This one's for Poo!

Good Morning Everyone!  Hope you all enjoyed a fantastic week and are in the midst of an excellent weekend.  I was reminded that its Geotta Fest in my place of residence - a whole festival dedicated to one of my favorite foods! Although I have to admit that I have no clue what's in geotta and I'm not sure I want to know - the most important issue is that I love it and that it pops when you cook it!

Today I'm dedicating this post to my active fantasy and day dreaming life.  These pics are from one of the resorts I will be enjoying in just about 12 days.  I can almost smell the pool and ocean and hear the ice clinking in my rum and fruit drink!  I have not been totally or mentally committed to Afghanistan for the past month and it gets worse as this two week reprieve closes in.

Oh my!  The words I am typing just ran into the bed I will be enjoying for an entire week at this particular location.  We are staying at another mind boggling place the week before this - Phuket, for two weeks, in two different resorts!  My Momma did not raise a dummy!  Being crammed into a bottom-bunk twin bed will only be a memory once I am here!  There will be no walls that flap in the wind nor any co-habitants that are right on the other side of a plywood wall divider.  This place also has a soaking tub, access to ice cubes and from the looks of it, very little dust or dirt!

What?  You say I can fall from my room directly into the pool?  Fabulous!  As long as nobody pulls a "Natalie Wood", this sounds perfect so far.  So, this is how it plays out in my head day after day after day...  it will be so nice to swim in a pool as compared to showering in non-potable, chlorinated water.  I am also planning to leave a day early and spend the night in Dubai.  That should give me a day to "get right" so that I will be less potentially annoying to my traveling companion.  I feel like I've been here for years!   The Thailand adventure will also involve a day of cooking school on the beach and also a day of boating, sea canoeing and snorkeling in the outer islands.   Being over here seems to be worthwhile if I can continue to travel like this!  It really can't get here fast enough.  OK, I'm finished with  the vacation talk.  On to more pertinent matters...

Our tent now has 3 more residents as these women from the Department of Development just moved in - it took some minor adjusting, but I am used to them now.  For the last several months it has been just me and one other person in this tent - she and I are pretty quiet and extremely clean - hopefully these women will be as well.  Apparently the friends and family of Menno Paws must have still been living in the tent because once the new residents moved in, the mice were back - I think their ghettos were torn down and they were therefore provided with housing vouchers and moved to my room.  I came back from the gym yesterday morning and kept hearing a horrific squeaking only to find TWO mice stuck on the sticky pad my parental units had sent me!  Still alive, biting each other, stuck to this glue trap - it was really horrible.  I had to call a friend over to retrieve them and they were tossed into the dumpster.  I seriously felt horrible about it for a few minutes, but then remembered how afraid I am of what exists right up the food chain and got over it.  Hell, those glue traps work well!  The other traps in my room didn't even go off.  Today I spent pulling everything out of its place and cleaning - surprisingly, I found mouse poo everywhere and they apparently have an appetite for  Ramen Noodles and like hanging out in my metal locker-closet.  Nasty!  But now all is clean and I have a better idea where to check for evidence in the future.

So, no rocket attacks at all this week.  Weird and creepy.  Apparently the intel is rather disturbing with reports of the Taliban hoarding their supplies in order to launch a bigger attack.  They had better hope that nothing disturbs my two week escape from this place or there will be hell to pay and a few less virgins to meet them in their promised land!  I can't remember how many they are promised for being martyrs, but it's significant - which is quite interesting since their religious beliefs lead to significant sexual encounters with other men and boys.  I talked to a doctor working over here with the Afghan/Taliban population who told me that anal gonorrhea is at epidemic proportions here - "yuck-O" - anyone who knows me well would know how much i enjoyed hearing that information and placing it in my Fun and Disturbing Facts file in me head!  That's a lot of sore butts and may explain some of the defecation issues here (I sat in yet another meeting where pooping in the shower by these guys was discussed).  I have requested pictures of the signs they post at these FOBs.  One is of a man squatting in the shower over a pile of poo with a line thru it (not permitted) - there's also one for no standing on the toilet and another that nobody understood, which I can't even begin to describe.  So, be excited!  I will post these as soon as I get them.  What am I, 2?  I don't know why I find this whole situation so unbelievable, yet entertaining.  So to be fair, here's something the Afghans do very, very well - garden!

This is a greenhouse that an Afghan resident had constructed and grown at one of the FOBs I am planning.  It was beautiful.  They also like to grow a ton of weed and hashish and spend many hours a day high as kites.  Oh yes, and there's the opium - they need to open a University here ... Must make training them pretty interesting.  I'm totally confident in their abilities to defend their own country from the Taliban - right... but they certainly do have green thumbs (and troublesome posteriors).

I hope all of you have a wonderful weekend.  I plan on thoroughly enjoying the remainder of mine!

Drink of the Day - Ice Cold Water, but with no ice...