Still here….In Afghanistan

 

   Just to clarify….I may have accidentally been a touch misleading on the last post. Only the journey home has begun…not the actual flight. There are several stops along the way to get from where I was, in the middle of nowhere to where I am going (home). The point is that the ball is rolling downhill and I will hopefully be back in the states before a new month begins. But then again….who knows? Life here isn’t that bad, Burger King and a massage parlor…that about says it all.

   Thanks for everyone’s kind comments and especially for your interest in the book. Right now it looks like a 50 page full color picture book with Xanga entries and some correspondences and my a few of my personal journal entries. Something of a collage of sorts to represent my year here. I am self publishing so far unless the literary agent thing goes through so I will put my link to the online storage front up in about a month or so when everything is done and I am sure that it is worth the price of admission – sort of speak. I am also trying to find enough great pictures for a calendar and maybe a few posters. One of my pictures got published at http://www.hellofayetteville.com so check it out in the artist section. Sometimes it loads on the main page. It is called BigBird.

http://www.hellometro.com/Art_Files/1515file_9922.Jpg

   Thanks to everyone that has subscribed, and reads the site. I do read and feel like I kind of know many of you, despite the fact that I am unable to comment back most of the time. When I get home I will be in touch at least once with all the people that stopped by my site throughout the year. 

 

 

Anyone that has any good ideas about how to get some free publicity for the book or any advice to help me tie it all together when I get home please feel free to email me or comment and I will be in touch ASAP.

 

En Route to Home in Afghanistan

And then there was a big bird, with wings that would spin instead of flap. It flew low and on a direct course through the mountains, it lurched slowly onto the ground kicking up dust and rocks in every direction, I quickly crept inside with all my things. Then at once it leapt back into the air and took off, to take me home…and it was good.

Oh the time is finally here, the trip home begins not in days, but in hours. I spent the entire deployment looking at this ridiculous and depressing little program on Excel that shows our remaining time on a pie chart. I remember when the whole thing was red, I would stare at it everyday, and think to myself it would never move. And it didn’t for a long time. I remember being excited about the fact that an entire month was gone. I remember when I was just halfway through, and asked everyone on Xanga to throw an online party for me. I remember when I thought I would never make it home. And now, well now the red is almost gone. Only the tiniest little piece of red pie remains, and a weird sense of inevitability is setting in: “I am coming home”

The strange thing is, this is the first time in the last 2 weeks that I have been excited about that. I have more anxiety about coming home then I did about coming here. At least when I came here I had no idea what to expect. That is at least exiting, I know exactly what to expect from home and some of it I look forward to but most of it I don’t. If I had it my way I would go on leave and come strait back this country, this base, this office. It is a strange thing to complain about, having too much time. Waking up in the morning and spending your whole day trying to occupy yourself. Having the time to learn whatever you want, and do whatever you want. Any knowledge or skill is just a book away. An abundance of time, something most people will never know. I never thought I would say this, but something I will miss. I have read over 40 some books since I have been here, over 20 textbooks on specific topics, learned magic tricks, gotten better at poker, learned to write, watched 100′s of movies, spent hours in the gym, ran hundreds of miles for exercise, and still always had free time to pursue whatever caught my attention. Now I face returning to life, a harsh reality where you maybe have a few extra hours every night to knock out a few things on your to-do list. Anything else you want to do, comes off of the top of your 8 hours sleep.

Even having said that, I can’t wait for so many of the simple things about home, that I will take for granted again as soon as I get home. But I will never forget how valuable they seemed to me for at least one year in my life. Just to be able to walk around, without looking at the ground. I haven’t walked on anything flat or smooth since I have been here, everywhere I do walk is like hiking. I can’t wait to just stroll out of a restaurant, oh a restaurant, the food! There is so many simple things I am looking forward to, commercials on TV, the sight of women, driving, taking a decent shower, clean clothes, clean anything really, being full on Burger King, the taste of beer, a kiss, a hug, any music other then one of Crane’s 5 CDs, a new cell phone, cologne, playing with my dog, being full on Taco Bell, and mostly, the feeling you get whenever the “weekend” officially starts. All good things come to those who wait…

Lastly this….

Thank you so much for anyone that has read my Xanga for a long time and always been there to comment and just to read. It has made the entire experience easier on me just to have people out there to relate to. Your attention made my life seem interesting rather then boring and I thank you all for it. Thanks also for everyone that I knew personally that took alot of there own time to make my life better, either sending packages, or an entire class fulls of letter from kids, I can never thank you guys enough. Biggest thanks to NYCJOYCE, I am finishing a book about this year complete with pictures and a few Xanga entries, and it never would have happened if it weren’t for your relentless compliments about the quality of my writing. I still don’t think I fill the shoes of your compliments yet, but then again that wasn’t really the point was it? I will make sure that you get a free copy. Anyone else that is interested let me know, there will be much more to come about the future of this book as it is about to come out.

-Emerstan out

 

 

War with the Flies, a New Base, and Cheena in Afghanistan

 

      Cheena is a 5-7 week old little baby puppy. The interpreters here gave her to me until we leave so that I could train her a little bit, and  also because they could tell I wanted her. She is the tiniest little thing I have ever seen, I am pretty sure that if she is old enough to be away from her mother, she isn’t so by very much. Apparently she is a Chinese fighting dog. That’s where she go her name… for any linguists, you know that Cheena (the pronunciation not the spelling) is Spanish for China. Alot of the Afghans only keep dogs to fight them, and from what the terps told me she is pretty much a pure breed.  She is expensive for anything around here, let alone a dog. She should grow up to have the body similar to a pit bull or other stocky little creature, if she is ever to become a fighting dog she has a long way to go.

 

This is her practicing her jaw strength on a toy sent by Queen bea, thanks Bea.
Notice her collar, it used to be my wristband as you can see in other pictures.

If you look really close you can see her little milk mustache. She likes nonfat milk best.

 

   I have only had her for two days and she already knows “stay”, “come”, and to bark to be let outside. She is extremely intelligent, I was impressed.  I wish I had gotten her early on in the deployment so that I could do something cool like train her to be a bomb dog for the ANA or something with the help of the dog team here. Unfortunately when I leave here she stays. It could cost thousands and take months to get her back home, and seeing how I live in the barracks, after all that I wouldn’t even be able to keep her myself. So there will be no Green Card for Cheena, fortunately she doesn’t seem to mind much, she likes it here.

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    So close to coming home, however of course the Army has 1 more mission for us before we come home, so once again I packed up all my stuff and moved to another base. I was actually glad because now that the heat was coming back, this was the scene at the other base.

This was my the area above my bed

 

   I am sure that you can guess why we have flytraps hanging everywhere like they were party favors at Christmas without needing to many attempts. It was getting insane there, and at this point in my deployment, my mind is on some kind of fragile alert system where all the creeping insanities have been set aside due to the impending return trip to home. Flies however, were threatening that balance with their incessant desire to land on my face and eyes while sleeping, and land everywhere when I was awake. These are flies apparently trained by the Taliban…they live only to harass you and they have no regard for their own safety in doing so. At one point I killed just under 100 flies in less then a hour. The result of many failed attempts at tanning in peace. Luckily whenever my sanity is threatened by flies, I have an obvious outlet for my anger. Hence the obvious overkill on the flytraps.

   Now that we are at this new base, there are SO many things I would love to talk about surrounding the conditions at this base, however now that the Army doesn’t censor everything I write, I have to do it myself. There will be a time…(4 weeks or so) when I can talk all about it and put the pictures up that I have from here, but that time is not now. Sorry. Lets just say that it is very interesting here, we have alot to do all of the sudden, we live with the ANA on base for now (imagine that one), the food is good, there is wireless Internet, and Cheena makes for a good time. That is all I really need to say for now.

   I had an conversation with some of the terps from here, about their European satellite dish, America, Afghanistan, how much they Like bush(or so they say), the war,  how to attract girls in America (by request), and many other interesting things. I am going to do a more thoughtful post about that conversation here soon, it was rich with interesting things and things Americans would be really surprised to hear the locals say. Basically, if I was a reporter it would be a good story.  Thanks to everyone that comments.