Would you like some food with your grease?

I’m still trying to get used to Afghan cuisine. We eat sitting on the floor around a plastic mat, men on one side and women on the other. You can’t sit criss-cross applesauce here, so you sit with your feet to one side. And yeah, you eat with your hands, but they have cutlery sitting around for us westerners just in case. Usually it’s long rice, raisins, carrots and beef, soaked and I mean SOAKED in fat…they drown everything here in oil and fat, so while it tastes great the thought of it is a little unappetizing. I can’t exactly go throw on my gym shorts and run it off, you know? After one week I find myself lacking an appetite…you don’t get a lot of variety here. Oh well. I have to eat eventually. In other news, there are also no couches in most homes-you sit on really thick cushions on the floor. It’s actually quite comfortable.

For those who don’t know and are interested, I have to be really careful how I dress here. Women have to be completely covered (at least while out in public) except for their face, hands and feet. Most of the foreign women here wear jeans and Punjabis, which are long tunics. They are pretty comfortable and if you pick out the material and have them made they can be somewhat nice-looking. We also wear headscarves whenever we’re outside the house. But once inside, as long as there are no Afghan visitors, we can wear short sleeves and remove our scarves. We still can’t wear tank tops and shorts since our Afghan guard/handyman is usually around. We also can’t really travel anywhere by ourselves, not even the half mile from the girls house to the main house…we always have to get one of the guys to drive us or go in a large group, but even then never at night. It’s also scorching hot here...daytime temps are already into the 90’s and 120 will be normal come June or July. One of the staff told me that Mazar once held the highest temperature on record. Yuck.

We’ve had a couple classes already, but we haven’t technically started yet since there are still a few more students to arrive who are having trouble getting here-a girl from Uganda and a family from Pakistan. Crazy how we all ended up in Afghanistan…and that I’m the only American student! We also do several hours of prayer and worship every morning which really unites us as a team.

It’s nice that I have internet access pretty much every evening, so I’m obviously a little blog happy. But I’m sure my mother doesn’t mind. Hi Mom. I also found out that I’ll have to get a cell phone while here…oh, to text again!!! And I’ll be moving into a permanent room soon…hooray for not sleeping on the floor!

Until next time, live long and prosper.