Salerno Nights to Terwa Days

I have been out of comms for a few weeks, some of this is my fault and some is not. The majority of the last three weeks was spent in Salerno. During that time I was able to watch the whole cycle of the moon. With no light pollution, the nights were pretty awesome, as I have mentioned before. For almost two weeks everynight was like watching an old western movie, where they used a filter to pretend that it was nighttime. Moonshadows were not uncommon and stretched through most of the night.

As most of you know when I get bored, I have a slight tendency to spend some money. Apparently no exception is made for being in war. I bought a rug, it is an afghan hand made wool rug and is bigger than the space that I had intended it for. I will have a picture of it shortly. Interestingly enough the pattern is really sortof southwestern, which is typical of afghan rugs. I think this is the only one that I will buy, but I may buy a smaller Chinese silk rug. Who ever thought that I would be buying rugs?

For the last week and a half, I have been in Waza Kwah. My stay here is being made much shorter than I could have hoped. I went out to two smaller fire bases, Terwa and Doa China, and was luckily only at each for a short time. As most of my travels have been, I was lucky in that the trips to and fro were made closer together. I am not sure if there was a real reason, or if the fire base commanders just hated having someone around that out ranked them.

I do enjoy visiting Waza Kwah, there is a small group of Navy guys that I can hang out with and watch some movies. They are good guys and also have an important mission here, though it is different than my own.

I got my new hard drive, of course it arrived in Salerno the day after I left. I expect that the next blog will be nothing but pictures. . . assuming all goes well.

Staying Put

It seems that all of my previous postings have been about my misadventures in traveling in Afghanistan. Since my last posting, however, I have stayed put. It has been nice creating a new routine, a new Battle rhythm. My routine consists of enjoying a cup of coffee from the local Starbucks wanna-be coffee shop every morning, going into my office, and spending the evenings talking about the things we would rather be doing.

After sleeping for several nights on my cot in my tent, I was greeted with a very welcome surprise. . . a bed with a mattress. The mattress is super soft, with no real form, but its embrace is certainly better than that of the cot. I can't even imagine what it will be like to sleep in my own bed again.

The coffee shop that I go to every morning is called "The Green Bean," and they serve the normal coffee shop fare, to include some muffins and the like. It is actually sortof funny because Thursday nights they have poetry night and on some other night they sponsor kareoke. Though I have never been the best image that I can conjure is the opening scene in "So I Married an Axe Murder."

Returning from my journey through Afghanistan, I have finally met all of the members of the staff here in Salerno. One of them is a Master Sgt who spent his early years in the Marine Corps, then joined the guard. He is now back on Active Duty and is trying to get a College degree. He mentioned that he needed help with his Pre-Algebra, so I volunteered to help him out. Little did I know just how frustrating it would be. Initially it seemed as though he was really understanding it, and getting into it. I was excited, as it seemed as though I had accomplished something in the forsaken country. My excitement quickly waned as it appeared that he could not truly maintain the knowledge that he had gained. I could only watch as my excitement turned to frustration. There are times when I can see him understanding it, but most of the time he just gets frustrated and starts spewing random mathematical terms.

The weather here is in need of some variety, though we have had some strange and short lasting strange weather. Twice in the last week, the sun gave way to clouds and those clouds produced rain, that rained morphed into hail. Large ice drops fell from the sky. . . the hail was about an inch across, and that was after it fell to the ground and broke into pieces. Other than that the days are hot and the nights give a hint of a chill.

Kindof boring, but that is all for now. I will write more soon, assuming the internet stays up and running, unlike the current situation, where it has been spotty at best.