Afghanistan!

I went to Afghanistan! (quite the busy month, I know).

The trip was planned for a week. I went with 3 Army guys, kind of to help support them and introduce them to people in theater. They're all nice and easy going guys, so that part of the trip wasn't too bad.

We went all over (well, to the US -side): Bagram, Kabul, and Kandahar (and a few outlying places here and there). Afghanistan looks just like Iraq, only the locals are more attractive (intense eyes!), and there are mountains. It's still dirty/dusty/sandy though.

There's really nothing too great to share about the trip - well, besides that lovely day in Kabul. We were supposed to go to ISAF (another compound more in the city) for just an afternoon. We took a convoy (Ooo!) and met up with my coworkers. Then we got ready to head to another location... approached the main gate/exit, and they shut it, not 2 cars ahead of us! The foreign soldiers said there was an IED and to check back in 30min. Apparently they can clear them by then.

So we got out, looked around some shops, and started to hear gun fire. Oops! The gunfire when on past our 30min mark, which means they wouldn't be reopening the gate any time soon. Ok. No biggie. You have to be flexible. We went inside and made some conference calls, and while in the middle of one the whole building shook. There had been a large blast, large enough for us to know it was a VBIED (aka car bomb). Oops!

Here's a link to some photos and a little story on it:
http://thruafghaneyes.blogspot.com/2010/01/attack-in-kabul-18-january-2010_18.html

We were supposed to catch the afternoon convoy out, but now we were on lock down... without our bags! We'd left them that morning at the airport baggage storage area. Poo. Suddenly I was buying clothes and bath supplies at the exchange, and a coworker lent me an extra sleeping bag for the night. The boys had to sleep in the transient tent, but being a girl I was able to bunk in a room (there's usually a few open slots for ladies).

Luckily by the next morning everything was good again. We got back to the airport and flew into Kandahar where we ended the trip. I was never so happy to return to Bahrain, but I've thrown out to my boss that I'd like to deploy again :) I found a site I think I'd be good at running, so I'm going to put in for a manager's position. It'll just be 4-6 months, nothing too bad, unfortunately there's a few approval processes to go through - usually they don't like people who live abroad to deploy, but we'll see.