It needs to be established here & now that the details of my actual job really trip me out sometimes. If you would have told me that the easiest forms of communicating in my job would ever involve yelling, I would never have believed you. Seriously. Sometimes I’m starting to feel like this is a fire department. We had three days in a row where we had real, actual calls. That lulled me into a false sense of excitement about our potential. Then we had a few days of nothing. That’s more common. But today we broke our streak of nothing again! We had a call. And how was it dispatched? Lemme tell you. It was a chief screaming down the hall to the guys, then screaming to me to dispatch the engine. Uh… to what? So he yelled the details to me (all two of them) then I “dispatched” it and the engine was already responding because the chief had already summoned them. It’s far from perfect, but in the big picture, it works! See, once upon a time, I worked in a job where we regularly complained about our radio system. About our tone alert system. About our CAD system. About all sorts of things. But even when I was complaining about it and how antiquated it was, I always knew that in the big picture, we’d get the assets to where they needed to be. That’s what we do. All dispatch agencies everywhere manage to get it done, even if it’s not pretty during the process. So here I sit in Afghanistan with a radio system we share with the entire camp that sometimes works when we’re 10 feet away from each other but never from one side of the camp to the other, NO CAD, NO tone alerts, a doorbell to alert the crews of a call, NO mapping system… and we still get it done. If I go back to my little dispatch world in the states, I’m going to laugh at the blatant dissimilarities of my two jobs but the fact that no matter where we are or what we have, we’ll get it done.
I should apologize right now for not being in touch for so long. Things have been sort of… funny around here. I’ve had a lot going on, been trying to get quite a bit of stuff taken care of. Some days I really don’t feel like doing much of anything but watching a movie or cross stitching while I wait for yet another 12 hours to pass. Horrible excuse, I know. I’m sorry!
So what’s happened since I last wrote? Well… Christmas, New Year’s, my grandparent’s 66th anniversary (today! And I know it’s irrelevant to my living over here but I just wanted to point that out to everybody that reads this simply because I’m so happy for them), a few calls here & there, many movies, many workouts, finished a great book… It’s really not been terribly interesting. And that’s good.
Christmas was nice. It wasn’t depressing as many of my coworkers said it would be. It was fairly late in the day, but I had dear friend that I got to have my Christmas dinner with (okay, breakfast too, with proof in the picture below, but the dinner was the Big Meal so I'm just counting that). One of the most spectacular things we get here are the Styrofoam creations by the DFAC workers. They are awesome and I can't keep all of their talent and production to myself so here are some pictures of the ones we had waiting for us on Christmas.
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| I really had a halloween moment here, expecting someone to jump out and scream at me... The legs look so real! |
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| The wild gazeindeeraph. Gazelle/Reindeer/Giraffe. I guess they guide the sleigh in different parts of the world. |
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| Do make note of the Christmas Bunny. Not sure which story he falls into, but cute nonetheless. |
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| Juli and the Smurftue of Liberty! |
Our Christmas decorations were quite cute. We had dispatch looking nice, I had a few in my room, and there were a few interspersed throughout the camp. It's always nice to see twinkling lights when walking to laundry in the wee cold hours of the night.
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| My cute little tree and a few presents in my room |
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| Andy's snowman |
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| My tree during the day with more presents. It was tough to wait until Christmas to open these! |
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| Stuff in a care package from very appreciated, yet unknown people. |
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| The cards and letters in those care packages are priceless. |
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| What would life be without a green Christmas flamingo pen? |
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| The presents kept increasing. It is so nice to feel so loved by my friends and family. |
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| From my mom & baby bro (LOVE the calendar, Mom, thank you!!!) (love the clothes too!) |
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| From Joe (can't wait to get to the book & cookies, and to start posting some of the Mad Lib responses we come up with!) |
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| From the Cruz/Malloy/Workman groups. All so much fun and so useful! |
So as you can see, this was a very wonderful Christmas. I didn't post pictures of Jill's care package because I was too busy digging into it and stuffing my face with the contents to take pictures. I feel really bad about that, but those products-- the shampoos & conditioners, the Glee episodes & Christmas movies, the candies & microwavable treats, the Christmas decorations... everything was so wonderful. Thank you to you & John, the kids and their contributions, and to your (our ;-)) mom. And thank you to the rest of you who have been keeping me in your thoughts and prayers. Thank you for the Christmas cards (all of which made it onto the wall), for the boxes of candies & other goodies, for the emails, and for the encouragement. It is so comforting to know that I really do have the best of friends and family, even when 9000 miles away.
I also posted something on Facebook about our weather. The chilliness. The frost. The trauma of going into a port-o-potty that had ice on the walls. It actually turned into a very amusing string of comments, but just so you can all enjoy the concept, here are some pictures for proof.
The weather actually never got much worse than this. Some think that we're making a turn around and it's all up from here, but we're still hitting the low 30's some nights. We had a few days of clouds and about two whole separate "storms" complete with rain once and drizzle the second time. The camp actually got beautiful after the night of rain. I was very impressed with the way things looked. Granted, we can't really say the trees looked good because we don't have a tree anywhere in our line of sight, but the rocks showed their colors...
Alright, gentle readers. It's about time to head to lunch. Rumor has it, we've got chicken available today. We have chicken available almost every day! They do feed us well. Our DFAC is still reportedly about the best in all of Afghanistan. It's just up to us to try to be creative and as healthy as possible. Some days aren't easy, others are. The healthiest meals usually involve those when we decide to skip. All I know is that I was hit yesterday with the most profound sadness when I realized how much I miss Rachael Ray, my pots & pans, and VARIETY! But that's okay. I just think of how good my formerly familiar food will be when I get to feast again.
Love to you all,
D
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