4th of July...work day

Today we started the day pretty normal.  Went to get breakfast, checked email, then went to the logistics depot to discuss issues with the newly fielded authorized stock listing. This document will finally tell them what levels they should maintain on certain items, so they can now focus.  Before it was chaos.

During breakfast this morning, the decorations were pretty sparse...just the hats on the napkin holders.

While sitting in the logistics depot, I was of course drinking chai tea...you can see my styrofoam cup of coffee on the table...had to finish this first.  They still bring you chai, even when you bring an enormous cup of coffee...too funny. 

In today's discussion with the ANA Colonel about quarterly awards, I finally got him to understand (or he just told me what I wanted to hear) that he can't just come up with names.  The winners have to mean something and have to be selected carefully.  I recommended a board of three people that are pretty impressive to select the winners.  Tomorrow we will work on it...I hate taking this long to do something...Let's do this thing!

I stopped by the interpreters village to see the eastern style toilets.  The setup looks pretty good.  I'll get more pics later.  Most don't use toilet paper, they use the sprayer on the left to clean themselves kind of like a bidet.

Okay, it's time for lunch.  I asked the interpreter to sit down and do computer training with the ANA Major and Lt Colonel and have them send me an email this afternoon or in the morning.  I then, drove back to the base to eat and here's what the dining hall looked like.

You can't eat this, because it's styrofoam underneath...no cake...just icing.  Of course they had a real cake on the other side of the room for eating.

Little better at lunch...the hats are now on the ceiling.

Then we took care of some administrative office work and finished the day off.  We started our BBQ at 5 pm or so.  We had steaks, chicken, bratwursts, pork and beans, homemade (B-hut made...LOL) salsa, Afghan nan (flatbread), and some local Afghan melon.

There was another BBQ out at our depot, so I went out there next.  Here's a pic of some ANA basic trainees marching back from the firing range.

When I thought the day was done and started typing my blog up, I received a call from the US convoy team and they just arrived.  First they were asking for fuel, then decided they'd get it tomorrow and go get something to eat get some sleep.  They'd been on the road since 3:30am.  I can't imagine how tired they were...that's over 16 hours in a hostile environment...of course they had a stop or two to make...they're awesome!!!  We got 'em what they needed so they could get food and a bed right away.  We'll fuel 'em tomorrow.

Now for the old pictures, I was talking with an interpreter and she told me that all the interpreters have these pictures.  Unfortunately, no one has any specifics on where they came from.

When I was here in 2005/2006, I drove by houses like this.  People still live like this today. No running water and not electricity.  When you live in a mud home, don't think you worry about recycling and trash pickup.

They just aren't trying hard enough...they could get more things and people on that truck.

How many Afghans can they get on this truck?

I love the horses and camels to the left and cars to the right sign.