Day 1

Last night was a not a good sleeping night, between the malaria drugs and the excitement about coming into Kandahar I had a lot of trouble sleeping and staying asleep...of course it didn't help that I had slept on all of the flights all the way from Ottawa to Dubai. The morning started at 5 am, we went off to the airport to pick up the rest of our bags from the previous night. After the baggage agent send someone to look for 45 minutes there was no sign of our bags and it was time to go and check in to the flight to Kandahar. The cases were missing somewhere in the world, the one airline blamed the other for losing the bags it was a mess. It was a little tough going on without almost all of my gear but it was what had to be done. There is only 2 flights a week to KAF.

The flight was packed! It was a pretty straight forward flight. We landed on the base and were greeted by the public affairs officer for the embed program. We spent most of the afternoon and evening getting briefed on various things and signing piecing of paper and setting up our office. Not to mention trying to find my cases.

Seems like a pretty cool place here on the base, I'll most some pics so you all have an idea of what I'm talking about. There is a crazy dust here, it's like a powder, gets on to everything.

It takes some getting used to seeing people wandering around with guns on their backs...especially at dinner. The set meals are a little strict but I guess it is a military base. There are different little communities around the base for each country. I went to go and get a coffee at Tim Hortons this afternoon and got lost twice; once each way. It took me an hour to get the coffees and it turns out that the store is like around the corner from where we have our office.

The airline is working to track down the gear, the nice thing about having media relations people are in Toronto and are still having their working day as we're going to bed. Which is what I'm going to do now.

Have a good night all! So wraps up Day 1