This is the first of several pictures taken from a day trip to a large, beautiful lake resort area in northern Iraq. In this picture, we were relaxing by part of the lake where folks eat food, play music, etc. I was able to meet a family visiting from Baghdad. In this picture, the mother basically said "please hold him - give me a break for a while!". Everyone in the picnic area where we were by the river was very nice to us. One of the guys even let me play my ecletic (spelling?) music CD on his car stereo. Imagine me eating kebabs while listening to Spandau Ballet in the background!

Isn't it gorgeous?

Here is the lake. The previous picture is my team.

I thought you would like to see some pictures from a recent day trip we took to a very large lake in northern Iraq. We went there to do some business but were also able to take advantage of some "down time" to relax a little, meet some folks who were vacationing from Baghdad, and eat some local food. The water was very cool - beautiful scenery as you can see.

May I introduce you to "Murphy's Law"

Sorry I have not written in a while. I could give you some really creative excuses ... but I really only have one boring one - time has flown.

Each day goes by so incredibly fast. Before I know it August will be upon us. The work that I am doing is not very difficult but it does require a lot of planning and follow through. Some of you may have heard of Murphy's Law - for those that don't know, Murphy's Law states that if there is the slightest possibility of something going wrong it will go wrong. Basically, "Murphy" is the ultimate pessimist. I bring this law up because much of my time is making sure "Murphy" does not raise his ugly head when we are out and about on missions. For example, if there is the chance that someone may forget to wake up on time, I have a senior sergeant wake the person up 15 minutes earlier; if the team as a whole is not moving the way I want them to in the morning before we head out "outside the wire" and we are running the risk of forgetting something important, then so that Murphy does not "bite us", we form up for inspection 30 minutes earlier than usual....you get my drift right?

Well, in my world right now - which is filled with plans, briefings, guns, radios, coordinations with many other organizations we are supporting in this area, e-mails, meetings, and (oh yes) the Iraqi people - most of my time is spent making sure that the primary mission for the day is accomplished - which is everyone comes back with all their fingers and toes. I am always conscious of that Murphy guy!

If everyone comes back safe, we have had a good day. The secondary mission is whatever work we had to do for that day - whether it was conducting an assessment in part of a large city, or visiting with government officials to discuss a specific issue or broad range of issues, or conducting a goodwill visit to a hospital, school, or village to meet/greet folks and hand out supplies and/or beanie babies.

Then, at the end of the day I still have from 6 pm to about 9:30 pm to do catch up work and do other types of planning. I am hoping that my schedule will allow me to actually attend church on Sundays as well as have a lot more personal time in the evening. We shall see.

And given all of the above, I must say that I am enjoying the work. I am able to implement some initiatives and improvements in the way that we work over here and in the quality of products we produce.

How is life over in the US of A for each of you? Please write when you can I love to hear from each of you.

Big Glasses

I have three interpreters assigned to my team. Each one has his own personality and they are all great to work with. Depending on the area we go to, they need to be able to speak either Kurdish or Arabic…and in some cases Turkomen. I know some basic words of greeting for both Kurdish and Arabic. For example, with Arabic, if you want to say hello, great to see you, and my name is CPT C, you would say (say it with me) …”Ah sah lam a lay koom”(hello and great to see you)….” “Kife hah lik …momtazzz?” (How are things … excellent?” ) . In Kurdish, you would say the above English words as follows: “Choy nee Bashi” (are you doing well?)…”Zorr bash” (I am doing well).

So there you have it…you can now speak both Arabic and Kurdish! Well, enough to create a good first impression anyway. One of our interpreters has a name that is difficult to pronounce but he wears big glasses…so we call him “Big Glasses” and he does not seem to mind. However, everytime I hear his new name it makes me chuckle a little. I mean imagine calling one of your friends “Big Glasses” or “Large Nose” or something like that.