Yesterday was a flurry of interviews. Today I've got nothing to do but transcribe and enjoy the surprisingly zippy internet until 5pm. Below, my first royal-blooded friend:

Note below the lack of a steering wheel on the left side of the car. Most of the vehicles here seem to be from Pakistan. My host has a little Japanese flatscreen something (GPS unit?) beside the stick shift on his SUV, and explained to me that he and his brothers buy their cars for cheap in Japan and then have them disassembled and shipped in crates labeled "auto parts" to avoid paying customs duties.

All in all Kandahar seems a much cleaner and more spacious city than Kabul, with good roads and solar powered street lights--the latter a pet project, I was told, of the previous mayor (who before that was an accountant in Virginia) who was assassinated last summer.