Paddling in

Thursday 26 November 2009

It has been a nice Thanksgiving here in Afghanistan, cool and blessedly clear. The snow line is moving down the mountains and I suspect will hit us any day now. People here have two main ways of dealing with holidays. Some prefer to pretend that the holiday doesn’t exist. “Just 1 out of 180, man” is what many say, meaning that it’s just another day of deployment and one more closer to going home. I’ve opted to try to make the best of it, ate some turkey in the chow hall, and my team took turns talking about their favorite Thanksgiving traditions. I detailed how excellent the waves have been on the Windward side of Oahu on every Thanksgiving weekend for the past 8 years and how nice it is to paddle out from my neighborhood into clean, peeling, reef-break waves. After recounting this story, though, I suddenly realized that the best part was actually paddling in, knowing what and who was waiting for me on shore. That’s what I’m really thankful for.

I am going to spend some time with a Polish military unit in the near future. That’s kind of exciting for me, given my Polish heritage. My great-grandfather was apparently in the Polish cavalry, so it’s kind of neat for there to be another Sniezek working with the Polish Army again, 100 years later. I’ve actually been thinking of my Polish roots, lately, hoping that somewhere buried in my genetic code lies an improved tolerance of this cold weather. After all, my name means "snow" in Polish. Eight years in Hawaii has made me pretty soft.

Happy Thanksgiving to my family and friends. You don’t know it, but you just spent a Thanksgiving with me in Afghanistan.