Month 11 Day 6

Notebook entry

Five reports given, literacy instructors, number formation, key terrain,hidden hunger economist March 25, no class with Bernie, regimental combat team here, contracting officer representative, fire extinguisher fight leave flight shut up, Tawoos slides.

Journal entry

I observed the literacy instructors in the morning.  They were teaching the
students how to say and write down big numbers.  i.e. in english
'one-million four-hundred fifty one thousand two hundred and thirty two.' is
written 1,451,232.  That was a hard for a lot of the guys.  They looked at
me in awe when I started helping some of the students write their own
numbers.  Is this fast enough?

I worked with Qais and the major on plotting key terrain throughout the AO.
I came out feeling like it was a resounding success, but in truth, I cut the
acetate with/for them, gave them all of the numbers, showed them the
symbols.  It is progress, but it is pretty heavy-handed by yours truly.

Read an interesting article in the Economist called 'Hidden Hunger' in the
Mar 25th edition.  It talks about how malnourishment in childhood can
literally reduce people's IQ.  I wonder if I am seeing the fruits of that?

In the afternoon Bernie did not want to do class, and Qais was 'wery busy,
masroof' I told them that I wouldn't give them the weather or any reports if
they didn't do class.   They didn't do class so not reports.  The RCT came
over, much to the delight of the linguists who love to make fun of Capt CJ Radin
(it means small baby in Dari).  They tried to work link analysis with
Bernie.

I did the COR training class at the RCT.  Now I can supervise government
contracts.

In the evening meeting John Soltz said he saw two of the Afghans having a
fire-extinguisher fight. Awesome.

The Gunny said one interesting thing in the meeting about Afghan
prayers.  "Anyone who has ever been on an escort mission will tell you
that these guys never pray, they only use that as an excuse when they
don't want to do something."   I think he's right.