Finally on the Ferry Boat

 After hearing about it during the summer training, we finally made it onto a ferry boat.  There was no fairy captain to be seen, though I didn't look all that hard, to tell the truth. Anyway, we found this ferry in Seattle, and had no choice but to hop on and see where it would take us.

Reinpigs

 Here's something you don't often see in Kabul: pigs, dressed up like flying reindeer, on the top of the market, in this case Pike Street Market.  This is probably due to the ravages of war for the past 35 years or so, because otherwise, I bet you'd see this everywhere in Afghanistan.

Seattle's Culinary Delights

Seattle apparently wasn't always famous as a city that knew how to market its brands.  Coming as we do from a land where animal chips are more commonly used as winter fuel, we decided not to sample these cookies.

Experiments in Hats

 Failed experiments, I should hasten to add.  On the bright side, the only one suffering immediate embarrassment is our granddaughter, and she is highly unlikely to remember this when she is older, and if she does, we'll say it was the other grandparents who did it.

Sleeping in Seattle

I will post some of the weirder pictures we took in Seattle as soon as I get out of the airport, which is where I'm typing this.  Good free wifi in Seattle Airport.  Anyway, we have photos of pigs dressed as reindeer, which is something you don't often see in Afghanistan, as well as a particular cookie - I won't spoil the surprise by giving its brand name here - that could have benefited from a better name.  We had pretty good weather in Seattle, and the sky is completely blue as I type this.  Plus, we slept very well.  And we had lunch at the dockside cafe where Rob Reiner and Tom Hanks ate in Sleepless in Seattle.  Not that we recognized it or anything, but the counter had little plaques that said "Tom Hanks Sat Here" in the movie, so that tipped us off.

City of Love

During the down time in Dubai we went to the Derei City Centre, a shopping place (actually, the entire city of Dubai is basically a shopping place), though we mainly went there to try out the metro and get some lunch.  We took some photos of weird stuff, but I'll get around to posting those later.  As you enter the mall the door has the usual "None of This Stuff" signs to warn you against inappropriate behavior.  You must not wear inappropriate clothing, which includes T-shirts with unacceptable messages.  You must not be shoeless.  You must not engage in "dangerous behavior."  Finally, you are told in no uncertain terms that "kissing or other public displays of affection are not allowed."  So that pretty much scotched our plans for the mall.  Buzz killers.

The Seattle airport is now known to us for a mishap.  As we came out of the ramp from the plane, I decided it was a good idea to make a pit stop.  So off I went.  While to my mind there was nothing unusual about the detour, neither in terms of type or duration of activity, apparently Jody thought otherwise.  When I came out she was nowhere to be seen.  So I figured, OK, she's made a pit stop of her own.  Knowing that trips to the ladies' room invariably take longer than those to the men's room - obviously, there's something far more entertaining to do in there, perhaps PacMan arcade games, or Sports Center is on, or something along those lines that is lacking in the male facilities - so I waited.  And waited.  After about 15 minutes, I started thinking, this is a bit longer than normal.  So I wandered around the small terminal to see if she might have wandered off to get a coffee or something.  After about the sixth time around the terminal and lurking around the entrance to the ladies' room, and with the growing unmistakable certainty that everyone in the terminal figured I was a stalker, which really wasn't fair based on this experience alone, and there's no way most of those people could have known the other relevant information that would have led to that conclusion, I thought to myself, it's been half an hour; perhaps she went to the baggage claim.  So I took the escalator down to the area marked baggage claim - and came upon the doors to the airport train.  There's no way she would have taken a train to another terminal, I thought; I've simply missed her.  So I went back upstairs, loitered around the entrance to the women's restroom until even the undecideds had decided that, yep, no doubt the guy's getting ready to commit some sort of sex crime, circled the terminal area a few more times.  By now over 45 minutes had passed since we landed.  So I thought, I'll go page her.  Turns out the place to page somebody is where the baggage claim area is.  So I took the train, and at the baggage help desk, I saw our suitcases.  Turns out she had long since given up finding me and so went fairly expeditiously to baggage claim.  Apparently, she is far less willing than I to be considered an airport bathroom predator.

Directions

We have arrived in Seattle, after a short trip of approximately 44 hours.  We started out in Kabul Sunday before dawn, spent most of the day in Dubai, flew overnight to Atlanta, and finally making it to Seattle Monday afternoon local time, the equivalent of about 2 in the morning Tuesday Kabul time.  Kabul Airport, for those unfamiliar with it, is not the world's most modern, nor is it filled choc-a-bloc with shopping and dining options.  But it was another difference that most struck me.  Since our plane was not pulled up close to the terminal, we had to take a bus to get to its place on the tarmac.  Nothing unusual about that.  So a bunch of us piled into the first bus, which zoomed off confidently toward the plane.  And then wound up in a corner of the airport past where the UN planes park, with no other plane nearby.  So our driver did something profoundly un-American, at least un-manly: he stopped the bus, got out, walked over to one of the ground crew and asked for directions to where our plane was parked.  Oh, sure, it worked, and we got there - though several minutes after the bus that had left after ours, meaning we were the last people to board the plane - but where was that sense of triumph after having steadfastly refused to ask for help, and driving around the tarmac for a few extra hours until stumbling upon the correct path?

In Dubai, since we had to re-check our luggage anyway, we decided to take a bus tour around the city, since we had about nine hours to kill.  So we did the unmanly, un-American thing and asked for directions at the information desk.  The young woman had no idea where we could buy tickets for the double-decker bus tour, so she called the number.  It was at least a 15-minute conversation, as she repeatedly sought to clarify exactly where the ticket sales point was, where the bus was, where and when we would return, etc.  She squeezed every last drop of information out of her interlocutor.  She hung up, smiled broadly, and began to explain what we had to do, when the phone rang.  She answered, and then a 10+ minute conversation in Chinese ensued.  Finally, she hung up, smiled, looked at us ... and then her smile vanished, and she stammered, "I forgot what they told me."  She then waved us in the general direction of the parking lot and said we would probably find someone there who would know.  This episode, to me, proves the futility of asking for directions, ever.

Fun times await us - while in Dubai, we get a book on towel origami.  We are about to wreak havoc at the house of every relative we visit during this trip.