A Xmas on Afghan Land

Well its Xmas-eve, we called it a day early with a lunch for the department made up of food horded from the snack food orders and stuff from families and friend care packages. Some of us went down to the little concert down at the board walk, nothing too special, recorded it on the camera. Then back to the tents

As much as we try to make xmas special here and distract our selves this place likes to remind us in cruel ways. We lost a solder yesterday and had the ramp ceremony this afternoon. One of they guys in my office will have to be sent home as his kidneys decided to stop for a while, I'll talk more about that later.

There was a barbeque and I made it my best to literally miss the bus. It was not at the Oasis as usual but some large storage building at the south side of the base, so people going had to be bused. Content with my microwave Kraft dinner and cake sat down to watch a few BBC documentaries downloaded last week. Tomorrow Xmas day we have the day off, think I'll spend most of it sitting on the second floor oasis patio taking pictures of the aircraft going by.

The the night before we had fencing and the English fellow was out one last time before he head back home. Did quite well ageist him this time and held my own. It did help I spent the last week and half practicing two of the master strokes and there displacements, as well trying to clean up my basic guards. Hate to see him go as we the only good long swordsmen here. Quest that means I have to bite the bullet and start teaching.

As part of this prepping I had a little 2 by 3 inch notebook picked up in London. So I been making little Cole Notes of the two Christian Tobler books I have here. The notebook original use was to write out little notes on how to find different places in London. After my return the original purpose done and only a few pages used it needed a new purpose. Menken had told me once how one of the better fighters in Ealdormere had written out and diagram a mass of fighting moves and this was a contributing factors at his advance level of skill.

My office will be short for a few weeks. Stephan been suffering head aches for a few weeks and went to the Canadian medical role here. The first time he went they gave him some unknown shot that cured the head aches for a few days. When they returned they did more test then sent him to the larger NATO role. Turned out his kidneys were shutting down and had stopped working. Some more drugs and they were working again. He is to be sent home so a specialist so to fine tune the medications. Repeated dehydration, high levels of salt used in the food, and his high blood pressure before even coming here combined to take beating on his kidneys.