Al Humdililah!!! some chalam, a haircut and things are goin well

Although I'm prone to calling it sheesha, I now have to recognize the water pipe as Chalam, because it seems as if afghanistan is on its way back with the chalam culture. last night, after a frustrating week of built up boredom, I met my good friend Wafi at this new traditional afghan restaurant near my house. Sorry to my family members who hate seeing pictures of me smoking, but this was just so cool and rest assure in the fact that i've been exercising lately (yeah...do you know where the weight room is???) so my lungs are perfectly healthy. It's a really great place because of two major things: I asked the guy how long they were open and he responded "24 hours", i almost soiled myself when he told me this because I have been longing for a place to go and hang out with people after 9:30 - which is the regular closing time for the city. A great part about this restaurant is that they have these little mini huts that are constructed inside, and they put nice rugs to sit on and compfy pillows, plus those cool beads that act as a shaggadelic see through door. Add the traditional afghan music of 1 guitar thing and a drum, that makes a really cool atmoshpere. The other major thing they have is really delicious chalam (sheesha) and me and Wafi enjoyed a mint flavored one that was prepared very nicely i have to say. Wafi was really happy too because there really aren't many places for people to go and hang out, i think it has to do with the electricity issues here in kabul so people don't stay open late, but also the culture of people here is to go home to their families and stay home at night. To a foreigner, that can get really frustrating because i don't have a family here, but I keep myself busy with people from work and other fun stuff. So this was pretty good news, that kabul's social life just got one restaurant better, which is what they need in my opinion because it makes life here more social and fun for everyone.

besides that, yesterday i got a haircut finally after going around a while with a puffy afro. not that i don't like the afro, it's pretty rad, but it's much harder to deal with here cause i shower at my office and it's just much easier when i can wet my hair without using two gallons of water to penetrate the enormous afro. I was about to snap cause i kept getting this delayed due to the fact that most things aren't open here after 5pm due to the Ramadan period, so i was racing from work to get to this barber shop in time before they closed up shop. I walked in and found like 5 guys sitting on the couches, i thought they were waiting for haircuts. I thought i was done, so i asked but luckily they were just typical barbergoers sitting around reading the newspaper and chatting, i was invited to sit in the barber chair. This wasn't the best haircut experience cause me pointing at the electric buzzer wasn't enough to explain to the guy that i wanted my hair short - translation of such a word isn't too easy due to the large number of varying meanings of the word 'small/short'. even in english it's hard to explain but usually things go well. so eventually he was done and it wasn't even close to being short enough so i told one of the guys in the shop who spoke english and the barber started to defend himself like i'd insulted him. so thankfully he made the bottom shorter but i didn't push to get the top shortened and now i have a bit of a mushroom head, those crazy barbers man....in his defense, it was like 4:30 and they don't eat all day until 5pm, so i think i'd be on edge a bit if i were him. but anyways, thank god i got the haircut, as i like to say in my office: 'i feel like 100 bucks'. this is a phrase i coined after taking a shower, searching for a way to say 'i feel like a million bucks', I instead said '100 bucks' and my coworkers thought it was really funny so now they make fun of me for it. that's all for now, I'm going to be going to a traditional Iftar meal (breaking fast) on friday at my friend Wafi's house, there's also a halloween party i might go to so that should be interesting to say the least.