Night out

Dinner at an awesome Lebanese restaurant, an EID, festival and watching John McEnroe and Bjorn Borg play an exhibition tennis match. And oh yeah it Ellie's birthday. What a full day.

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Rain in the desert

it stopped before i could get out there, but it was raining here today.  you can kind of see in the photos the clouds and the sand kicked up into the clouds.  it did rain here today and it is actually pretty cool outside.weird...

Trip off base

I was able to travel off base for the first time a few days back.  I was actually doing my off-base drivers training.   Before we are able to drive off-base we have to get training (during daylight and night time).  Anyway, we went to this mall called "villagio"  I know, sounds just like bellagio, and it seems like they were definitely trying to make it feel like a las vegas casino...not that there was any gambling, but it did feel just like walking around the forum shops at Caesars Palace.  Here are some pictures that I took

when you walk in, notice the sky ceiling and the comparison of the westerner and local dress

you know, because every mall needs a canal and a gondola

another must for a shopping mall in the middle of the desert...ice skating

in addition to everything else, there was a pretty full-up carnival inside the mall

as you can see it is a pretty amazing place.  for me the most eye-opening things were all of the kid activities, you could really see how family/kid oriented the locals are.  it made me very homesick for my little homies, i know they would have loved all the things for them at the mall.  it is also an extremely weird feeling going from on-base and all that goes along with that and driving 20 minutes away and feeling like you are back in the "real" world.

365 Countdown

For those of you who check out the blog may have noticed the 365 countdown on the right column.  For those of you paying attention you will notice that the 365 countdown has dropped dramatically.  I found out that I got picked up for some intermediate developmental education...what does that mean....that now i should now be leaving here in the middle\end of June.  While I don't know what day exactly I will be leaving, I do know that I wont have to be here a whole year,  which is pretty friggin' awesome.

What it looks like on the outside

I have shown some pictures of the inside of my room.  But here is one of the outside of the building.  As you can see gone are the days of tents and trailers, they are finally building structures that they plan on having here for a while.

Notice the complete lack of green everywhere...i think that is the most depressing part of around here.  Everything is that same desert sand color.