No levels, no squares…

12 11 11 Hi Everyone;

We've been on blackout for something like 5 days and it has been boringly busy around here. The Ag Team was tasked with removing three walls from some stalls at the local bazaar. The resulting room is intended as an NGO (non-governmental organization) vocational-technical training center. It already has two regular classes, one in literacy and another in sewing. We have built the arches out of heavy duty steel and brought them down to where we are removing the walls... nothing in this country is more than roughly measured...no levels, squares, tape measures, etc... all by eye... not bad considering. Everything appears to be made out of low fired bricks or mud bricks with a mortar made from seemingly random mixtures of dirty sand and Portland cement. It keeps us alert when we are using things like exothermic torches (a magnesium rod and oxygen tank used to make a flame hot enough to melt steel and concrete) or sledge hammer, or chisel and hammer... sometimes stuff just falls down other times we have to persuade it! We have two of the 12' x 7 1/2' walls mostly removed and one steel arch installed.

Sometimes I don't hear so well... sometimes I just don't understand: Major Reyes walked into our office and announced "When we move to the rear I get Jim first!" Before you think I have gone local I should explain two things about local culture an US Army terminology. My MI instructor (military intelligence) warned me that the local culture has a lot of fun poked at it about the 'fondness the men have for boys'. It isn't uncommon to see two adult male soldiers holding hand s and walking together...it is not uncommon to see older men stroking the head or shoulder of a near adolescent boy. There are odder stories that I will relay in person that aren't meant for a public blog...that said...'moving to the rear' means returning to Ft. Drum and 'I get Jim first' was intended to mean that he needed me for some consultation work on home and energy system design. It did sound really funny to me and when I started laughing the rest caught on and joined in...

I am getting a bit tired of the living situation here...it just isn't home...my bed is noisy, my pillow is too hard, the food is getting boring and I'm tired of walking on fist sized gravel that makes you trip without warning. There, I'm done whining. We are swimming in cookies and candy...the Adopt a Platoon and Adopt a Soldier movements in the US are dumping LOTS of holiday goodies all over FOB Pasab. It is making me feel like I need to work out more often. I did break the 10 minute mile on the elliptical trainer on level 10 the other day though! I was over 15 minutes when I first started on that machine about 6 weeks ago.

Hope you all are having a great preholiday time! Love, -Jim-