dinner with the turks

Usually every Sunday evening a group of us go to the other side of the base and have dinner with some Turkish contractors. We have befriended a couple of them from seeing them in the clinic.
Borish (not sure about the spelling) is the one standing in the background. He really appreciates us helping his crew out when they need help. Believe me they don't come calling unless they need it. I will post some pics of me working on one of his worker's finger. Borish is the one who organized the cookouts.

Also in this picture is Jeff on the right and Mike on the left of me, with Borish standing in the background.

Here's all of us sitting at the table waiting for dinner. There's lots of bread and a mixed salad of onions, green peppers and some other stuff that was actually pretty good.


They insisted on serving us. Once we were seated they didn't want us to get up for anything. Good stuff! Hopefully Steph gets wind of this type of service (just kidding honey). The meats are chicken and beef kabobs. They also cooked some type of mincemeat sausage. I don't know what that is but I do know that it was a mixture of something(s)...probably not my favorite part of the meal but the kabobs were great.


Here's us getting our eats on!

Here Borish and his buddies were planning a little joke on your favorite person. Why is it the nice guy always gets picked on? Just remember everybody has their breaking point.
Don't hate me b/c i'm beautiful...Hate the game not the playa. Playa.

So they get me up and tell me to chop a toothpick in half with this machete. Pretty easy, right? I was very skeptical so I didn't give it my all (that's the excuse I have for not chopping it in half on the first try). I knew something was up but couldn't quite put a finger on it. I should just trust these guys.

Once I demonstrated my ninja-like skills they wanted to "test" my ability doing it blindfolded. At what point should I have stopped or my FRIENDS stepped in? Let's take a step back and think about this...Let's see, I am in Iraq, I seem to recall something that has to do with blindfolds and a machete. For pete sake shouldn't someone have stopped this!?

So the trick was they had me take off my shoe and sock and place my foot in water (obviously this was the distractor not to mention they were speaking Turkish-yet another warning sign to go along with the blindfold and machete, there was no way I was letting go of that machete). With my foot in the water, they asked me to chop another "toothpick" in half. Well, they made the old switch of the toothpick for my sock ploy. Yes, my freakin' sock! That's what is stretched out on the chopping board.

HAHAHAHA! Here's me holding the two halves of my now useless sock. They may have taken my machete but I still have my 9. I'm about to pop some caps in them. So for Christmas I guess I will be needing some more smartwool socks!!!