EATING LIKE A HORSE FULL OF VIM AND VINEGAR

My mom had received my clothes from Kabul, plus a metal trunk containing some odds and ends.

My friend Jon did the packing and had mailed them to me.

My mom had to wash my clothes two or three times to get them clean.

She was always cooking up a storm and I was eating like a horse.

I was anxious to start teaching again, but this would not happen for another year.

I visited Boulder to see some old friends, and it wasn't too long before I came back there to live.

I stayed with a couple of buddies that I had lived with before going to Afghanistan.

I called Washington D.C. every day to ask about getting paid, but they kept telling me that I couldn't get paid because I had not stayed in Afghanistan for two years.

After over a year, I finally got a check for $900, or $75 for each month that I had worked at Kabul University.

I was careful not to spend this money, but I did buy a big down parka for $75 that I had planned to wear during the coming winter in Colorado.

I was about to get a position teaching English in a high school located in a mountain town about 20 miles west of Boulder.

But this never happened.

The same week that I had bought the parka I received an offer to teach English on Guam.

The contract was for two years, and my plane ticket back to the U.S. mainland would be paid for if I completed my contract.

This would be no problem.

I stayed on Guam for six years.

(But that's another story to tell.)

My family was flabbergasted that I wanted to leave the United States once again, but the wanderlust was still strong inside my soul.

I was still young.

My mom had nurtured me back to health, and I was full of vim and vinegar.

I was off to see the tropics!