Days 90 - 94

Dec 30 – Jan 4. Well Happy Happy New Year to everyone. Hope everyone had a good time and the head is pounding too badly. Me and the kitties has talk out Chinese and rented a couple of DVDs, Dark Knight (pretty good) and No Country for Old Men (very dark and a bit bizarre – did want to make me read the book though!!!). That took me almost to midnight, but I fell asleep. The fireworks woke me, so I called Beanie and had a New Years Eve - she sounded pretty good. I think New Years Eve was a little anticlimactic after the great job they did making Christmas so Christmasy. They had a nice little campfire, but it appears some “other people” on the base liked the idea of a bon fire and decided they wanted to have one also. Kinda minimized the “specialness” of being the only ones with a fire. Sorry for any typos but Max keeps walking across the keyboard. Guess he wants to get a few words in – Lord knows he’s Beanie’s cat!!!

Being that this is the first day of the year and Beanie should be home on about the 90th day of the year (30 March) I am officially starting my countdown calendar. Yes, I know I’ve been cramming “days to go” figures in previous postings, but now I’m serious!!!
I had mentioned earlier that Beanie had the opportunity to visit a school near FOB Fenty. She had a great time and sent me some fabulous pictures which I will make yet another feeble attempt to share with you. Okay, here we go!!

Clearly this is a team of professionals. I mean if you disregard Beanie not wearing a hat and the fact that she’s winging Brian!

The first set of pics is from just outside the base. I think Beanie captured some of the prettiest pictures I’ve seen of Afghanistan. The first one is a local vineyard just outside the gate. You need to look closely, but there are two men and donkey are easy to see, but if you look behind the pillar on the right there is a woman. First women I think I’ve seen in a picture. On the full size photo you can see her a bit clearer.

Here’s a picture of three young Afghan men – I’ll call them the Three Amigos. Two neat things to note is how green the fields behind them are and the other is they are all giving some variation of a thumbs up sign (yep, I’m sure it’s a thumbs up as opposed to the Hawaiian good luck sign)

Fresh cauliflower being sold on the road side. They all know their picture is being taken and they’re all smiling. Pretty cool.

Here’s their ride to the school. It’s a French (AKA CESM pronounced chez’ um) chopper called a PUMA. The Blackwater folks fly them so it’s probably the first time it’s ever seen combat (yeah! I know, cheap shot!!!)

This picture is from their trip to the school and is my absolute favorite picture of the Bean doing her best Top Gun pose. What makes it so funny is she doesn’t have a clue that she is!

This is the actual school. It’s about as basic as you can get. No desks or chairs, just rug and a blackboard. Below one of the girl’s classes is in session.

Here’s Beanie yucking it up with the kids. By the expression of the kid in the front row center, I don’t think he is really buying into this whole thing, but is holding out in case something good comes out of it.

The way it is set up is the boys attend one session (morning I think) and the girls attend the other session.

Girls at school. I think this is a great picture. The lighting of the headscarves and the glow of their faces just seems to capture an aura of childhood innocence. They sit on the floor, no chairs or desks. Man, talk about concentration!!

Here’s the faculty. I'm pretty sure I've seen at least one of theese dudes at a Greatful Dead concert. Got to give them their due as I’m sure there are those in the country that do not agree they should be teaching girls.

Hard to get much cuter than these two pics!!

The entire DCMA team all hunkered down for the flight. Can’t be too safe