Day 7

Sorry that I have been absent for a few days, there were issues logging into the website and I've been pretty busy.

Sunday was a busy day! My gear finally arrived from Dubai, quickly checked it over and made sure that I had what I need. Then I loaded up the key things into an armoured vehicle and set off with the Task Force Commander to the PRT in Kandahar City with the rest of the Canadian embedded media. There was change of command ceremony taking place and the general was there to oversee it. We travelled by armoured car to and from the event. The drive was about an hour or so, decent ride. When we got there it was pretty quiet, there are fair less people at the camp than at the base and there isn't any air traffic so no planes coming and going. It's a little weird after spending a week at KAF to come to a place that's dark at night and there isn't any noise. The Canadian government filled us in on some of their projects and then we were done for the night, it was like 9 at night. I didn't really know what to do with myself since at the base I finish around midnight to 3 in the morning so I went back to my sleeping area and read for a while and then went to sleep. The next morning came quick, had to be up a little after 7 for breakfast and another briefing, this time a walking tour of the facility. The change of command ceremony happened, we scrummed a few of the commanders and then we were back in the vehicle to go back to the base. The rest of Monday was fairly quiet. The material from the change of command ceremony went to the networks and again we wrapped things up early.

These early nights are helping with my recovery from the jetlag and the few sleepless nights before coming into Afghanistan. Today, we talked with a police officer from Canada who put in a program to teach Afghan cops to read...good idea. The rest of the day was doing some tech stuff for me, testing out, cleaning and double checking my gear. The time has been helpful in getting some reading about the area done and some just general reading. Not to mention, emailing and blogging.