Groundhog Day

I have now been in Kabul for two weeks, but it feels like much longer.  I work 12 hour days, 7 days a week.  People here call it the 'groundhog day' effect (from the Bill Murray movie by the same name) where each day is pretty much the same as the day before.  And while I feel like I have been here forever, I also feel like my days are on fast forward, so maybe  that is a good thing. 

US Forces Afghanistan Patch

Taking pictures here is a little bit tricky because there are a lot of things you cannot take pictures of, but I'll try to get some up here in the next post. For this post I will try something different and hyperlink certain words so that you can investigate further if you like. 

I work at ISAF HQ in Kabul, Afghanistan.  ISAF is a NATO command, but there are a lot of other non-NATO countries represented here as well.  Looking for people from other nations is kind of like bird watching.  Every once and a while I see a new species with a unique uniform with a certain pattern and with certain colors that I have not seen before.  So far on my base, besides Americans, I have seen people from: Australia, Belgium, Canada, Croatia, Czech Republic, Denmark, France, Germany, Greece, Ireland, Italy, Macedonia, Netherlands, Norway, Poland, Portugal, Slovakia, Spain, Turkey, and the UK.  When I went to another base nearby I even saw a large contingent of Mongolians!  So there is a very international feel here.  It is kind of like some bizzaro version of Disney Land's 'It's a small world' meets some sort of weird war time Epcot Center.  In case you were wondering, English is the dominant language used by everyone. 

Fun things that I have seen so far:
      -The Germans had an 'Oktoberfest' one day.  They closed off part of a street on base and put up some German flags and barbequed some bratwurst.  One of the female German soldiers even had on a 'beer girl' outfit, although she was wearing combat boots.  Sadly, Americans are not allowed to drink any type of alcohol in Afghanistan :(   - although Europeans are permitted a maximum of two drinks each on their national holidays or festivals. 
     -The Navy celebrated its 236th birthday yesterday (Oct. 13th).  To celebrate, we sailors had a BBQ in the evening.  It was fun.  I've found that these little events help break up the standard routine. 
     -Kabul is located at almost 6000 ft in elevation (think Denver-ish), so it is starting to get pretty chilly.  It has been raining recently so the mountains around the city already have snow on the peaks.  Very calming. 

Well, that about does it for me today.  Stay tuned...