Life in Kabul

Well, I have been here in Kabul for almost two weeks and am starting to get settled in (kind of). I am working nights and have been for the past few nights. I am not yet used to the hours and am still adjusting to sleeping during the days. I thought I had a good deal for this since my roommate leaves next week and I would have the room all to myself except for about 1-2 weeks every few months but I found out a couple of days ago that I will have to move to a new building and will not get the good deal I thought I had. The room is basically a rectangle about 20 feet long and 7 feet wide, not really enough for two-three people that they are cramming into them. We do have AC and I believe there is also heat for the winter and the beds are made of memory foam so at least I have that going for me. I really am not complaining since it is much larger than I had on submarines and I can see the sun every once in a while. The food here is the same, basically there are 5-6 main dishes that the make and rotate, so the variety is not there. There is cheese (Swiss, Provolone, Bree, etc) at every meal and there are also cappuccino machines in the DFAC. I usually get a cappuccino from one of the 4-5 small restaurants here on the compound about daily. They are much better than Starbucks and cost about $2.25 for a large so that also is not too bad. All the little stores here on the compound are in € (Euros) but the exchange rate they give for $ is O.K. I am not used to the smell here (light sewer) and the sky is usually hazy. I am not ready to buy vacation property here, but all in all, it could be much much worse!!!

I will be going to my first Bazar today and will see if there is anything good. I have done some shopping at a couple of the rug shops here on the compound and there are some very nice rugs, mostly hand made, for reasonable prices. If anyone would like for me to look at rugs for them, I would be more than happy to. Once I have a better Idea of what you would like, I will go back and take some pictures and get exact prices to send you to make sure you do not spend $250-$1800 on a rug you will not like. I personally saw a couple of camel wool rugs that I really liked. The camel wool rugs have more brownish tanish colors although they did have a couple with some reds in them. For ~ 6ft X 4ft camel wool rug it was about $275, but they are hand woven and natural (waterproof) dyes and are made in Afghanistan. For a ~ 9ft X 5 ft camel wool rug it was more around the $500 range. Rugs of 30% silk and 70% wool run from $450-$700 for a ~ 9X5 and bigger ones run into the thousands. All wool and all silk run lower and higher respectively. Just e-mail or comment to this post and let me know what sizes/colors/patterns/styles/content you would like and I will see what I can find and e-mail you pictures. If you can find example pictures online, you can even e-mail me those and that might be better. The rugs cost about $25-50 to ship back to the states. There are some really nice rugs here and I have people who know rugs and will go with me to look. I will post pictures of the rugs (in general) later.

Here is a picture of the people I am working with (I am in the second row far right as you are looking at it).

More later...