(no subject)
It's 3:38 PM here, and 4:38 AM at home.
I got here safely (here being Manas, not Kandahar). Sitting on a plane for so many hours is more exhausting than you might think. We stopped in Newfoundland, and again in Leipzig, then a third time in Tbilisi. It should not surprise me as much as it does that airport gift shops can be really offensive if you take them at all seriously. Everything in the Canadian gift shop was plastered with moose, beaver, maple leaves or mounties. The gift shop in Germany boasted shelf after shelf of ostentatious beer steins. We were not allowed off the plane in Georgia, but I would bet money that someone in the terminal was selling nested dolls.
There's nothing really wrong with any of this, but I wonder sometimes just how far these stereotypes would propagate without the souvenir industry propping them up.
In Germany, I paid $7 for a diet coke and a can of pringles.
My bed is in a huge tent with about 39 other people. Tiny, threadbare sheets that have been washed too much and used too many more times than that, a musty pillow in a pillowcase half too small for it, and it's just so much nicer than sitting on a plane all day and night that I am looking forward to sleeping there tonight, after all my late night briefings and equipment pick-ups. Well, I need to go find a bathroom and a SHOWER!
I got here safely (here being Manas, not Kandahar). Sitting on a plane for so many hours is more exhausting than you might think. We stopped in Newfoundland, and again in Leipzig, then a third time in Tbilisi. It should not surprise me as much as it does that airport gift shops can be really offensive if you take them at all seriously. Everything in the Canadian gift shop was plastered with moose, beaver, maple leaves or mounties. The gift shop in Germany boasted shelf after shelf of ostentatious beer steins. We were not allowed off the plane in Georgia, but I would bet money that someone in the terminal was selling nested dolls.
There's nothing really wrong with any of this, but I wonder sometimes just how far these stereotypes would propagate without the souvenir industry propping them up.
In Germany, I paid $7 for a diet coke and a can of pringles.
My bed is in a huge tent with about 39 other people. Tiny, threadbare sheets that have been washed too much and used too many more times than that, a musty pillow in a pillowcase half too small for it, and it's just so much nicer than sitting on a plane all day and night that I am looking forward to sleeping there tonight, after all my late night briefings and equipment pick-ups. Well, I need to go find a bathroom and a SHOWER!