So this morning I had to go to TC (trial counsel--the military's version of a prosecutor or my job) training. The only problem with this was that it was being held at the courthouse, which is about 2 miles away from where I live. Also, I have never been there and had only a very rudimentary map that showed me the location. To add to all that, it was raining. Which meant everything was one big mud puddle. I don't tell you this to complain, but just to set the scene for my morning.
So I set out on my journey to the courthouse, and of course it starts raining a little bit harder. When I first got to Afghanistan, I would try and avoid the mud so I wouldn't get my boots dirty. I soon got over that and they are pretty much my mud boots now. The only thing I try to avoid now, is the really big puddles that I can't tell how deep they are, for fear that I may drown. I passed one of my NCOs (Non-commissioned officer) just a little ways from my RLB (relocatable building or my house, as I like to call it sometimes) who reminded me that the walk was going to suck. That was appreciated, as I had already forgotten....
By the time I had reached the half way point, the mud had soaked through my boots and water was constantly dripping from the brim of my PC (patrol cap). When I reached my destination, of course it immediately stopped raining, and course there was also a bus stop right there as well.
Once I got to the road that the courthouse was on, I realized that I had a problem. On the map, there was a red arrow pointing to one building and a red circle around another, with courthouse written right next to both. On top of that, from what I could tell, both of those buildings were behind a fence. You can't see through fences in Afghanistan, as they always have some kind of tarp attached to them. So, I wasn't sure. I also didn't know where an entrance to get on the other side of the fence was. So, of course I ended up going the wrong way. After I ended up in a dead end, I came back to the road and found the entrance, but of course it was locked and I didn't have the code to the keypad.
More people ended up showing up, but none of the them had the code either. Finally someone was able to reach through a hole in the fence and open it from the other side. I don't think that we were the first people to do this. We all found our way back to the courthouse, only to find another locked door which nobody knew the code to. Somebody may or may not have figured out a way to break in through that door as well. Of course once we got into the courtroom, a minute later the chief of justice (the guy with the codes) showed up.
The training wasn't really anything to write home about, or write about in a blog for that matter. After training, I stopped by the boardwalk and picked up the ice-cream cake that I had ordered yesterday for my NCOIC (non-commissioned officer in charge) as he was finally getting promoted today to Sergeant First Class. I say finally, not because it took him long, in fact he made it in 7 years which is faster than most do it, but because he was actually promoted 2 days ago, but the Sergeant Major wasn't available until today to do his pinning on ceremony. So, unfortunately for him, he had to walk around for 2 days with a rank lower than he actually was. But fortunately for him, the pay kicked in 2 days ago despite the fact Sergeant Major wasn't available.
When I got to my office, there was probably a couple inches of water on the floor. Did I mention that my office floods? Well it does. We tried to suck up the water with a shop-vac but the one we borrowed didn't suck well enough and ended up just spitting the water back out as it fought with gravity to get up the hose.
After my NCOIC's promotion ceremony, the whole legal office went to the boardwalk to Mama Mia's (the pizza/Italian food sit down restaurant) to have a celebratory dinner.
I haven't been doing a good job of taking pictures since I arrived here in KAF. I am going to remedy that situation starting tomorrow. I promise I will have more pictures in the future.
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