Jet Lag - Kicks you in the butt!

I arrived in Kabul on the 15th, was met at the airport by Dorie and Matt, both work in the office with me. Nice people, very imformative. We leave the Kabul airport and enroute to the compound. As we drive, I'm trying to take in everything I see, ask questions and listen to Dorie and Matt point out things of interest. Like, did you know that they have wedding buildings here for weddings. So when someone gets married, they rent these buildings for the shin dig. They are elaborately decorated, Dorie says at night it looks like Vegas with all the lights - very cool. I think all the roads around here are dirt or else they're so covered in dust they look like dirt. As we're driving, I see a donkey drawn flat wagon with a little man sitting at the front bouncing all over the place holding on with his legs clamped under the front of the wagon and he's in traffic with all the cars and that donkey is running like hell. But, he's keeping up with traffic. I couldn't help but chuckle. When we get to the compound, I'm shown three rooms and get to select the one I want. Mine has a balcony. Then Dorie takes me on a tour of the rest of the compound. Then, its lunch time. They were serving grilled lobster - don't mind if I do. Dorie thought they were going to be small so she ordered us each two and they turned out to be big - darn, we had so much left over we had to have lobster for dinner too. I spent the remainder of that day being introduced to other staff as they filtered in and cleaning my room. I slept 6 hours that night.

Day 2: Got up and got dressed, went down stairs and discovered Melinda and Marsha in the rec room doing the 4 mile walking tape and joined in. Then went to breakfast and over to the office. Dorie spent the majority of the day showing me some of my job tasks. We went to lunch and then back to more learning. That night, we went to dinner at an Italian Restaurant. Willi took the entire staff to dinner so the Afghan cooks could have a evening off during Ramadan. The food there was delicious! For an appetizer, I got a clear chicken soup and Willi recommended the Filet of Sol - YUM! Both were delicious. During dinner, Willi asked if I liked to play Monopoly and I said "yes". LOL - Monopoly game Saturday at 1900 hours, be there or be square . . .he says he's the reigning champ. When I told my daughter Heidi that we were playing Monopoly Saturday night, she laughed and said "Geeze Mom, he doesn't know how competitive you are when it comes to monopoly - even as kids you wouldn't let us win" - Ah, she makes me sound mean huh? LOL - she's telling the truth. Honestly, I don't know who's more competitive, me or my son in law Sam. We love to play monopoly.

Day 3 - Thursday. Got about 4 hours sleep - thank you jet lag. Went down stairs and did the 4 miles then breakfast and off to work. Cleaned my office, put together two binders for two dignataries out of Washington, D.C. (WDC is the acronym of choice - everything here is an acronym) learned how to make ID cards for new staff. Pretty cool actually.

About a quarter to 12 decided to go over and get a diet pepsi from the dining room. When I entered the Dining Hall, there was a male attorney in there making himself a cup of hot tea, we said hello and he started telling me that we were having hamburgers for lunch and how much he enjoyed hamburgers. As I reached in for my diet pepsi, I thought someone had slammed the dining room door. I looked around to the door and saw it was bouncing/rattling a bit. Didn't think anything of it and the attorney was still talking. So I headed out the door and back to my office, as I walked out, the four Afghan cooks came out of the kitchen in a hurry and went into the Rec room. Then I noticed a female attorney enter the side door and go into the rec room. I kept going out the front door and met Dorie coming from the office and she asked if I heard the blast and I told her I didn't know it was a blast I just thought someone had slammed the dining room door. It turns out that a suicide bomber had ran his vehicle into an Italian Military convoy near the US Embassy and about 4 km from our compound, killing 6 military personnel and 10 civilians. Over 50 civilians were injured. One of the men who works in our Finance Dept lost his cousin in the blast. Very traggic.

I went back to my office and did some more cleaning and thought about how I want to rearrange my office (its currently set up for a right handed person and every one knows I'm a lefty) and monitored CNN in my supervisor's office.

Last night, we went to CSSP (Corrections Compound) for a BBQ. Really good food, steak, chicken and spare ribs. Came home about a quarter to ten.

Day 4 - Friday - Today is the recognized and practiced Holy Day. Everyone is off. We work six days a week here with Friday's off. I got up, did my laundry, had a brunch breakfast and then came up to my room and talked to my husband for about an hour on Skype. Then I took a nap and slept from 2 - 7. Missed dinner so I settled for a english muffin w/peanut butter, a yoguart and a small piece of cake. Its one in the morning and I'm wide awake. I have to be up in six hours to go to work. Jet Lag sucks! Well, I'm going to try and go to sleep. I think I'll turn on the TV and gets lulled into lalaland. Wish me luck!