Day 7 - New Arrivals

The NMAA support team is really beginning to grow. I'm told additional help comes every summer. Two new Air Force Captains arrived a few days ago, one physicist and one civil engineer. Yesterday we got three new additions from the Naval Academy (two Naval officers and one Marine). This is a first ever for NMAA. Westpoint and USAFA have been sharing the load since 2004, with Westpoint honestly doing most of the heavy lifting. Well, USNA is in the game now so we should have a really productive summer.

I worked today on some of the computer labs with the CS department's lab technicians. We made several things work that didn't previously, but I'm not sure we actually made progress. In more than one instance, we would make a piece of software or hardware work that hadn't been, and then they would look at me and ask, "so what would we use that for?" Hmmm. These are the people that are supposed to train the instructors on new technology in the labs and help them integrate them into their courses. I guess we've got a ways to go, and I've got some more work to do. It is challenging and interesting at the same time trying to find a common ground to build upon (and sometimes frustrating too).

At the end of the day, we attended an awards ceremony for many of the sports competitions that the cadets have been involved in over the last few weeks. Just to give you a flavor of what it was like I've included a picture of the Turkish Military Attache' (dark blue suit on the left) presenting awards to the winning soccer team. The awards ceremony was sponsored by our Turkish counterparts here at NMAA. The Turks and the US are the only two countries that have full time on site mentors.

The ceremony was interesting, but I have to admit, the speeches were much too long. Not to mention they were in Dari and we didn't have interpreters, so it was all pretty much Greek, er Dari to me. This is a picture of the Dean, Col Hamdallah, giving the main speech for the event. The Turkish Military Attache' gave a speech too, and it was doubly long since he gave it in Turkish and paused every few sentences to have it translated into Dari. Wow, double the foreign languages that I don't speak. It's a shame Americans are so language selfish/ignorant.

Well, it's late here and I have an early appointment with the CS department head. He was home sick today, so we missed a meeting to line out a schedule for the mentors to audit all the instructors. I finally got my course offering schedule translated, so we're making progress. Take care until tomorrow.