Happy 4th of July...or as our Italian, Spanish and Afghan friends say, "Congratulations on your Independence Day". Though we had to convince the Afhgan's that American had to fight for it's freedom from the British government.
They couldn't believe it or that it was only a few hundred years ago!
We started the day with a visit to the site where NATO is building the Afghan Air Corp a new building and we brought our pet Giant with us. We got a tour from the Afghan company that gives us gas for our helicopters. The manager is called, The Principal...he looks like Afghan mafia? They showed us where they store mason jar sized jars of jet fuel, in the office, on open shelves next to some dude's desk, not sure how that guy has any brain cells left!
They showed us the storage facility...it was crazy!!! A tiny oasis and a duck! Who knew there were ducks in Afghanistan. The mom was sitting on her eggs, she didn't like the looks of our pet giant though!
Yes, that's a 25' or 8 meter (since we're in Afghanistan) fountain behind the giant.
We were invited to the Regional Training Center (US cops that are here training Afghan cops) for a 4th of July party! It was great...we even saw things like ice! It's been a long time since we've seen ice! Sorry, I got a little side tracked. I have list of things I miss most (the wife is first but she's a she, not a thing).
First is real milk, second is toilet seats that haven't been peed on and third is ice.
Anyway, again, sorry for the digression.
The cops put a really good show! There was a ping pong tourney, poker, darts and volley ball. And on a side note to that...the Afghans love volley ball...not sure when it started, our interpreters tried to tell us they've played it for years. If that were true, they should at least be able to beat a 6th grade girls' team, and I'm pretty sure they'd get crushed by the 6th graders. But I guess I shouldn't make too much fun of them, we lost to some Italians...even with our Pet Giant. It was pretty weak to get beat by Italians on the 4th of July, at least they weren't French! Just Italian dudes in Speedo's. Okay just kidding, but that is a funny conversation when they try to convince you that a speedo is totally hetero. I told an Italian Colonel that was an argument he'd never win!
We had cake...Graydon is showing us the 'cheese cake'? I think that was a layer of cheese-like substance between layers of white cake. And if you look close, you'll see what look like mushrooms in that aforemetioned substance. I abstained, as mushrooms are fungus, and fungus is the same thing as athlete's foot. I didn't want to take the risk.
Our Italian and Spanish friends asked us over to a couple of...fiestas or whatever they call them in Italy. Our Italian friends were really good dudes, they went to Pensacola for pilot training. They told us that they don't wear speedos when they go the beach in Florida.
This guy is an Italian F-16 pilot...he went to America for training too...that would be with the Tucson Air Guard. He learned a lot. Not just flying F-16's...the Guard guys taught him some other important skill sets. And like a good instructor, he teaches the lessons he's learned. In this case he's teaching fellow Italians how to shotgun a beer. I think he's on his eleventeenth beer by now. Go Guard!
Our best Spanish friends...Frank and Fernando, we call them the old guys from the muppets. Their office is right across from ours and they take very good care of us! Fernando is a talented painter...and artist and a gentleman. We had a good time with them and we will miss them when they go home soon! Fernando was trying to take us from the Italian 'get-together' to the Spanish one...he put on his magic red hat but still got lost in the dark. We made it home safely with the Lithuanians. No problem!
We had to get up really, really early to launch out the Afghans on an all Afghan mission. We even loaded up 1000 kg of cargo...by hand. It was nice morning.
Then after the cell phone silliness of the Afghan scheduling system, this is what happened, and then we unloaded 1000 kg's of cargo.
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