Arrival

It's 2:30 in the afternoon here in Kabul. Yes, we arrived safely - almost 24 hours ago. First impressions: lots of traffic, lots of men hanging about, trying to sell phone cards, etc., dust everywhere. We were picked up at the airport but had to walk quite a ways to get to an area where regular people are allowed to park. Police all around the airport but didn't see any guns. Ken and Debbie, the managers of the guest house came along with the driver Zamir. We stopped at a western market on the way to the guest house which had just about everything you might need - General Mills cereals! - chunky peanut butter, chips and dips. But no popcorn so it was good I brought 6 pounds along.

The weather was lovely, just amazingly beautiful, about 75 or 80 degrees. But very dry, which at first was very welcome after the humidity of Dubai (my camera lens misted over so I could hardly take pictures). By last night though, I was feeling my entire skin surface start to shrink. I'll probably look like a raisin when I get home.

The guest house here is not as fancy as the one in Dubai. But the people are just as nice. There are quite a few Afghanis on staff, a cook, a cleaner, drivers, guards and of course Akram who works in the office. He kindly lent me this laptop so I could keep up my blog and check email.

This morning after breakfast we went downtown to buy a vaccuum cleaner for a couple in north Afghanistan(that was the main reason we stopped at the western market yesterday, but what they had wasn't satisfactory.) Nice appliance store - not so many floor samples as we're used to, but quite a variety of products available. Kabul has electricity most of the time now, with only occasional outages, so the products are coming too. Next we walked to the City Center Mall. Big contrast. Once inside (there were guards outside and in, and saw my first armed guard) you might have thought you were in Dubai. Three stories of shops and another five stories of hotel, with a huge open stairwell that let you see all the way up. There are escalators there, but they weren't working, the only ones in Kabul apparently. Shops selling electronics, jewelry, videos, clothes. I stopped into one store to check prices on a lovely silk dress outfit - $472 US.

The big news is that we have decided to go to north Afghanistan on Wednesday, returning here on Sunday. The community center there is one that was started up by another group and came under the auspices of Morningstar a couple of years ago. They have many programs up and running there but Brian has never had a chance to visit. Life is more conservative up there and they use solar power for everything. Also no indoor plumbing. Hey, why not; it'll be just like summer camp!