One month in...

Photos: The Satellite we put together...Stewart should be proud!! / Bright shiny building in the city of Kabul...used for weddings and a sign of progress/Screaming Cat that keeps Marines up at night!!/Aghan Press Conference





Well, it's been a full month since I departed San Diego and here are the things I have discovered:

1. Television is extremely overrated...especially when you have about 1 hour of free time at night to choose between talking to family, checking out the news online and preparing for the next day.
2. Food in the states is too easy to come by. Being here is almost like going to a Weight Watchers clinic b/c you only get 3 times a day to eat and the food is predominantly healthy choices like baked or stewed meats, steamed or boiled veggies and water/soda/juice/tea to drink.
3. Buying without a purpose or shopping for useless items that collect dust is a bad American habit that I wish more people could move away from. Afghans buy to subsist; they buy to ensure they have a warm tent or hut to live in; they buy to fill their children's stomachs; and maybe they buy when they can to offer a meal to a kind soldier who helped them re-build a road or school. If each person could just sit down and write a list of what they REALLY need to ensure they stay healthy, I think you would see savings accounts increase and bad debt decrease. It isn't an easy task to turn away from our glitzy Consumer Marketing and Advertisement in the States because they study how and why we decide to buy things!! But, I think it is a challenge that many can commit themselves to if they just remember how lucky they really are to have everything in the world at their fingertips.
4. Personalities and attitudes are the biggest predictors of a person's ability to succeed in the workplace. I have first-hand knowledge of this as most of you do as well. Working with different branches of service, Army, Navy and Air Force has required me to bite my lip several times and try to understand how they go about business. Working with the foreign military members from Australia, Canada (great), Britain, Italy, France, Macedonia, Singapore, Germany, and others has been fun and extremely educational so far. Most are anxious to share info about their country and so far they have all been very welcoming.
5. Afghanistan cats have the loudest damn meow I have ever heard. These aren't the domestic cats that you find roaming the streets of New York City or even the wild ones you see locked up at the local pound. Nooo...these cats are hunters, they are thick in the belly and they want your food and love. What happens if they don't get it? You hear a loud, almost woman screaming type of sound coming out of their mouthes. It is a high pitched meow that can be heard across the whole base from one of the dozens that live here to chase and eat the resident rodents.

My latest adventure was to help set up a Satellite at a Government Communications Facility that does Afghan Press Conferences. Two of us started off with 4 large crates of iron, metal and fiberglass pieces and by the end of the day, believe it or not, we put together a dish the side of a small car!! Today we will attach the electrical wiring and hopefully test out the dish to ensure it can send and receive live video and send live broadcasts around the world. The purpose of the U.S. military buying this and enstalling it for the Afghans is to give them a means to communicate with the different regions across Afghanistan and to receive information as quickly as possible when significant media events take place. I'm honored to work with the Afghans and State Dept. to increase their communication capabilities.

Another project in the works is to teach local Afghan Spokespersons and media on how to respond to crisis events, how to report their findings to the public and how to better understand how the enemy uses media to get their message out to the public. If all goes well, myself and two others will begin teaching Public Relations classes at the Government Comm Facility within the next few weeks.

Well, I hope all is well at home. So long from Afghanistan for now.