Sunsets

Afghanistan isn't always the prettiest place. And sometimes, it's downright ugly. The sunsets here sure are really pretty, though.

Moving Day

We moved again. Hopefully, this will be the last time before we come home.

This time we didn't have to get up super early, though. That was nice. We brought all our bags down to the helicopter landing pad and waited for our helicopter to arrive. While we were there, I saw this neat little red wagon. I didn't see any little kids around, so I thought it a bit strange to see a red wagon. Maybe they were playing hide and seek.

Once we were in the air, we saw this big castle out the window. Riley said that it was built by Alexander the Great. I don't know who he is, but I wonder if he knows The Great Itsy Bitsy.

The helicopters always fly in pairs. Probably because they get lonely when they fly by themselves.

 The flight wasn't very long, but we got to fly over a few little villages. It was hard to take pictures of them from the air, but I did get this one. It makes me sad to hear about how poor the people here are. They don't have electricity or water. Only a few of them have cars. Most of their houses are made out of mud, too.

We landed at our new FOB and were shown our tent. It's lots bigger than the tents that Riley and his girls use when they go camping. It has lots of bunkbeds in it, but not much else. I'm glad that I get to share a bunkbed with Riley. I got the top bunk.

Last night Riley and I got to Skype with the girls back home. Riley let me talk to them. They were really happy to see me and they got mad when I went away and Riley came back. Riley and I miss them lots, but it's nice to be able to talk to them.

Chopper Ride

We got to go for a ride in a helicopter today!

Riley's alarm woke us up really early again this morning so we could get to the airport in time to leave. We called for a ride to the airport a bunch of times, but nobody answered the phone. That meant that we'd have to walk. We walked part of the way, then got lucky and found a bus that took us the rest of the way. It would have been a really long way to walk, especially with all those bags.

Once we got to the airport I got really excited by what I could see as the sun came up. There were a bunch of helicopters not far away. I really hoped that we'd be able to go for a ride in one.

I thought that since we got to the airport so early, that we'd be able to get our helicopter ride soon. But it turns out that when something should be done on an Army base, it takes a lot longer than you would think it takes. Instead of riding on our helicopter right away, we sat around and waited for hours and hours.

It was really cold where we were waiting, so to stay warm we sat by something called a torpedo heater. It was a big red tube that blew really hot air out of it. I didn't see any torpedoes around for it to heat up though. Just a bunch of people. After a couple hours, the heater started to make weird noises and little flames spat out of it. A few seconds later a big smoke-cloud came out of the heater and filled the room all the people were in with smoke. Everybody in the room started waving their arms around and shouting. It was almost as much fun to watch as when people walk into my cobwebs.

A couple hours after the smoke cloud, a guy came into the room and told us that it was time to get on the helicopter. Hooray! I got to sit right in front, just behind the pilots. I could also look out the window to see the mountains and cities we flew over.

The flight wasn't very long. But everything looked really different where we landed. There was more snow on the ground and it was lots colder than it was when we left. There were less people, but lots more big trucks. There were some big trucks called HMMWVs and really big trucks called MRAPs. I still don't know why people decided to give their trucks such silly names that are so hard to say. It seems like Paul or Bob would be lots easier to pronounce than HMMWV.

We found our tent and unpacked. Riley said that we shouldn't get too comfortable, though. He said that we'd have to move in a few days. It took us a whole week to get here, and now it looks like we're going to leave and go somewhere else soon. 

Sometimes humans do really strange things.

Afghan Arrival

We go to take another plane ride today. We got up really early again and went to the airport. We got our tickets and waited in a big line so Riley could get a pretty red stamp in his passport. I thought it was a little strange that he'd wait a long time for a pretty stamp, but he seemed to think that he had to.

Once we got on the plane, Riley said that he'd never seen a nicer 737. I liked the pretty blue lights on the ceiling. It made it seem like we were underwater.

Once we landed, I could tell right way that we were in a different place. Afghanistan looked a lot different than Dubai. Instead of big pretty buildings, Maseratis, and sandy beaches this place had big concrete walls, tents, and dirt. It also smelled like poop.

We went to a hotel to spend the night. This hotel wasn't nearly as pretty as the one in Dubai. It was actually a bunch of metal containers that were stacked on top of each other.

The rooms were actually pretty nice. It was really clean and I found a bed and a table. It seemed to make Riley happy, but I was hoping for a place to spin some cobwebs.

When we were walking around, I noticed a bunch of buildings that looked like square caves. The soldiers here call them bunkers. They are for protection if bad people shoot rockets or something called mortars at the base. It made me kind of sad that people would shoot things at the soldiers. Another soldier said that they usually sit in them to get some shade, though. He also said that most of them are full of mud and cobwebs. Hooray! That made me happy. Maybe I could use cobwebs to teach some soldiers Karate.

The next day we got up really early again. I don't know why humans like to get up so early all the time. I was getting tired of it. We were going to go to the airport again to catch another ride to where Riley is going to work, but it turned out that we couldn't fly anywhere because it was snowing.

Riley talked to the people at the airport and they said that it will probably be a few days before we can go anywhere. Hopefully that means I'll finally get some sleep.

The Adventure Begins

Hi, my name is Bitsy. Actually, my name is Bitsy the Adventurous Arachnid, but since that can be hard for people to say a lot, I just go by Bitsy for short. It's easy to remember, too, because my parents named me after the great Itsy Bitsy. He's looked up to by spiders everywhere, because he climbed the waterspout.

I live with a human named Riley. He doesn't know that I exist, though. You see, spiders and humans don't always get along, especially when spiders are as big as I am. He does have 3 little girls that DO like me, though. And they like him, too. Riley had to go away to a country called Afghanistan for a few months to help some people there. And since his little girls like him so much, they asked me to tag along, to keep an eye on him and watch out for him.

A couple of days ago Riley packed his bag and took a bus to the airport to leave. While he was saying goodbye to his family, I sneaked into the bag.

We rode 3 airplanes in one day. They took us all the way across the county and then all the way across the ocean. We then flew over a bunch more countries and landed in a big city called Dubai. The weather got bad along the way, so when we landed in Dubai, we were too late for our next flight. That meant that Riley and I would have to wait in Dubai for a day or two until the next airplane could take us the rest of the way to Afghanistan. 

I've never been to Afghanistan before. Actually, I've never left the country before. Well...to be honest, the farthest I'd traveled before this adventure was out in my family's backyard to spin cobwebs in their tool-shed. Cobwebs make humans shout and do all sorts of Karate moves when they walk into them, and I love Karate.

Anyway, in order to check on our next flight, we had to get up really early. We got up at four o'clock. While Riley was taking a shower, I snoozed a bit more. The alarm scared me right awake when it went off again at 4:10. I quickly turned it off and climbed back into Riley's bag.

We went to the airport and found out that the flight today was already full. We would have to stay in Dubai for at least another day. For some reason, Riley didn't seem upset. In fact, he seemed kind of glad.

Once it got light outside, we found a big bus. The bus was giving something called a tour of the city. I'm not sure what a tour is, but we sure drove around a lot and looked at a bunch of things. It was kind of exhausting.

We saw a great big building that the bus driver called the Burj Khalifa. He kept interrupting the tour to tell the people on the bus that it was the tallest building in the whole world and that it is almost as tall as two entire Empire State Buildings stacked on top of each other. I don't know what an Empire State Building is, but I'm guessing it's pretty tall. But only half as tall as the Burj Khalifa. Eventually the bus driver stopped interrupting our tour with his talking and kept driving. Come to think of it, he never did explain what a tour is.

After we stopped the tour, Riley saw a black car. He said that it's called a Maserati and that it's really cool and pretty. He walked up to it and pretended to touch it. He didn't actually touch it, though. He said it was because he didn't want to hurt it. I like the Maserati because it's black, like a black widow. I'm not supposed to touch black widows either, but that's because they can hurt me, not the other way around.

After we pretended to touch the black widow car, we stopped at a restaurant to eat. It was called the Hard Rock Cafe. I don't understand why it's called that, because I couldn't see any rocks around it. Mostly, there was just sand.

The food was pretty good, too. I thought that maybe there'd be rocks in the food, but there weren't. Someone did stick a toothpick in my sandwich though. I asked for a pork sandwich, but the waiter said no. He said that in Dubai they eat lamb sandwiches instead of pork. I told him that was weird. He then told me that he thought a spider eating a sandwich was weird. So I told him that I thought that it was weird to name a restaurant after a rock when there were no rocks in it. He just laughed and walked away.

During lunch Riley told the waiter that he didn't think that the music by a Korean guy named Psy was rock. I thought it was obvious that Psy doesn't make rocks. I'm pretty sure he doesn't make music either.

After dinner we went to a grocery store. Inside, Riley found some Camel's Milk. He thought about buying it, but bought something called Bitter Lemon instead.

Outside the store, we found a blue camel. I climbed up on her and asked if she knew about the camel's milk that was inside the store. She wouldn't answer me and was holding really still. Maybe she was hoping people wouldn't notice her and take her milk.

Since the camel wouldn't talk to me I climbed down and went back to the hotel. It was getting late and I decided to go back to bed. I'd have to get up again at four o'clock. And I didn't want to sleep in again.