Colder

For the first time since I have been here I can say I have been cold. The weather is cooling off here by, what seems to be, leaps and bounds. I have to turn my AC unit to heat at night, otherwise I wake up freezing. During the night it gets to around the mid 50s and during the day the mid 70s which makes for some nice days. It hasn’t rained in a week and most of the mud is dried up. The air seems to have no dust in it which makes for some really really nice sunsets, ones that put the summer ones to shame. I catch myself staring at them with my mouth wide open. I will try and get a good picture on here as soon as I can. I don’t know if my camera can do it justice. The moon also looks awesome and comes out during the early parts of dusk, and appears very bight in the sky. You also see Jupiter next to it, it comes up as a bight red dot to the moons right (at least I think it is Jupiter, that’s what I was told).

The big news here is that Obama won the election. There is an eerie quite among the halls of my building. I was expecting, in this situation, for the Texans and Louisianans to be freaking out, or pissed off. They all seem to have there foot in there mouths. ‘AS’ left the office first thing this morning. He ran out like I had some flesh eating disease. I don’t think he could take being in the same room as me after he found out Obama won. I just hope now that Obama can live up to his promises, make big changes and try and turn things around. I hope maybe he can make the rest of the world not hate us, and be a good example for the rest of Washington, maybe do a little house cleaning, get fresh ideas and people in those big white buildings.

I had a funny thing happen to me the other day, I ran into a Kenyan working at the DRMO Yard (Recycle yard) and he asked me an odd question. He asked me, “Why do you look different then everyone else here?” I didn’t quite understand what he meant. I think the confused look on my face prompted, “You have skin whiter then the other Americans, and I don’t think I have seen anyone with that hair color, is it real? I more then a little set back by this question. I didn’t think I looked that different from everyone else but I explained to him that I am of Irish descent and that the Irish have lighter skin and often have red hair. I guess to someone that has not been to America and only has seen American that are generally from the same place, would easily point me out of the crowd.

I had the chance to sit down with my Iraqi friend ‘Hotum’ today. He is a little upset because the soldiers at the gate are not letting him bring in the shirts, pants, Viagra, belts, perfumes or Dinar that he was bringing in to sell to KBR and the military. It messed up the sweet business he was running. I know he had to have been making a killing. Iraqis working for the military are making 16 dollars a day, which exchanges for 18,800 Dinar. This makes any Iraqi working for the military millionaires, which doesn’t really amount to much. However, he was selling shirts for 10USD which I know he had to be getting for pennies. Hotum is a rich man to say the least; he tells me he has 4 wives.

While there I also asked him what he thought of the US military and KBR being in Iraq. He said he didn’t mind us here, but will be happy when Iraq is run by Iraq. I asked him what he thinks of his president, and he said he is good, but not always. I further went on to ask him what it is like in his town. Are schools being built? Hospitals? Roads? He smiled and said yes, and explained that things are being built up. I was glad to hear this! Finally I asked him what he thought of Saddam, and with a scrunched up face and flipping his wrists into the air said, “Saddam no good man, bad for the people, bad for business, bad for Iraq.” He went on to explain that Iraqi is better now, and the future looks bright. I hope to translate some more specific question to ask him on a later date. Find out his views on America, what life is like as an Iraqi pre and post Saddam, and what he and the other Iraqis think will happen in the future.