Life in the Land of the Pure

The young couple.* One of the great things about living — not just traveling — overseas is to have visitors.  An excuse  to try new things and see familiar places through new eyes, to recall the thrill of discovery and share places you love with people you love.  I just had the pleasure of hosting harrison and Tasha for what you may be surprised to learn was their first visit to Pakistan.  Lots of firsts for us — we explored a lot!—and for them— first conversation with an ambassador! (Heather and Ruth are here with me now so you know there will be a part two to this story).  And, because my last post was light on photos, this post will seek to rebalance.   Our bar, the SafeHaven, is the second best bar in Pakistan  A tutorial on rugs  Dinner at the New Kabul … a must for visitors  Top secret Santa … stocking stuffers for our marine security detachment  Yes most embassy holiday parties come with polar bears standard  Lots of natur...

  Wow my last post was over six weeks ago!       Yikes! so many things since then: After taking over the garden club, we. Have almost all    the plots “adopted.” My basil is doing well, my pumpkins are flowering (still) but no fruit, my sunflowers are nonexistent … but the collard green plant I inherited is doing well, I harvested it and cooked it up some for snacking.    Not too bad.  We had a Halloween party and more importantly the Marine Corps Ball (or as heather and I put it, prom for old people). DCM natalie, USAID director Kate, and I finally got together for a photograph.  Book club has done two books, The Center ( a sort of Pakistani horror thriller) and There There (a novel about the Native experience in Oakland). Next up is James, a retelling of Huck Finn from the perspective of Jim, the runaway slave. I’ve been volunteering with People Actively Working for Strays (PAWS), the group that supports and cares for the dogs in the d...

  Come with me for a walk.     I broke it up so it’ll be far less than 90 minutes.     1- https://youtu.be/hoCHnDbhses 2- https://youtu.be/gRbRH5F2-is 3- https://youtu.be/a756v2aWwds 4- https://youtu.be/-xyGbct3Tc8 5- https://youtube.com/shorts/jVmpXq8GFdQ?feature=shared 6- https://youtu.be/asQhob_2zzQ 7- https://youtu.be/dO-d01riggw?feature=shared 8- https://youtu.be/l5tVDC0Gu6o?feature=shared 9- https://youtu.be/sPCGj7xo1x4?feature=shared 10- https://youtu.be/ERovKmQtSF0?feature=shared 11- https://youtu.be/gSYLsejcdCg?feature=shared 12- https://youtube.com/shorts/YQdzmbGc2l0?si=QXSNieFxyO5IsOMB 13- https://youtube.com/shorts/B1LbY60NTdw?si=RDzuq30-7m_W5zDt 14- https://youtu.be/K1INb-u4diA?feature=shared 15- https://youtu.be/CHoccO5EoDw?feature=shared 16- https://youtu.be/NerNg2kQfEg?feature=shared 17- https://youtu.be/H-iWHyw0PkY?feature=shared 18- https://youtu.be/dx6kO-JDFSI?feature=shared

  …  Or all work and no play isn’t quite how I roll   Every now and then I’ll use the blog to let you know what I’ve been up to.    Like anything anywhere, it’s mostly what you choose to make of it.   Starting with last weekend …. Saturdays (unless its raining) I walk the diplomatic zone (DZ) with a handful of other embassy folk.    It’s usually a core of about five with another handful rotating in and out.    It’s about five hours, taken us an hour and a half, and just before the last couple hundred meters to the embassy we stop at the Dz’s Dunkin’ Donuts.    My standing order is an Alaska coffee (cold and blended frothy with whole milk) and a donut.    That walk gets me my 10k steps.    Last Saturday night (sept 21) was a busy one.     A few of us were invited to the South Korean political counselors house for Korean food (sushi, fried chicken, and this amazing spicy fresh pasta) and a ...

 In a departure from the one previous post, I’m going mostly video clips today.   I recorded pieces of my 2-hour-ish walk around the diplomatic zone.  

I  can’t give you much of a visual tour of the embassy compound—the regional security office frowns on it because it’s difficult to avoid including the security features, which would be a no-no.     But I can share and describe the attached map.  As you enter the front gate, or Main Control Access Center (MCAC), you’d pass the American flag on your right and see on your left a two-towered building, the Chancery.    The right-hand tower as you face the chancery is the New Office Building (or NOB, kind of labeled as “chancery”), which includes many of the embassy offices such as the Ambassador and Deputy Chief of Mission, regional security office, the finance, HR, logistics, and IT functions, the political and economics sections, the defense and legal attaches … so that’s the tower I work in.    The opposite tower (New Office Annex or NOX) holds USAID, the cafeteria, the community liaison office, and the sections that deal with the physical pla...