Busy Days

Well, each day has much busy-ness about it here in Bagram. Between planning for the next trip to counseling to spending time getting to know the troops to working out (to relieve stress and prepare for the rigors of the year ahead) there is little time for anything else but sleep. Trying to get on the computer and put out information is difficult. We don't have our wireless set up yet, so I am at the whim of the MWR computers, which are verrrrry sloooowwwww.

I'm living in an 8x10 cubicle with no real ceiling. It's in an old Russian airplane hangar with high ceilings, so when they "built" in rooms with plywood, they built them about 8-10 feet short of the hangar ceilings. Consequently, I get noise and light polution from all of the others in the living quarters. There is not much "me" time here, but then again, with four kids, there wasn't a lot of "me" time at home, either.

Showers and toilets are a different matter. Showers are about 50 yards from our quarters, so it's a bit of a walk across some of the most treacherous, ankle-wrenching gravel to get clean. Toilets here are some of the worst I've experienced! Ugh! The port-a-potties are (I'm sure) about at the end of their shelf-lives and stink to high heaven. They will have these in Hell, I am certain. I can't complain, however, as some of our FOBs have NO such potties and do their business in bags for incineration. (Sorry, I don't have time to put up warnings.)

Anyhow, life is still pretty good. The first week flew by and I presume that the pace of operations here will cause the rest of the tour to fly by, as well.