teach them, hurt them, fix them up....

So, we have been staying pretty busy lately. I and my guys have been teaching our ANP a whole lot of good useful info and such. Some of it, as you can tell, is a little rough on them. But don't worry, we teach them some good first aid as well. These particular guys have their own medic, who has some real good training, so we send them to him instead of to our medic. It teaches them to use their system and resources. I can't get into all the details of our training and such, for opsec reasons, but it is going good. The ANP are highly motivated, especially when I yell at them like new privates for clearing their weapons before they are instructed to. Have to instill the discipline and fear in them you know. But, even if they do not understand my words, the tone and volume gets across quite well. Usually after I "get in their ass" one of the officers comes over and starts yelling as well. I am trying to get my terp to learn how to yell like me, but he is a naturally quiet guy. Oh well, we can't all be as loud as the ol' SSG. It is a lot of fun, and I am even putting more names and faces of these guys together. It is hard when there is like 14 Mohammads and 6 Amin's and 4 Khans. The go by nicknames like some of us do, so that helps. We have not hurt them too bad, just the pride of a few when we did some hand to hand combatives. It is funny because one of my instructors for that is the smallest guy in the squad. Had them fooled. Well, we are doing good still, looking forward to the end of this deployment. Thanks to all for the support and packages. More to come.

Bob Villa in Afghanistan...not really....

So, we have begun some remodeling projects on one of my ANP stations. It is quite fun, as it gives us some new things to do besides just training them. We do love to train these guys, and they like the training, but it is fun to manual labor, and build some stuff. One of my guys is really involved in building a new wall for the compound. He has the concrete mixing down pretty good. I am working on a new room to put the weapons in. I am pretty sure that none of the people at the station have ever seen any cordless power tools. They were pretty amazed by them. One officer even filmed me while I was cutting some plexi glass. The chief was in awe of the set and asked where he could get one. I tried to explain to him about Home Depot, and he wanted to go. I told him that if he comes to the U.S. that I would take him there. It is still cold here, lows in the 20's at night and highs around 50 during the day. It has been sunny, which helps, but the wind comes off the mountains and chills us pretty good. Thankfully we have some good cold weather gear to help insulate us. Oh, the little girl is the stations cooks daughter. She is always running around and getting candy from everyone. Here name is Shanaz. Well, duty calls, so I need to keep it short. More updates to come soon. Russ.

Are you ready for some flag football!!!!

So, we played our 4th game today, and won of course. I think the score was like 10-3. It was a easy game, which is good because I was sore from playing the day before. Our team is very diverse. We hav a good mix of people who can run, catch, throw, and play defense. If you have not seen the link on the right, then check out the creator of the TFL (Torkham Football League), on his own site. We all have fun, win or loose and it is a great way to kinda relax and blow off some steam in a productive way. Of course there is some trash talk, except from the "nice guys", but it is kept to a limit. I play center, (that's me in the tan shirt snapping the ball) as I can snap the ball, create open pockets, and can block the blitz pretty well. If I play defense, I am either safety or just guard a reciever. So, it is not all work over here, we do play as well. Maybe one day we will have sponsers, better refs, the NFL will call.....Oh, sorry just day dreaming. Well, you all keep reading and I will keep posting as much as I can. Russ.

Giving out some free stuff...

So, we had the pleasure of doing another Humanitarian Aid Drop today. I picked a local school in one of my districts. They have around 2,000 kids or so at this one school. We took all kinds of school supplies, food, shoes, blankets, and other like items to them. I will let the pictures tell the words, but it was great. We had the ANP out helping us distribute all the goods. It is better to have the ANP pass it out, as it helps their image on the community. There were so many kids here it was crazy. We all had a lot of fun today helping out this school and the people around it.