Merry Christmas

Merry Christmas from Kabul. Christmas here is pretty much like any other day, cold and smoky. We have not had any snow yet, evidentially, that comes later in January. We did have a slow workday today and the bad guys cooperated to give us a quiet holiday. The best part of the holiday season this year is I will go into the 20s for days left on Saturday and should be able to get out of Kabul for a few days. The picture is of our holiday gift exchange we did on Christmas Eve in the “Burkah” Room. We had a British guy dressed as Santa and an Army Sergeant dressed as an Elf to hand out presents from our Secret Santa thing. I got a nice knife and since I had an Australian girl who we always tease about wanting to marry an American, I gave her a Kuala bear dressed in desert camouflage with an American flag on his shoulder. It was nice and a whole lot of gag gifts were given including a couple of Karzai robes, and Mosque alarm clocks. If I had to spend Christmas in the middle of an Islamic dust bowl, at least I have some good people here at work to spend it with.

Since I probably will not be here for New Years this post will serve as my overall holiday blog post. I will be back shortly after the new year and will post pictures etc for my trip to the Polish Forward Operating Base (FOB) with my old roommate who is a Polish Major. It should be a good trip and I am looking forward to seeing more of the country for a few days and I will get to ride in a Polish (Russian) helicopter!

I hope everyone had a great Christmas and has a wonderful new year!!

Two weeks closer to home

Well another couple of weeks have gone by and things are still quiet here. After almost no rain for the first four months in Afghanistan, it has been raining non-stop for the past couple of days. It has gotten colder here and is supposed to get down to single digits Fahrenheit this weekend. Things in Kabul are quiet although we are still kept busy by the bad guys in the rest of the country.
I am now down to almost five weeks here followed by more than two weeks to get home after that. It has been an interesting tour to say the least.
Christmas in Afghanistan is quite different. There are a couple of lights up around the base and we are hoping to have a quiet Christmas this week. I will be going on a trip to visit a Polish PRT (Provincial Reconstruction Team) in a couple of weeks and am looking forward to seeing more of the country and getting beyond the walls here for a few days.
Nothing more to say now, I will try to blog again on Christmas.
Merry Christmas and Happy New Year!

Believe it or not, another new post

Again, it has been a long time since I have written. I could go through all the usual excuses, but it really comes down to internet problems…Since my last post, not a whole lot has changed. I am still here in beautiful downtown Kabul and still working for a living. Thanksgiving has passed and we were treated to a “traditional” Thanksgiving dinner with Turkey, potato cake type things, gravy, and ham. We did get real collard greens though which made the whole meal! A very small group of people did try to ruin our Thanksgiving, but only made some more work for us and ruined the day for some of their fellow countrymen instead. We have been busy here but as winter descends upon the country, we are hoping thing will quiet down a bit!!

Tonight is the Army/Navy game and there has been some level of rivalry amongst the large population from both groups. We all know however that Navy will be destroying Army 45-3. Speaking of sports, the schizophrenic Denver Broncos are at the top in the AFC West and will hopefully wrap up the division this week or next. I am kind of surprised, but am hopeful they can pull things together and finish the season with double digit wins and the division!

Christmas is a little over two weeks away and my time here in paradise will be over shortly thereafter! I would like to thank everyone for the support I have received during my time here! This has been a very interesting experience and it really makes me think how spoiled we all are. This country has been in the midst of war for the better part of 1200 years and if you have not had a chance to look at www.quqnoos.com yet, I highly recommend looking at it and seeing how people live here!

Happy Holidays and Happy New Year!