Tell an Afghan, Tell the World

The past week has been pretty depressing. After receiving briefing after briefing from academics about how we are losing the war in Afghanistan and all the things the Americans are doing wrong, it is difficult to understand why I'm putting myself in harms way. If we are to do this country justice, we will be there for at least twenty years (I increased my earlier estimate of ten years after hearing from all these PhD's). Then yesterday we received a classified briefing on all the ways we can get blown up or killed while we're over there. Fun stuff.

Today we started our training by the Army Corps of Engineers Afghanistan District. Four construction quality assurance personnel who spent at least 13 months in Afghanistan taught us about the experience and challenges we will deal with while we're there. It actually sounds like a lot of fun and we'll get to do a lot of outside the box thinking. They told us the living conditions in Afghanistan is circa the 11th century, so the designs/construction methods we use have to be sustainable by the locals. And then in their next statement to us, they say "build lots of solar panels and wind farms." But that's a completely different topic that I won't get into right now. Needless to say, none of my buildings will have solar panels.

I wanted to thank everyone for their comments and support. It's great to know people are finding my blog useful and a somewhat interesting read. :) Scott and I are escaping the base today for some good ol' fashioned fun at Walmart.