Wanna make a bet?

It's been too long since that last update...things have been hectic aaaaand pretty stupid too! One of the things they forget to teach us when we went to 'How to be a Mentor' training, at Ft Dix, NJ (it sucked as bad as the name sounds)...where was I? Oh yeah, they tried to teach us how to mentor our Afghan counter parts. Fine, but no one told me I'd be 'mentoring' or advising Spanish Colonels and Italian Generals too! I'll get to that later....and the real meaning of ISAF. It supposedly means International Security Assistance Force....it really means I Suck At Fighting. 

Or Italians Suck At Fighting....let me say, we've met a lot of really good Italian dudes...but the General....uh, not so much.

Every time we get rocketed here on base...it's by the same bad guys from the same location. There are some folks here, that specialize in 'fixing' those kinds of issues. Let's just say they are not European...they have offered to take care of the problem, permanently. The Italian General said  'no'....they don't want to upset anyone. Their answer? Pay the Taliban not to rocket our base! Nice! Until they raised the price...

This same genius General ordered someone to drive a crane out into the airplane graveyard, which is on Afghan Air Corp land. This is outside the ISAF camp perimeter. With no coordination with the Spanish camp commander and more importantly without asking the Afghans...genius General orders someone to take/steal an old airplane wreck from the Afghans. He wanted to make a monument inside the ISAF camp.

The Afghan Colonel that I mentor and advise told me that if the Italian general did not come to his office to apologize, he was going to hold a press conference and tell media that ISAF was stealing Afghan property. The Italian general did not see why the Afghans would be upset that he was going onto their land without asking and taking whatever he wanted without asking. That's two and half days I'll never get back....but I did convince them to send a 'representative' with a bottle of whiskey to smooth it out, no press conference.

The Italians do have a cool restaurants .... you have to make reservations even! This was the Chinese buffet night. Yes, the chinese buffet at an Italian restaurant in Afghanistan.

 

 Afghan Chinese lobster... Tuscany like restaurant .... things you don't see every day.

  

 Another highlight...the swine flu. Some Spanish dudes brought the pig flu to peaceful Camp Arena. Our Spanish and Dutch friends demonstrate the proper protocol to keep from spreading the porkfish flu...while we were hanging out with the Lithuanians.

  

 Ah...'The Principal'  ...he just explained to us how women are respected in Aghanistan...which explains the look on my face. Okay...he actually educated us a little, the United States was the first country to officially recognize Afghanistan when it gained independence from England.

 I learned some other things too... like missing a huge hunk of your tail rotor is, in the words of one of our Afghan pilots... 'no problem!'  Seriously, there's nothing wrong with this right?! What could possibly go wrong with something that spins really fast missing a giant chunk of metal? 

  

 No problem...this guy climbed up the tail, like a spider monkey, in his underwear and socks. He totally fixed it. No problem.

 And thanks to the Air Guard....for the tornadic dust storm blowing crap all over our Mi-17. Thanks you guys rock.

This is Stretch and his ... uh, 'friend'. The Army calls them battle buddies. They like to take scenic rides on that completely hetero (about as hetero as a speedo) 4-wheeler through downtown Farah, stroll down the river banks and share watermelon in the moonlight. Don't forget, the Lanky One is the most powerful Mi-17 pilot in Herat, according to the Afghans. Someone in a movie once said 'that's like being the smartest person with downs syndrome'. 

   

And one of our friends here...eats more than the 4 of us put together, though Stretch doesn't really count as a whole person, he's a vegetarian....so make that 3 and half.  Like any good friend would do...we sometimes say .... 'I bet you can't eat....'

Okay, she won the 'I bet you can't put the whole thing in your mouth all at once'....so the next bet was the whole bag of cheesy poofs...Afghan cheesy poofs...that's rough. Though we did discover the secret to her powers....she has no spleen.

This time...she bit off more than she could chew, the bet was the whole bag in an hour. The Giant called her a sally and showed her how it was done.