Day 5 - It's Lamb!

Big news today! We finally confirmed that the meat we eat at lunch is lamb. It is quite tasty and tender, so I suspected as much. Beef was the second leading guess, with goat not far behind. Camel was a distant fourth guess, but with the help of the language immersion officers here on our team, we confirmed it was lamb.

I realized the last few days have been terribly devoid of photos, and perhaps a bit heavy given the recent few attacks we've had. I'll try to lighten up a bit and provide some photos. By the way, if you click on the photos in the blog you get a much higher resolution version. Try it with the one below of the Afghan cadets marching so you can get a better look at the beautiful roses in the foreground. I'm really smitten by them. I do plan on a separate post today to further comment on the costs of war, this one in particular.

Today is Friday for me... Not really. It is Thursday May 20th, but tomorrow is Jumah here, so we don't work since all the Afghans are off. It is their one non-working day of the week. We take advantage of it, but go back to work on Saturday and Sunday. Basically 6 days on, and one off for them and us. When in Rome, er Kabul, as they say. Most of the historically Catholic/Christian NATO nations here take Sunday off as well, but we work. I'll go to service tomorrow after yoga. Pretty cool that I'm deployed in Kabul and I found a yoga class on base. It helps to offset the cement mattress I've been sleeping on. My lower back can't decide what to do.

I spent a bunch more time in the CompSci department today with their lab techs and department head. By the way, I partially decoded the naming system here. One of my predecessors here told me the CS department head was named Col Rahman (pronounced Rock-mon). He introduced himself to me as Col Fazel as I mentioned in an earlier post. I asked him today how he preferred to be addressed and he of course replied "however you wish." Well, that's a frustrating answer. With the help of my interpreter I learned that his full name is Col Fazel Rahman Fazle. His ancestral family name is Fazle, but his immediate family name is Rahman, and his first/nickname is Fazel. Well from here on out he's Col Rahman to me. I'm a stickler for respecting people's names and titles, so I'm glad I figured this one out with help.

I finally got a few decent shots of my cell, I mean living quarters. Yup, that's all there is too it. These are views of half the room, and there is an identical desk and bunk bed in the front half. This summer we may end up with 3 per room, but hopefully only two. Notice the awesome sheets! I asked Gina to buy me some sheets a few weeks before I left mentioning something about them being "tactical green." Well they are green all right. And even made by Izod. I'm the height of fashion and talk of the barracks. They are quite soft and cozy though .

I spent time walking around the NMAA campus today and watching the cadets. They tend to use their after lunch time for military training, athletics, and studying. Academics are mainly in the morning. It was fun to watch them practice marching with their NCO's. They have an interesting combination of arm swing, goose step, and facing movements. It must be handed down from the Soviet involvement here for so many years. The NCOs and cadets were having a great time though, and it's a lot of fun to participate. They love to practice their english on me with every imaginable greeting from very polite "Hellos" to the occasional "What is up dude" followed by a laugh with their friends. I take it all in stride and have thought about teaching them the high five and bump as an alternative to saluting. Not sure how the Commandant will like this when I leave though.

I've gone on long enough for this post. However I had to share this photo of an old Mig-21 (we called it the Fishbed in NATO) that sits behind the dorms. There are a few of them sitting around in multiple states of decay. I climbed up on it and even took a picture of the weathered out cockpit. It's cool for me to see all the old Soviet aircraft. As a Lieutenant in Germany just after the wall came down, these were the same jet fighters that we spent so much time tracking and gathering intelligence on. Now I get to climb all over one. In a future post I'll try and include some photos of the current operational aircraft the Afghan Air Corps is flying. They utilize the Mi-17 helicopters very heavily, as well as a few other Russian built aircraft (most notably the Mi-24 Hind). They are transitioning to European and US built planes, but still have quite an interesting hodgepodge of aircraft on their flight line.

That's all for now. As they say here, Jumah Hoch, or happy Friday.