A year in Afghanistan: Happy Mother's Day!

I have been without air conditioning for the past 3 days, so when I woke up to the maintenance men knocking on my door this morning, I knew it was going to be a good day. Turns out they couldn't fix the AC unit, so they had to replace it with a brand new one. This makes me happy, as there is less chance that it will break again. Not saying that it isn't a possibility, but it definitely makes it less likely.

After they got done installing the new AC, I left my now cooled room to head into the office. Not much is ever going on on Sundays. So, I usually use it as a day to get some reading done, as other days have a tendency to be busy and then work gets in the way of my leisure activities.

My paralegals were out of the office most of the day today playing flag football. The company was having a tournament. It was way too hot to be outside playing football, as well as watching football. I passed. After the football tournament, the Company had a Mother's day/May birthdays celebration BBQ. I am fan of the BBQs as it is not DFAC food. Plus the smell of the grilling meat drowns out the other horrible smells of KAF, and makes the air not as bad. There was a huge cake with all of the people's names who are celebrating a birthday this month on it. It was quite huge. It wasn't the ideal birthday cake, but for an Afghanistan cake, it wasn't too bad. Let's just say that I have had way worse while here. This one, the icing actually tasted a little like icing, instead of straight crisco. The cake part was still pretty bad and was so dried out it had the consistency of biscotti. But, as I said, it was one of the better cakes that I have while here, so I am not really complaining.

My Birthday is in 10 days, and it was nice to have a little piece of cake with a candle to blow out. Being at home with everyone I love would be waaaaay better, but it definitely helps when the unit does something little to make those who are celebrating mother's day or a birthday to not feel alone. Below are some pics from the BBQ.