under the light of a full moon.

Not quite home, but every day brings us a lil closer.

Merry Christmas!

Mik

Local Sight-seeing

On a mountain a few miles from our base there are some ruins.  
The map calls it a shrine, and the locals call it the castle
of infidels.  The Mujahadin used it as a fortress during the
Soviet invasion, parts of the wall had been destroyed by tank
cannon fire.

It was a heck of a climb up there...150-200 feet...not too
bad until you actor in 50+ lbs of weapons and gear...when you
got about 100 feet up, the trail forked, the right went up to
the old curtain walls that were on a cliff that was about 200
feet high I went there and took some pics with a disposable...
then back down to the fork and up the left passage.  There was
an old well partway up that path, supposedly the defenders that
were killed were thrown into the well, I could not see the
bottom.  I went up the left fork as far as I could, to another
wall over a cliff, to reach the top from there, you literally
have to climb the rock face.  Sans armor and weapon, I would
have made the attempt, the main portion of the castle is at the
very top, but there was no way I could do it, encumbered as I was.
Going to try to get pics from the guys that took their digi-cams...

It was an exhausting climb, but well worth it.  I would love to be
able to come back here one day and climb all the way to the top.  
Hopefully by then, some enterprising Afghani will have set it up as
a tourist spot and installed a skytram to the top!

Veteran's Day

A Tribute to Our Vets

We built this country on the strength of our devotion,

Freed our fellow countrymen from foreign tyranny,

We have served our nation in countless climes and countries

From the burning deserts of North Africa to the killing jungles of Asia

From the vast plains of America to the fertile fields of France…

We have faced our brothers on the field of battle

Then offered them our hands in time of peace

We have vanquished our enemies utterly

Then rebuilt their lands with our sweat

We have made former foes the staunchest of allies

Our brothers lie buried across this world

And we who survived came not home unscathed

Wounded in body soul or mind

We returned to our homes

To our families and friends, to heal

We are soldiers and sailors

Airmen and Marines

Coast Guardsmen

Brothers and sisters

Mothers, fathers, friends and kin

We are teachers and firefighters

Police Officers and Rescue workers

Nurses, doctors, factory workers

We are your friends and neighbors

We are the shield of your freedoms

We have served our country and our flag

For two and a quarter centuries

With our lives and our blood

We have watered the tree of liberty

Long may it grow and bloom.

Citizenship Test

Take the test...tell me how many you got correct in the comments.

You Passed the US Citizenship Test

Congratulations - you got 10 out of 10 correct!

Could You Pass the US Citizenship Test?

School Visits

Earlier this week, I had the opportunity to take some of the school supplies that have been graciously donated by American students to a couple of local schools. We visited a local girls' school and a kindergarten. It was wonderful to see so many children, especially the girls, at school, wanting an education...but it was hard because of the conditions of their schools.

The girls' school was a one-story building, with a gravel courtyard surrounded by a wall. There are ten rooms in the school, nine of which are used for classrooms, the other room is the school office. In these nine classrooms, the school teaches a total of 40 classes in three shifts. Due to size constraints, some of the classes are conducted outside, regardless of the weather. The school hosts about 1000 students, girls from the poorer areas of the city and outlying villages. They have no books, no A/C or heat, very little paper, no exercise or playground facilities. Almost nothing, in fact, except the desire for an education. As this was our first visit to this particular school, we only brought supplies for 50, which ended up earmarked for distribution to the teachers. However, we did bring some Frisbees and volleyballs, donated by the International Stabilization and Assistance Force (ISAF), whose jurisdiction we fall under.



This is a picture of us and the school staff with the frisbees and supplies that we took to the girls' school.





This is one of the classrooms. As you can see, there is only a small blackboard for the teacher's use. The girls all sit on the carpet, there are no desks or tables.




This is the courtyard of the girls' school. This is the only place that some of these girls can run and play. This is also where we played Frisbee.




After visiting the girls' school, and playing some Frisbee and volleyball with them, we went to visit one of the 5 Kindergartens in the city. This was an even smaller building, only 4 rooms, one of which serves as the school office. The Kindergartens are co-ed, but again, very crowded. Only two of the classrooms had chairs for the children, the other class sat on the floor. I went into the third classroom and sat with the children as they recited their lessons. Most of their learning is done through rote memorization and repitition. One student would recite what they had memorized and the whole class would repeat it back. I had a chance to go in and talk to the class briefly. I asked if they were excited about being able to come to school. Their response nearly deafened my in that tiny room. They were very excited. One of the girls asked if she could recite her lesson. I cannot remember it all, but the gist of it was that a crazy man is asleep in the brain and won't learn, and it asked the crazy man to wake up, wake up and learn. She did such a wonderful job, and was obviously so happy with being there that it nearly broke my heart. I told them that I was a teacher too, and that I really missed being with my students back home. But, I told them, that I was very excited to be able to be there with them in their classroom, in their school, and to watch them learn.



One of the Kindergarten classrooms.

"My" classroom, greeting the children.





Education is the key to this country, to all countries. Teaching our children should be our highest priority, for it is through them that civilization will succeed or fail. No where is that so obvious to me, than here, in a land that is desperately trying to regain some of its lost civilization, to recover from a quarter century of bloodshed and oppression.

But it is still there, you can see it, in the eyes of the children.

P.S.: There are many more photos at my photo gallery.

Thought for the Week

With modern technologies, such as Global Positioning Satellites (GPS), it is now possible to be lost, more accurately, than at any other time in history.

GPS is a wonderful thing. It can pinpoint your location on the surface of the earth to less than the size of a Honda Civic. Unfortunately this will not tell you where to go, or how to get there. GPS does not warn you of roads that have moved. (An all too common occurance here in Afghanistan, where roads can shift location by several hundred meters a year.) Nor will GPS warn you of irrigation ditches wide and deep enough to swallow a HMMWV.

But, by golly, GPS tells you exactly where you are...in the middle of the deep Afghani desert!

Minimal Posting

Not that I have been posting a lot here anyhow...

But, my laptop motherboard quit a couple of days ago, and I am trying to work with DELL to get it up and running as soon as possible. Which, in DELL-speak, coupled with the mail system, could be several months...

I'll post what I can, when I can...

God Bless.

Sad Tidings

We just received news that one of our comrades from 5th Tank died in Iraq. He apparently was electrocuted while performing maintenance on a vehicle. He will be sorely missed.

Please pray for his family and friends that they may find comfort in this time of sorrow.

Mik