Update 17

So, I am just going to go ahead and assume that everyone is watching
30 Rock and wildly enjoying it. If you're not, you're missing out.
Whatever your personal feelings about Alec Baldwin, he is a timing
machine! And with that random statement, it's time for another Update!

So, this week has been rain central here in Afghanistan. We've had
more rain this week than I've seen in the whole time I have been here.
(How do they officially measure rain? Gallons per square foot? Gallons
per inch? Inches per gallon? Or is it in metric? Hexaliters per
centipede?) There are puddles that could probably qualify as ponds.
Some of the tents have flooded, though so far the tent I live in has
been safe. There has been thunder and wind and general storminess. But
one of the things that I was kind of expecting hasn't happened.
Whenever you see rain in arid areas on nature documentaries there is a
sped up film of grass growing afterwards and vistas of new vegetation
and animals that sleep underground for 11.5 months out of the year
waking up and shaking off their hibernation. (That last part might be
an exaggeration, but I'm not quoting or anything.) But here there is
just a lot of sandy mud and a stagnant smell.

When I was really little we rented a house in Chardon, OH. It had an
old stone basement that smelled like stone and damp, a mildew, cold
smell. The entire base smells like that basement.

I DID see a bird this morning though. It was a sparrow-ish kind of
flappy-winged thing. It was chirping like crazy and for a second I
thought about the birds in Rikki-tikki Tavi and how they flapped
around and freaked out when the cobras, Nag and Nagina, were around.
Then I looked around and realized that any cobras would be floating
belly up in one of the ponds and trudged on back to my cot. Having a
literary childhood is great in certain circumstance, but in others it
is just kind of depressing.

What other big news do we have for the week? I'm within 3 pounds of my
weight goal. This will get a little complicated, but I'll try to
explain. All of the scales here are metric, so my goal weight is 84
kilograms, in uniform. And the uniform weighs about 8 pounds. (That's
boots, two knives, a belt, whatever is in my pockets and the whole
deal.) So, right now I weigh 85.6 kilograms, which is about 3 pounds
from the goal. And the goal will put me at 176 pounds, without the
uniform. I'll be at about what I weighed in high school. When I left
for training I weighed between 210 and 220 pounds. It's a big change.
I've definitely lost the weight in the least healthy way possible,
mostly from not eating, but it's cool to have achieved it. 33 years
old and I weigh about what I did at 18.

School work is the other big thing this week. I'm taking 4 classes
online. I've been really surprised lately at how little sense of humor
anyone that I am taking classes with brings to online forum. We mostly
do our class participation by posting little comments, like on an
old-school BBS. In Writing class there was this huge conversation
about plagiarism and how important it is to avoid it. One of the
topics that everyone had to comment on was, "Avoiding Plagiarism,
Personal Tips." Everyone was supposed to give examples of how they
avoid plagiarizing. (I know, this is a 300 level class, this is what
you pay for when you pay tuition. The college system is a total scam.)
Everyone is posting these tips like: "I like to make sure that
anything I copy from another source has a reference within the paper."
I wrote, "Am I the only one who wants to copy someone else's answer?"
I got 6 responses telling me that that would be plagiarism.

We're about 2 months out from coming home now, and everyone is very
excited. They keep talking about how it's so close to getting home. I
keep telling people, it's another 3rd of the time. I try to remind
them of how long the first 3rd took. But no one is listening. They are
sending home all of their gear and acting like it is only a matter of
days. I am sympathetic, but I really think it's a mistake to give over
too much of your thought to leaving, we still have more to go and if
you don't want the final 3rd to feel the longest, it's best to embrace
the time we're still here.

I was sent this:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/01/15/AR2010011502203.html
A friend of mine knows the guy and describes him as having "gone
native." It's an old fashioned idea, and one that we kind of don't
think about anymore. Back in the day, British Empire times, it was the
height of embarrassment to have someone go native. But now, I think
that we almost approve of it. It's one of those things, like commandos
and guerilla warfare, where it's good if we do it, but bad if someone
else does. I think that it's one of the interesting facets of losing
the whole honorable warfare code. We still have things that we think
of as really bad, but mostly only if other people do them. I told my
friend that, given the Afghan sexual proclivities and their strange
pedophilic leanings, I'd be afraid to go too native.

Sort of a bits and bobs week, nothing that big happened and nothing
too shocking to report. I'll see if I can have a more comprehensive
topic next week. What with the rain and all, it was pretty quiet.
Thank you to everyone who Facebook'd or Gmail'd me a happy birthday,
it was much appreciated!

For more of the Afghan Updates, or any I failed to send you, please
visit: http://dustintheeverything.blogspot.com/?zx=ee6fac97810abcfc