An interesting trip

I just got back from Counter Insurgency School at a Forward Operating Base (FOB) on the outskirts of Kabul. The class was interesting and I was able to interact and get to know many people from bases around Afghanistan including some Afghan National Police (ANP) and Afghan National Army (ANA) members! The base where the class took place is located in between the "Kings Palace" and "Queens Palace". Here are some pictures...

This is the class picture in front of the "Queens Palace". The palace was built in the 1920s and used until the Taliban and the Northern Alliance fought in the mid 90s. It is now very run down and everything that was easily removed has been pilfered. We got to take a tour of it and I am sure it was a very nice palace at one time.

This is a picture of the "Kings Palace" I do not know much about it, but it is now condemned.






















This is the Soviet Officer's Club that overlooks the valley. We hiked up to it one morning and got to tour it. It is not as run down as the Palaces, but it is still in major disrepair! It was used by the Special Forces to direct bombing strikes against the Taliban in 2001. I have pictures of the tours of the Queens Palace and the Officer's Club that I will be sending to Heindrek for him to upload to a photo sharing site.

The Class and tours were both very interesting, but now I am back at ISAF HQ in Kabul.

Fantastic Experience!!!!!

I just had the best experience of my time here! I went with a group of about 35 people to a local school and handed out school supplies, toys, and candy to a class of boys from 6-12 years old. It was a great experience and I will hopefully be able to post some pictures sometime soon. The kids were great and very polite! They taught me some Dahri and I tried to teach them some english although many spoke some words. I even tried to show one kid how to golf (he had received a set of play golf clubs). It was very rewarding, but very short. Unfortunately, we had to be in our body armor other than that everything went off without a problem! It really put a face on the people we are here trying to help!

Not much new in Kabul

There is not much new to report from Kabul. I am slowly getting used to the schedule here and am trying to stay somewhat normal. I was looking through my past posts and I realize that it may appear that I have a whole lot of time on my hands to do a lot of shopping. The truth is that shopping, going to the gym, and watching movies is about the only thing to do on the 1-3 hours I might have off in a given day. I am currently on the night shift working from 6pm to 830am all but Thursday when I work 8pm to 8am. Even with these hours, meetings tend to run long and take place in the middle of the day so I usually only have about 8-9 hours a day to sleep, shower, go to the gym, and relax. I do go and browse usually about 1-2 days a week and look for things that are interesting and cheep. We are discussing changing the way things are done at work since we are losing about 50% of our people in the next 2 months and only about 50% of them are being replaced any time soon. So like many other places, we will need to do more with less.

I am hoping to be able to do some limited traveling here in the near future, but will not be able to post it until after it happens, so stay tuned for those updates and pictures!

One more thing, I did think of a couple of more things I would really appreciate! Ranch and/or blue cheese dressing packets. Please do not send the little plastic tubs of the dressing or bottles, but rather just the packets since I cannot refrigerate them and the tubs would be more prone to opening during shipment.

Love to all!
Jason

Jen and the boys and the Bazaar

First off, Jen and the boys will be headed to Orlando to evacuate from the fury of Hurricane Ike which is expected to be a strong Category 4 storm when it hits the Keys sometime Tuesday. I will post any updates on my blog...

Now the bazaar. It was very interesting and they had anything and everything. Prices were very easy to negotiate. If you see something on the internet having to do with Afghanistan, chances are you can find it there from rugs to Kashmir and silk tablecloths, blankets, and scarves. Here are some picts...

A Kashmir and silk blanket
















A Camel wool rug















An Afghan war rug














A Kashmir and silk table cloth


















A tribal rug (hand woven, various styles, sizes, and colors)















An antique rug (again various colors, sizes, and styles)




And much much more. Let me know if you would like for me to shop for something for you, it is very easy to negotiate for a good price and the quality on some of the stuff is very good!!

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...