Vive la... France?

Okay, I know, I'm quite aware of what we all think of the French in America but to tell you the truth they are some really cool guys. The French military is working here in Afghanistan and I actually have the pleasure of working with these guys. To tell you the truth though, when I first found out about it I wasn't too excited to have to work with those "frogs". My view point has changed though. From what I've seen so far from these soldiers is that they are very polite and hospitable. They are more than happy to provide accommodations in order to make you comfortable. Plus a lot of these guys speak pretty English fairly well, I feel kind of dumb not being able to speak any French back to them as a courtesy. I'm trying to pick it up though... It's just coming kind of slow. The first night that we hung out with these French guys they threw a trick question at us, "so what do the Americans think of the French?". Yeah try answering that and keeping good relations with them at the same time. It's kind of hard, we made it work however.

On a side note though I thought that I would write a little story about one of my last missions. You'll like it, it was pretty funny. So for our last mission we went up to a little village that is buried all the way up at the top of the mountain in this tiny valley. The roads up there were horrible, actually quite nonexistent. There were some points where our HMMWV's were bottoming out and even having a hard time fitting through some of the passes. The drive up to the village was about 2 1/2 to 3 hours long and it did nothing but bump you all around. We finally got to the top of the mountain and made it to this little village that was tucked up in the edge of this valley. We got out and went and met with all of the villagers. We talked to them to see what they could use, see what we could do to help them and to just see how things were in general. They seemed pretty happy with the way things were so we decided it was time to head back. Before we left though they told us that if there was one thing that we could do it would be to fix the road, yeah no kidding. So we took off and started to make our way back down the mountain. Again just bump after bump, turn after turn. It was getting pretty old by then. Than it happened. We were about half way down the mountain and out of no where a thundering boom that could have been mistaken as God's anger came crashing over us. BOOM!! What was that? Without hesitation, without time to think, without telling myself what to do I instantly looked up out the turret of the HMMWV to see where the rocket fire was coming from. Everyone in the truck thought that we were done and let out the only reasonable reply, "OH, SH...!!!". I thought that we were done. I didn't see any explosions, I didn't see any Taliban on the ridges ambushing us, all I saw was a giant F-15 fighter jet flying close to 100 feet over head. Now I'm not sure if you know your distances when it comes to fighter jets but 100 feet is about 100 times closer than I want to be. Turns out the BOOM was nothing more than the explosive sound of an F-15 breaking the sound barrier right over hear, 100 feet over head. To make it even more explosive, at the time we were tucked down into a tight little ravine and the sound just echoed. I took into consideration what just happened, I checked my underwear and tried to slow my heart rate because I now understand that I get to live another day. After I got my heart rate and adrenaline under control and realized what just happen I couldn't help but to laugh about it. I seriously thought that I was done, but it was just a friendly jet flying over head and saying hello. And for you Meg, I know you're probably reading this freaking out that I thought that I was a goner and thinking how is that funny? Well it's because of the mere confusion of what was happening and having it turn out to be something completely harmless. I love you though, please don't worry. I'm all gravy baby. I'll even attach some pics for your viewing pleasure. So, pleasure away. Until next time.