Sylvia's Journal

Today was the first day of Ramad(z)an and for us a very quiet day. We slept in, had a chili omelet on the terrace and then we started to fantasize how we were going to spend the 2 days in Holland after the wedding, before we head back home to Kabul, on September 10.

We cruised the internet as if we were planning a honeymoon, looking for a B&B in Holland that would allow us some quiet and relaxed moments in between the hectic wedding week in the US and our extraordinary life in Kabul.

We found the most picturesque B&Bs in a small town north of Amsterdam, in Enkhuizen. They all had rave reviews but homemade websites that wouldn’t allow instant occupancy checks or bookings. We sent inquiries about vacancies and are waiting the responses.

We booked our hotel in Dubai for our return trip; the selection criterion was reliable air conditioning. When we get back it will still be in the upper 30s at night. We booked something near one of the gigantic air conditioned malls in case we want to go for a walk.

We are not fasting along with everyone around us although we are asked to not consume or drink in front of our colleagues. The lunch room at work will be closed for the next 30 days and so for lunch we either snack unobtrusively on cliff bars (very cheap here – we think they have fallen of the truck together with our apples from Washington State) or go home for lunch.

Around 6 PM Axel decided that it was time for cocktails. He had been able to find limes (rare here) and decided on Daiquiris. It was then that we found out that we don’t have unfettered access to the internet. Anything related to alcohol is censored. We were just about to send out an SOS on email when he found a recipe hiding deep inside a food website that had escaped the censor’s eye.

We toasted to the good life that we have, not because of where we are but because of being together.