Well this has certainly taken longer than planned. I apologize for that, especially to those of you who keep asking when the next installment of me is going to be here. I can’t exactly say that I’ve been inundated with work, but I have been trying to keep as busy as possible. As I said before, I’m going to have to give you all an idea of what the day-to-day stuff is like around here. It’s definitely not what I thought I’d be getting into. It’s another world entirely. Some good, some not so much.
Let’s start with the house. I’m living in a plywood rectangle. Everything inside the large plywood rectangle is another smaller one. My room, the training room, the day room, the offices, all of the firefighter’s rooms… everything is plywood and everything is rectangular. At least it’s visually appealing. And when we go outside, everything is tan. Tan tents, tan buildings, tan sand… I thought that I’d take as many pictures of colorful stuff as possible before I left so I could have my screen saver to remind me of all that I miss. That was one good idea. It really stands out in the monotony of tan. I was pretty amused the other day when I saw a guy washing his truck. Really? Here? It’ll be tan again in minutes.
I know a few of you are watching the weather here. Lemme tell you, it ain’t what it appears to be. I just saw my online weather for Kandahar as 63º. Not a chance, kids. Not a chance. It’s not even 9 am and it’s already rather toasty-good. I went for a walk two days ago with my darling roomie. When we took off at 1500, it was 96.8. When we got back around 1730, it was about 93. Granted, while we were out, the dust obscured the sun a few times for us, but for the most part, it was a warm walk! I saw clouds the other day. That was really big news for us. Quite a few people, me included, went out to take pictures. There have been some impressive sunsets & sunrises. I woke up the other morning and started laughing to myself. I saw the beautiful sky and thought, “red sky in the morning, sailors take warning” then wondered who is supposed to take warning when there’s nothing on which to sail. Does that warning still count for us when we’re completely landlocked? What is a red sky here trying to tell us?
The days, right now, aren’t terribly exciting. We wake up, go to roll call, & go to breakfast. Honestly, I think that’s the best meal of the day here. Not only do the guys who work the breakfast line always brighten my day, it’s also the best food. After breakfast, we head back then try to figure out what we’re going to do with our day. Laundry? Work out? Hit up the PX? Get ready for being operational? Oh the choices are so plentiful. But we manage. Sometime around lunch, we get lunch. Now you’ve got to understand that we need to find a way to confine our hunger and food needs to certain hours of the day. The DFACs aren’t open all hours, though we do have a sandwich bar open 24 hours a day… but that’s a bit more of a walk. There are 5 DFACs on this camp and all taste the same. Actually the food in them tastes the same. But it’s food. Some of the FOBs over here don’t even have that much. Either they eat MREs or food from the PX. Not my idea of a nutritional existence! We actually really do have it good. Sometimes we try different DFACs just to vary it up a bit. Whatever works, right?
After lunch is often much the same as after breakfast, only now we’re more off the radar. There’s more time to clean our rooms, organize stuff, play around a little bit… that’s when I usually work out. Either a walk around the camp, which is really quite nice, or soccer, or the gym. We’ve got two of those. Sort of. One is split in two, so I guess it could technically count as three, but that one in two is still mostly one. Just cardio in one tent and weights in the other. The other has both together. Either way, it’s nice to have those available to us! There are a few MWR tents around here as well, but I’ve only been into one of them. It’s probably really lacking for the military men & women, because they don’t typically have as much stuff over here to keep themselves entertained as we do, but it’s still something. Again, I think we’re all on the lookout for diversions.
Sometime after our afternoon, we go eat dinner. It often looks, tastes, and smells suspiciously like lunch. Sometimes it is lunch… just at a slightly different time of the day. I don’t quite get it. After dinner, we chill. Just because that’s all we have left to do. Games, talking, playing on our computers, reading… it’s really not too exciting at all, but we look for smiles where we can. Some people have nice, elaborate sound systems in their tiny rooms. Some have video games. Some have their music. That’s why I bought a keyboard. It’s a great option to help pass the time. Monday through Sunday is always the same mostly, but Sundays are technically down days. It’s a relaxing non-work day. Those are nice.
So that’s pretty much my day to day life right now. As I think of new stuff, I will definitely let you know. If I can pull this off the right way, I’ll start writing things to you all as they happen so hopefully there’ll be more shorter entries. But who knows what tomorrow brings!
Thanks for reading, my dear friends. I miss you all. I am definitely having a great time here, but you are all still in my heart. Hope all is well for everybody.
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