Good Morning Baghdad!

Final Post — For Now

Well, for those of you who’ve been following my progress to Iraq for a second time, I’ve made it! It was a long and arduous trip, marked by travel difficulties, poison oak contracted during my week of training in Texas, long, hot, humid days (in Texas and Qatar), and long, hot, dusty days (now that I’m here in Baghdad).

Now that I’m living in Camp Victory (along with far, far too much stuff–I’m going to have to go through it and send some back home to family), I can see why the people from this side of Baghdad always called the International Zone, where I was before, “Club Med”. Certain things I took for granted, like private bathrooms, TVs, internet access, phones that call home, and easy access to work are not part of the package here! While I did a fair amount of email whining about this for my first couple days, I’m getting used to the long walk to the bathrooms and the fact that the only internet I get is (defense filtered) work internet. Never mind–I’m going to be busy around here, and busy with interesting work!

Baghdad is very different–in a good way–than the way it was when I left a year and a half ago. Things have quieted down greatly, the Iraqis themselves are in charge of lots more stuff than they were before, and the main complaint the powers-that-be are making about security is that military personnel are getting too “complacent” because things have been quiet for so long. And all in all, that’s not a bad problem to have–it means that life is starting to feel semi-normal to even the troops out here. It requires correction, of course–it’s not like everything is golden yet–but it’s also not the razor’s edge that it was here a year ago.

However, my lack of unrestricted internet access, along with the Army’s policy of requiring blog registration and monitoring, combines to make it too difficult for me to continue blogging, at least for now. I’ve been having some “blogger burnout” lately anyway, so maybe it’s all for the best. Should my circumstances change (I hear that there may be some wireless coming my way in the future), I may well be back, but for now, this is goodbye. Even this I had to send back to the States for someone to post it for me.

I’ve enjoyed keeping up with all of you here, and I’m going to miss hearing from you in the comments. I hope I’m going to be able to return to you at some future date! Good luck, and I’ll talk to you later (I hope!).

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