Ketchup

I finally found out how to post. My new camera takes great pictures, but they are giant size and I had to resize all of them to fit on here. This first set an American school run in Kabul. The are just like any school in America except the teachers have shotguns and Ak-47s to protect the students. All of the students were very well behaved. The school bosts a outdoor gym, soccer field of sorts, and has many safety features that are not included in the American school system like lock down doors that cant be penetrated from the outside. I dont have any pictures of the students, that would be to dangerous for them to be identified. Surfice it to say that the school had K thru 12th grade. The staff were very professional.

These are some of the windows that were in the school they are etched glass of roses

this is an eyebrow window

This one of the combination windows

The difference in this school was very evident, the students truly wanted to learn and went the extra mile to make it instead of shooting at the dirt they strived to get as much as they could out of it.

Yesterday I went out to a site to do some police work. It was the start of the Tagab Valley.

This is the start of the Tagab valley. It was a very hotly contested area when the russians were occupying Afghanistan. There are more dead people there than are currently living there. Small villages lay in ruins and all around them are graveyards of the local dead.

I sat in my vehicle and watched the farmers work the land. When the site was first set up the first night they had 30 or so folks come against them and fail to dislodge them from the valley, the next night around 250 tried and thanks to close air support they failed to.

it looks pretty peacefull during the day time.

This next set is the next day when we went West instead of East. We visited a district that was flooded quite badly. One thing of note we traveled down "the silk road" I stood where Alexander the Great stood on the road (which was pretty much any where on the road). Marco Polo traveled down this same road to get to China.

We wokndered if our 12K lb vehicle would make it over the bridge. but that was cake compaired to the rest of the road.

This is a semi tanker that didnt make it. It rolled down the hill and spilled its cargo into the river. The road is rather narrow in many places. We picked up a guide and he showed us the way. " its only an hour out and an hour back" and after two hours we still werent there.

The river finally subsided and we were able to go up and visit the distric hq the river is still running rather high.

This is the valley away from the river

The kids were eatinng the mullberries off the trees that line the valley road. I couldnt tell what they were eating, I could not see for shure nore make out what kind of trees they were till we stopped at a local store to get a pop and they had boxes of dried mullberrys laid out to sell. They eat lots of chick peas and raisins as an after school snack. In each village the locals had set aside an area for a school and the kids go to school in shifts, so the kids were just getting out when we went by some ran and hid and others were very courious about us. I wave at all the people that we meet especially the kids, its my way of finding friend and foe, if you wave you are put into the catagory of semi friend/foe and if you dont, you are foe. The kids in the valley wanted pens and paper not candy like all the city kids. I guess you have to have your priorities.

Okay next time I will put in the pics of the prison.