Welcome to Afghanistan

I started and abandoned many drafts for this first blog. Most of them were of the whiny sort, complaining about my long and ridiculous three days of travel (never, if you can avoid it, fly into Dubai. That airport was designed by monkeys, maybe even monkeys on crack), my lack of instruction from my leaders and my being dropped into the cesspool that is Afghanistan without any type of life preserver. So I am choosing to focus on the positive. I got here with all of my luggage, have yet to be groped (apparently all Afghan men live under the assumption that Western women are whores and wish for nothing more than to have their butts grabbed), and God is taking care of me. Example:

By some mysterious lack of foresight, I did not withdraw any cash before leaving the Houston airport. I was very worried, as there are few ATM’s in Kabul and none in Mazar, so I was horrified that I had let myself leave the states with ten bucks in my pocket. But God was awesome. On my flight from Dubai to Kabul, the airline was doing a promotion. They did a random seat drawing, and yours truly walked away with $125 cash in my pocket. Miracle, no? God provided me what I needed when I needed it, because as soon as I landed I was immediately driven to buy a plane ticket to Mazar, then had to pay for taxis and a night at a guesthouse-I don’t know what I would have done if I hadn’t had that money!

I finally made it to Mazar-e-Sharif on Friday afternoon and became acquainted with everyone here. Along with a long term school there are also many short term groups that come through, right now there is one here for six more weeks. Everyone is really nice and helpful. In Afghanistan Friday is the holy day, so their weekend is Friday and Saturday, so I’ve had a whole day to relax and recover before the program gets started Sunday. I’ll report on living conditions in Afghanistan in my next post, cuz good night, that’s a doozy. I’d appreciate any prayer I could get right now…it’s going to be a long, rough year.