Memories of Spring and Plans for Our Summer

Since I did not do a great job of posting much this Spring, I thought you might like a snapshot of some of the things the kids were involved in.  David was the white rabbit in Alice in Wonderland.  Here he is posing with his friend who he calls “Po” ,short for Paul.

Next is a picture of Winter and her coach Ms. Foster after their game at the American University.

Lastly, here are some pictures from Cultural day at our school.  Winter is representing Austria.  Her friend Haseena in the middle is representing a country in South America and Nahir who is originally from Argentina represented Liechtenstein.

Rasool was in my Consumer Math class and represented Mexico.   I think he secretly wanted to represent Texas which is not a country.  He is always trying out his Texas’ accent out on me and would love to be a cowboy, boots and all.

This last picture is of some students doing an Irish dance while waiting on people to come to their booth.

Summer has come to Afghanistan but luckily the last few days have been in the 80’s not the 90’s that we had last week.   For Noel, summer means lots of work and long days.  Our flight demand is highest in the summer so the guys try to balance getting those flights met and not killing themselves off.   Most of the flying takes place in the morning due  to the heat so Noel often leaves the house before 5 in the morning.  The need for pilots in the summer is one reason we are not starting furlough until Fall.

Most of you know that Winter is in Tennessee with her grandparents where she says she is enjoying the showers and lots of good food.  She hopes to work on getting her driver’s licence and have some internship type opportunities.

Well that just leaves Big D and I.   We will be busy packing for our move to another house at the beginning of July.  The house is a couple of streets over from where we are.   We will miss our old house but are excited about new opportunities that come with this house.  This is the Pactec house that has a pizza oven so we will be pretty social.  It also has a guest room so you are all welcome to come visit.   We are moving before furlough so that the house can be used by others while we are gone.   David and I will also be working on language this summer by taking a few classes a week.

The plan is for Teresa and David to join Winter in August so they can begin their schooling for the year.  Teresa and the kids will make their way to Iowa to be with Teresa’s mom and then will meet up with Noel in Idaho in the middle of September.  As the summer goes on, we will know more of our plans for fall but hope to see and reconnect with all of you.

On a foot note, I have two more weeks with my boot.  I am thankful I have a boot and not a cast.  It has been hot so I can take the boot off which especially helps for sleeping at night.  Hopefully everything will be healed up by the end of the next two weeks and ready to go.  It is a blessing that I won’t be traveling until August giving my foot even more time to heal.

Blessings, TJ