Conference

Scott and I were lucky enough to participate in a Rule of Law conference up at Bagram this past week. Besides being a fantastic conference, it gave me a chance to say goodbye to a few people that I don't get to see very often. I was also able to catch up with a few others that I hadn't seen in a while - funny how we all seem to run in the same circles (and "see" each other in emails all the time) but often our paths just don't cross.

Anyway, I ran into Rebecca while I was there. Rebecca has been serving as an advisor to the newly-formed Afghan Independent Bar Association. Getting the bar association up and running has been a huge achievement, and I'm sure Rebecca has played a big part in that. She just found out that she has been accepted for the LLM program at Harvard (wow!) so she will be leaving here a lot sooner than she had first planned. Best of luck Rebecca - and give me a call when you get to Boston!


We had absolutely beautiful weather for the conference - nice enough that we had lunch outside. Kicking back in the rose garden with Scott...

After the conference it was back to work as usual. On one of our trips, our usual vehicle was not available and we had to borrow this Land Rover. Now, I have nothing against Land Rovers, but this little one was definitely not made to carry people in full battle rattle. If I only had the video of us trying to get in and out... :)



I splurged a little bit at the bazaar this week, and finally bought a painting I've had my eye on for a little while. Here I am pictured with the painting and with the artist - and yes, all that work behind him is his. Very, very impressive... The mosque in the painting is one that we've actually driven by, so I have a little bit of connection to it.

Unfortunately, my pictures took forever to upload tonight, so I'll leave this short post with just a couple more rose pictures. The entire base is in bloom in so many colors - and they just look so perfect that I have to stop and take pictures... and share them with you!