Merry Christmas!!!

I hope everyone reading my humble blog has a wonderfully merry Christmas. Yesterday some of our Afghan partners in the IJC hung the banner pictured above on the fence outside of the CJOC. When I saw the sign and realized that the Afghans had it made and hung it up, it made me smile. I think it’s a really nice gesture. As printed on the sign, the MOD stands for the Afghan Ministry of Defense and the MOI is the Ministry of Interior. The patch in the upper left corner is the Afghan National Army’s seal and the patch in the upper right corner is the National Police. The banner even has Santa and the reindeer flying across the sky, above a church (although there’s no cross on the steeple). Overall, I think it’s very nice and just wanted to send everyone a Christmas greeting from Afghanistan. I’m thinking of all of you (trust me).

The IJC has a few things planned for Christmas Eve and Christmas: movies, food, a 5K “jingle jog” (yeah, right), live music by some of the deployed soldiers (including my deputy group commander), a DJ (there’s some civilian/contractor guy that hosts parties every now and then, although I’ve never gone to see what they’re like), caroling (I’m trying to be positive, but that seems like too much of a stretch for me), and of course church services. Tomorrow will probably be a shorter workday…maybe only 12 hours long. Then I think we get all day off on Christmas, which sounds nice, but I don’t know what I’ll do all day. I’m sure we’ll just hang out most of the day. I’ll try to take plenty of pictures. Love to you all. Merry Christmas!