Herat, Afghanistan

I made it safely to Herat.

It turns out that our helicopter was a contractor flight
on a fast civilian helicopter.
It was really cool.

I have my own room right now for just a couple of weeks
until two of the Army officers that are in my room return.

We have flushing toilets and hot showers!
Unfortunately there is no wireless.
We can still skype though on the Spanish internet service.



Jen here to add some background info. for Drew:

He is filling a NATO position for the U.S.
on a Spanish base in Herat.
(The Spaniards have been there since 2005)
Bulgarians are also on the base serving the same capacity.
It is likely that Drew will serve his entire tour
on the Spaniards base.
He will, however, be working on a surgical team
made up of US soldiers.
Both country's surgical teams and Drew met the other day.
Communication was limited.
Drew misses the men he got to know well
during his week-long stay in Georgia.

Of interest: 2 days ago (he is 12 1/2 hours ahead
so I'm not entirely sure if my time line is correct here)
he had his first experience with a bomb.
He said a plane flew over the base rather low.
The next thing they knew they heard and felt
a huge explosion (it rocked the walls of his building).
They wondered if they should head for the cement bunkers.
After they stepped outside to investigate,
they saw a HUGE plume of smoke
and realized the US had just dropped a bomb on a target.

I asked him, "What did it feel like to worry about
finding shelter in a bunker?
Was it scary?"
He said, "Yeah."

He may add edits to this story once he reads it
in the coming days.
We only had 15 minutes on Skype before the computer
automatically shut down.
No one was in line, so he was able to Skype right back.
But between the kids, our connection (dropped a few times),
and scanning our brains to see if
there was anything either of us needed to discuss,
we didn't get back to that situation.