January 2010

We are now in the year 2010! So far January has been rather uneventful. Our New Year's Eve was brought in by a mortar attack. This one was probably the worst one we've been through yet. We were on our way to chow and all of a sudden the siren goes off and BOOM! We had to run into one of the bomb shelters around here. Once it settled down we continue our way to chow and there were a few cars along the road that put on their flashers and stopped. The people in the car had also run to some of the bomb shelters along the way. Then we get to the chow hall and everyone's joking, "They were off by about four hours! They could've at least waited until midnight!"

Other than that it's been extremely uneventful. I won't be starting online classes again until I'm back in the states so I've been taking it pretty easy. I've been quilting (on block 6!), and I finished my 150 some odd cranes out of 2" origami paper. That was fun. Michael calls them "swans" or "doves" and sometimes when I hold one up infront of his face to look at he'll grab it with his mouth like he's going to eat it. It's pretty funny.

One thing I've noticed about Iraq are the crows. I've never seen such big, healthy crows before. They're beautiful here as well as quite bountiful. My favorite part of the missions I'm on are when we're on our way back and we're driving to the drop off point on post and there's this particular stretch of road where there's HUNDREDS of these crows. I've noticed the peak time for them is around 7-8 AM. They're all lined up along the street lights and fence posts angrily cawing like little black feathered hecklers. Some of the trees along the way will have 20-30 of them all making a ruckus in its branches. It's wild. There's also been a few sightings of the elusive "hooded crow" which is what the picture is of. They're usually a sign of something dead nearby as they're like vultures in their eating habits.

A couple of weeks ago Michael and I were on our way to evening chow and two of these crows were eating something someone dropped and it was the closest I'd been to them. They're HUGE. Easily around 12-15 inches. Almost as big as Ravens.

Anyway, we're doing well. We're working on getting a house on post, figuring out our plan for the next year, and getting ready to leave. It's kind of exciting and sad at the same time. This little place has been our first home for our first year of marriage and we've grown rather fond of it. We've downsized a lot of the stuff in it. So even though we'll be missing this place, we're looking forward to being in a house soon.

SIDE NOTE: Please stop sending packages as we're hitting the 30-60 days until departure and we don't want anything getting lost out here. We've been extremely thankful for all of the thoughtfulness and appreciate all that everyone has done for us. It's made this stay here more bearable. So thank you, thank you, thank you.

We hope all of you had a great New Years and that 2010 will be filled with many blessings and wonders. We love you all. TTFN.

R.