The Trip and Day One

Well, we are here in Kabul after a long trip and a short day one for me. The view is amazing! We have mountains on both sides of us and one of them still has snow on the top.

We spent our last weekend in Lynchburg with both sets of our parents. Bev's mom, dad and brother flew in on the red eye Friday night. David coming was a huge surprise! We visited Thomas Jefferson's summer retreat, Poplar Forest. It is being restored and it looks great.

We flew out of Dulles Monday night. My parents dropped us off at the airport. And we were able to see Bev's mom off on her trip back as she also flew from Dulles. Her poor dad got delayed numerous hours leaving from National as there was bad weather in Atlanta. I believe he finally got back to the west coast around 2 am and had to be picked up in LA.

I highly recommend upgrading 13 hour flights! I slept about 9 hours straight and Bev got about 5 hours of sleep. We actually arrived in Dubai a little early and then made our way to the JW Marriott. Great hotel within per diem. Everything thing else there is expensive though. We got up early, had a great breakfast buffet and then headed to catch our Safi Airlines flight to Kabul.

The problem with flying smaller airlines in the middle east is that they don't update you very often on the status of the flight. Our flight was delayed over 4 hours and the status changed about 3 times on the board and only the last one was accurate. The gate attendants did come around a couple times to let us know the correct status but the board was useless. Finally at about 4 o'clock we got on the plane.

Safi bought their planes from Air China. And Air China gets as many people as possible on a plane. My knees touched the back of the seat in front of me and when he leaned back I could not put my tray table down as it hit my belly about three-fourths of the way down. Not a comfortable two and a half hour flight.

We finally arrived in Kabul and were met by some folks for our five minute ride to the Embassy. Nothing like cramming eight folks in body armor in the back of an up-armored van. The ride was quick and eventless. Thank God!

When we got here we had tot go through a security screening to make sure we weren't bringing anything we weren't supposed to and then off to the main security post where for some reason or another my name was not on the list for access. After about 10 minutes I got a visitor badge and we were escorted to our apartment.

The apartment is much more than we expected. We have a large bedroom, a living room, a kitchen with more cabinets than we had in Maryland, a small eating area and a standard bathroom. The bottom of the windows start at about 7 feet high and go to the 12 foot ceiling. It is going to be hard to hang curtains!

After unpacking our clothes we finally went to bed around midnight. I guess we were still on US time because we woke up around 5am and went for a walk around the compound. It is kind of weird having a huge wall around you but it is comforting. After our walk we showered and had breakfast. Then it was off to Admin to start our check in.

We made it to medical, GSO, the IT bubbas and to our offices. We also got our permanent badges later in the afternoon. Afte we got our badges Bev had to stop by her office as something needed her attention on day one. I headed back to the apartment and promptly fell asleep for 9 hours. That is why I am up at 2:30 in the morning doing a blog post.

Today is our day off and we are headed to Camp Eggers to do some shopping and maybe hang out at the pool for a little while. We will post soon!

Love,
Joe and Bev