Off base trip.

I finally made it off base today. We left around 12:30 pm and didn't get back to our rooms until around 10:45 pm (some of this time was spent waiting to get back on base).

Well, we left the base and drove into town and around and to one of the popular malls, we got in the parking garage and drove around it for probably 10 - 15 minutes looking for a spot, there was also lots of other cars doing the same thing. People in this country are not considerate at all with driving and it was difficult to drive around a crowded parking garage with terrible drivers all around us. BUT, we finally got a good spot and went into the mall. Eight of us were on the trip and we split up into mall groups and went our own way for two hours. The mall had 4 floors in some parts and 5 floors in other parts, it was a really big mall. It also had a Wal-Mart style store on the inside of the mall, which was weird and cool in its own way.
We wandered around to see what the mall had to offer. This mall did have a built in ice skating rink, which was cool. It was also kinda weird and kinda cool to see all the muslims in their full getups. The men wore completely white gowns and the women wore black ones. Half of the women covered their face and half of them didn't. Of the half that covered their face, you could only see their eyes and half of those women actually wore a full clothe over their entire face - you couldn't see anything. I assume it was hard to see through the black clothe, but I have no idea? They walked around fine.
We ended up going to eat at a place called "Nandos", it was a Portuguese/Mozambican type food place. We got some chicken and beef kabobs and they were delicious. It was a nice change from the chow hall food that I have eaten for every meal the last three months. After the meal we left the mall and drove to the "Souqes", they are sort of like a flea market.
This place had tons of different stores and a lot of the same stores scattered around. We saw the same candy shop about 5 different times in different areas. They had animals for sale (tie dyed chicks and bunnies, dogs, cats, turtles), burkas, shoes, cheap jewelry, cheap watches, other clothing items, and little food places. We wandered around this place for about an hour and a half before leaving to go visit "The Pearl Man", some guy who sells nice pearls for super cheap. We were there for over an hour while everybody decided what they wanted and haggled prices with him. He was a really nice guy.
After that, we drove to our last destination which was another mall. We spent a little over an hour there. Fenton and I broke off from the people eating expensive steaks and found an arabic style restaurant and had some delicious arabic style hot sandwiches. It was probably one of the best things I have eaten in a long while. I don't remember what I ate because it was some word I can barely pronounce and the restaurant was also another word I can't pronounce. All I know is that it was delicious. After that, we drove back to the base and it is my night off, so I am just relaxing in the nice cool internet place.
Other then my off base trip, everything here is pretty much the same. Work is good, the base is good, and life is happy. I am looking forward to coming home though. I hope everybody is doing well. I talk to some of you pretty regularly and the rest of you almost never, so, I hope you guys are doing good.

I posted a bunch of pictures on my facebook from my offbase trip, check them out if you want to see how awesome it is here..

~Brad