I can feel the sunburn across my cheekbones as I write this! I’ve taken to eating lunches outside with my friends, for the last couple weeks. It’s nearly always bright and sunny, now, and at the height of the afternoon, it’s warm enough that being in the full uniform is a little uncomfortable. Wow—after spending the last three winters in Ohio, this is a serious change! (I have no doubt that Alabama, where I would have spent the winter if I hadn’t deployed, would have been a change from Ohio as well.)
In fact, I just heard from a friend of mine back in Ohio about the several feet of snow she had to dig her car out from under, and the freezing cold out there. Oh, and another friend in upstate New York had been telling me about “The Valentine’s Day snowstorm” that was still going as of the 17th…
It’s funny to hear all of that; it’s so very different than the warm brilliance of the Baghdad sunshine around here. The only thing that sounds familiar is when I hear from my parents in Arizona, about their barbeques and get-togethers in the outdoors. Actually, it’s interesting how close, climate-wise, Arizona and Iraq are. I think that, over the summer, this part of Iraq gets a little hotter than Tucson does (though I know Phoenix often gets 120+ degree days over the summer, which is a lot like here).
Being someone who isn’t tremendously fond of hot weather, I’m rather glad that I’m going to be out of here before the full brunt of the summer heat gets going. As it is, however, I’m thinking that I’m going to be hoping for full-force air conditioning in a few weeks!
I must say that it’s hard to go outside into the brilliant sunshine, and commit to feeling as bummed-out as (for the past week or so) I’ve let myself be. I realized today that maybe I should just let go of a lot of it and relax. I’m not going to change things around here by withdrawing into a sullen disapproval of the system, and if I just let myself feel happier, it does happen naturally. So I’ve been working on that today. And interestingly, my new barricaded desk-situation seems to be helping in this regard. Blessings come in strange disguises, sometimes.
Plus, my replacement just wrote to me about when he should try to arrive, so that he gets here before I leave. And you can’t help but being happy when you think about going home, right? 
Posted by Kjirstin 
