Details about Dirk

I keep hoping Dirk will be able to do his own post, but he’s had so many problems with his Internet connection that it just hasn’t happened yet. We have been able to talk on the IM, and swap emails. The webcam has only worked once since he got to his base. I read Susan’s post from yesterday and realized that I do know some details everyone would probably find interesting. So here are a few things I’ve picked up over the past few weeks.

Dirk is living in a new cement building. It was recently built to replace the tents. Because it’s so new, there isn’t a fiber optic cable. He’s relying on wireless Internet, and that’s why it isn’t very reliable. It’s slow. He can load our blog just about every day (and that’s why I update it so often), but it takes a long time.

He has air conditioning. But when it’s 110 degrees, air conditioning only gets it down to 90. However, there have been several cloudy and rainy days, so the weather hasn’t been an unbroken string of heat. (Probably that will happen in August.) There is lots and lots of dust on everything. The dust obscures the view the same way the inversion obscures the view here.

There is a beautiful old olive grove behind their base. He’s promised pictures if he can ever get his connection good enough to upload pictures. There are also lots of mountains around. He says it actually reminds him of Utah. (I’m assuming he means the Beaver area.)

He works from 3 p.m. to midnight. He gets up late enough that he misses breakfast, but says the food is pretty good for lunch and dinner. They offer Baskin-Robbins ice cream with every meal, and he takes advantage of that. Vanilla is his favorite flavor. They didn’t get ice cream once for three or four days when some local Afghans stole the truck. (I bet that sold for a lot on the black market!)

He’s got a very thick black beard. He wears business casual to work, and hasn’t worn his uniform much at all.

The church group is about 20 people or so. On Father’s Day, they got care packages that a ward in Tennessee had sent for them.

The base is small enough that everything is in walking distance, but there is one truck the guys can drive if they want to. Maybe the truck has air conditioning, because Dirk says that truck gets driven a lot. I think it’s funny they do all that driving when the speed limit for the whole base is 10 miles per hour!

After they finish practicing on the firing range, they have to get out of the way of the kids from the nearby village who come collect the brass. The brass gets sold to artisans in the village who melt it down and make artwork out of it.

He can get a Persian rug for cheap, which means several hundred dollars instead of several thousand.

The Wii is doing fine. All the games in the PX are kid games, but some basic games came with the Wii.

His movie projector works fine, and they watch movies on a wall.

He misses us lots. We miss him too. I hope the Internet connection issue get worked out because I’m dying to see pictures.

We love you, honey!