Mmm...beer.

It's eight o'clock in the morning in the mountains of Afghanistan, and I would really like a beer. A cocktail would be good too, perhaps a gin and tonic. Wine would also make me happy. Actually, anything with an alcohol content higher than the one Bitberger non-alcoholic waste of an aluminum can that I drank for some reason almost two months ago would make me happy.

Before anybody recoils at the thought of an upstanding young gentleman like myself craving an early morning buzz, please bear in mind that I've been here almost seven months, and at this point I am somewhat overdue for a break. I'm a bit burned out, and fortunately I only have about five more days until I get on a plane and fly home for my fifteen day mid-tour leave period. I'll be splitting the time almost evenly between Seattle and Mexico, and at this point, the thought of sitting on a beach in Mexico going out of my way to do absolutely nothing is pretty much what's keeping me going. Realistically, there are any number of things keeping me going, but the Mexico-beach-scene is one of my favorite screensavers that I like to turn on inside my head when it's time to tune out and attempt to make the week end more quickly.

There's another more profound element of the beach and beer that I miss, but you'll have to bear with me for a second because it requires a brief explanation, and I'm going to try to use an example to explain it. When we first got here in April, everybody started to figure out that the internet at the Green House (and now the FOB) could support VOIP phone calls, which basically means using an online program to call anybody, typically at ridiculously low rates like a penny a minute. Since I have a Mac, I had some difficulty initially using my computer as a phone because of compatibility issues with Yahoo Voice, the cheapest and most common VOIP program. Instead, I would borrow my boss's computer. He's stationed in Japan, and he has a four year old daughter who's picture is the background on his computer. While I was borrowing his computer, the background picture was his daughter standing next to a tree on a street corner in Japan. Aside from the fact that his daughter is adorable, what really struck me about the picture is that there's one person in the background, across the street. She's a rather pretty woman pushing a stroller. The reason I found (and continue to find) this striking is that she's a woman, standing freely in the street, and not wearing a burka. This little scene goes a long way toward explaining why I want a beer right now.

I think what it comes down to is the idea of being able to have a beer if I so choose. Or the idea of a woman freely walking down the street without a society of men crushing her. And to imagine a beach full of nearly naked men and women roaming around, swimming, and drinking all at the same time? It's almost more than I can conceive of right now. There are going to be restrictions and prejudices everywhere you go, but what I've really begun to miss is the ability to do as I please without a culture bearing down on me. If I want to walk down a street and step into a bar, why should anybody stop me?

I know what a few of you might be thinking, which is that I'm veering dangerously close to some popular right-wing slogans, and that the next words out of my mouth are probably going to be that everybody around the world deserves a chance to drink the sweet sweet milk of freedom and democracy without being oppressed. In a sense, I guess that is where I'm going (I'm going nowhere near methods for exporting all that milk to foreign countries, though). However, I understand that progress, equality, and freedom take time, and that this place isn't necessarily ready for all of it. All I know is that I value those things, and I would really, really like a beer.