2009 AFE Tour Blog Day 12: Qatar - Camp As Sayliaha

7:30am came awful early this morning. We woke up, ate breakfast, packed up all our luggage and equipment before proceeding back through customs/security to leave the base. Just outside of the base Julie and William from Camp As Sayliaha met us. We transferred all of our gear into a van and truck and proceeded to Camp As Sayliaha, about a 30-minute drive away.

We arrived around 9:30 or so, checked into our new “hotel” and unloaded all of our gear and equipment. They had a full day planned for us that would be great on a normal day but the jetlag and lack of sleep from the day before was catching up with us. This was probably the peak of the deliria setting in and it was pretty evident. We pushed on through though with a tour of the base and several meet and greets.

We had another “commander call” at 1pm where we met Colonel Girard. She seemed like an amazing woman that most of us would have loved to just sit down and talk to for a much longer time.  At the end of the commander call she ordered us to go get some sleep. Unfortunately, we only had about two hours before we needed to be at sound check so we all went and laid down just long enough to fall asleep before being woken up and hurried off to sound check.

Walking into the venue was quite the experience. From the outside the building looks like any other airplane hangar or big bulky building you would expect to see on a military base but when you open the door it is a completely different story. Immediately inside the door is an Irish pub, keep walking about 20 yards is a sports bar, and after that you’re at a very nice wine bar. All the way down at the end of this huge building is a giant US Flag with a stage right in front of it. It was a very cool setup.

Again the show went great, we signed CDs, took lots of pictures, watched some football (it was Sunday afternoon in the US), and then headed back to the hotel to get some much-needed sleep.

With Whitney and Jeff before we left the first base in Qatar.

We've never seen a camel in the back of a truck... have you?

With our new "contacts" Julie and Erica

Another "Commanders Call". We make lots of important decisions at these tables...

With Colonel Girard

Is that James Brown or Rev. Al Sharpton in the background???

We were awarded plaques recognizing us for coming to the base. Col. Girard read the first plaque and then called out "Garrett Thielking". 

Garrett looked around the room for atleast a couple seconds before he realized that his name had been called.

This got the whole room laughing and showed everyone how delirious we were. She told our contacts to take us back and put us in bed immediately.