wonder if the taliban will try to recruit me

I just got back from shooting at the officer's club.

I almost didn't make it there. I got into a taxi at the intercon, and the driver drove aimlessly for 10 minutes before saying "I don't know where is this officer's club. You have a map?" I was like "you're the driver, don't YOU have a map?" He pulled out a cartoon map they hand out in the tourist club area. The officer's club is not in Abu Dhabi so it obviously wasn't on the map.

"You get out of my cab now" he said. I was like "WHAT?" It was unbelievably hot outside, and I needed to get to the officer's club in 20 minutes or I would be late. He said "my friend, he will come pick you".

So I sat on the side of the road fuming for 5 minutes and then the friend showed up. He took me to the officer's club hotel and said the shooting range was there. It wasn't. I started the kilometer slog in the hot sun to the range and then luckily ran into one of my co-workers, who gave me a lift.

The COO of the company I'm consulting for was there. He sat next to me in this theater style area (imagine a movie theater with only 30 seats, 10 in each tier) and we chatted for a half hour while we waited for our range time (the theater area is about 5 feet away from bullet proof glass that looks onto the range so you can watch people shoot). He's a super nice Jordanian guy who studied in the US, and he's always coming out with these crazy expressions. Today he said "holy toledo!" when he looked at my target, because I got a bull's eye (I admit that I had a lot of bad shots too). It always makes me laugh when he says stuff like that, and I think he does it on purpose. 


The COO had never shot before so he decided we would go together. There are 6 lanes at the range, but two were taken up by the sheik's kids, so only two of us were allowed to go in at a time (even though we had the range reserved, the sheik takes priority), with two empty stalls between us and the kids. A guy stood right behind me at all times to make sure I couldn't face any direction except forward with my gun. Then, when I was done shooting, he told me to put my hands up and back away from the gun before he reloaded my clip.


Then they left and some seriously terrorist looking guys came in. I don't know what the guy next to me was doing, but his casings kept flying over the divider into my stall. For those of you who have never shot before, the casing is HOT. My work colleagues were watching this and laughing as I would flinch every time a casing hit me on the head or shoulder. Then two of the guys that work for me that came decided it would be fun to sing "it's raining bullets" to the tune of "it's raining men", with the Texas Kid doing this little dance of me jumping around when a casing hit me. Ha ha ha.

The guy who manages the range is Paki, retired army, and not only did he find pink ear protectors for me, but he also let me load my own gun after I finished my first two clips and he let me shoot a fourth clip for free. As they say, you get what you pay for.

He thought he could instruct me to be a better shot. He stood behind me, holding the gun, and putting his finger over my finger to show me how to squeeze the trigger "more slow" as he kept saying. The problem was he was 3 inches shorter than me and I have gorilla arms. So I had to kind of fold up my arms so he could reach the trigger. Out of 15 bullets only 4 hit the target at all, and only two were in the black. Everyone from my project was watching behind me in the theater and laughing. When I was finished I held my target up to the bullet proof glass so everyone could see how bad it was.


I would like to take this opportunity to mention that the Texas Kid is a damn good shot. He wanted a casing so I took off my sandals and picked one up with my toes. After I gave it to him I said "I picked that up with my foot" and he said "you are so disgusting". Then he went to the bathroom and washed his hands and the casing.


While driving home Texas Kid was still laughing about the Paki giving me a "shooting lesson". I was like dude, you're people are retarded and he said that the guy just really wanted to touch my hands because it's a big deal for a man to touch a woman's hands.

Which may or may not be true. It's the middle east, so it's hard to tell what's real and what isn't.