Emily and Max are in Savannah, and I am in Herat

Today is Saturday. While you all are enjoying a weekend, I am working! It is so weird to have Friday off and work Saturday and Sunday, but I guess I will get used to it.

The spandex soldiers are gone now. There’s not a crowd at the coffee stand at breakfast, and I don’t hear the music of their language anymore. Almost no one was in the gym tonight. It’s sad to see them go, but I am glad they are safe and leaving this area.

I broke one of my promises to myself tonight. I tried the fish. The little cook was so proud of himself for preparing salmon packaged in foil, covered with diced tomatoes and onions, so I had to tell him I would try it. Let’s just say that I am sure it could have been better had it been cooked about 10 minutes less. It wasn’t even pink. I took a couple of bites, but thankfully, he was still cooking on the outside grill when I left and pushed almost all of it into the trash bin.

Today was my heavy writing day. I really enjoy editing the weekly reports because the writers are much more receptive and kinder than my students. In fact, they almost all said thanks to me for correcting their errors! Wow! A couple of the authors are Afghans, and they print out the red-line drafts so they can learn from their mistakes. So does a guy in Kunduz – and he’s American. He wants to know the writing rules so that he can, as he says, do better the next time. Today, I had mini-lessons on writing numbers and using acronyms. Tomorrow, I will be writing instructions as to how to size a photograph in Word. I hope I can first figure it out and then write it coherently. Last week’s lesson was writing active voice sentences instead of passive voice (for those of you who don’t remember that lesson, here it is: ACTIVE - I threw the ball. PASSIVE – The ball was thrown by me. See how much better the active voice sounds and looks? There you have it).

The days are getting shorter, but the afternoons are still lovely. I think that since I have been here, we have had three days without sun, and one of those was right after I first arrived in Kabul when I remember that it rained cats and dogs. Here, though, the sunless days are really just kind of hazy – not even really cloudy. Esman says, though, that this pleasantness will come to an end pretty soon. When I go home for Thanksgiving, I will wear my heavy coat back, and will bring gloves and boots as well.

Julie is on leave now, and the man who was on leave when I arrived here is now back. He’s a very laid back guy; he used to be a prosecutor in Illinois, and while Julie is gone, he is feeding the camp cat – actually the camp kitten. There is a cat, as well, and it tries to attack the kitten often - I assume it’s a jealousy thing. I told Julie that I would help feed the kitten, and so far, I have remembered twice. The little thing is lucky that Will is now around.

My shopping trip to the American base was successful – except that they carried no Puffs Plus. I will have to make do with Kleenex until my care package arrives from Max. I couldn’t find any boots, either, so I will have to order some and hope that they get here pretty soon. I did find, though, a pair of shoes. I know you are not surprised. They are not really cool shoes, though; they are Asics, and they are a half size too large, but I think they will be all right. They were ON SALE, which means that I can wear them out on the river rock and it won’t be that big a deal.

That’s about all that’s happening here right now – oh, except that I got first approval for my Sedalia Democrat column from the company. Now it goes to the State Department for final approval, and then I will send it to the Democrat for the editor’s approval. I am sending my first blog entry, so that people who are not reading the blog will find out how I got here. You might not recognize it, though. It was 1752 words, and I cut over 700 in order to get the size close to the Democrat’s 700-word limit. I hope they will go with the longer column just this once. I will let you know what the State Department says as soon as I know.

Thanks for listening. Tomorrow I go visit a department head. I will try to take some kind of picture to show you, but I don’t know what will be allowed. Until then.