We're officially into the 100-degree weather here in Balad, IQ. I have seen highs reaching 109'F so far. A few days ago, it was 86˚F at 0745 in the morning, and reached 100˚F by 10 AM, and continued to climb.
Today was not quite so bad, though. I think it only got up to 95˚. Nice cool day.
I wish I had been making posts more often, and I will attempt to be more regular in doing so through the remainder of my deployment, my goal being a post a week.
I still get questions about the time difference. Here in Iraq we are in the Arabia Standard Time zone which is GMT +3. Iraq does not observe daylight savings, and neither does Kuwait. This means that, because of Daylight Savings being observed in the US, depending on the time of year I will either be 10 or 11 hours ahead of PST, or 7 or 8 hours ahead of EST. I am currently 10 hours ahead of PST and 7 hours ahead of EST. Whenever I call Katie when it's morning here, it is usually late in the evening the day before there. And if I call her in the evening here, it is the morning of the same day there in WA.
I have also had people wondering about my normal daily routine. My work week is Monday through Saturday. I usually get up around 0530 Monday through Friday (I usually don't do PT on Saturday mornings), and do PT with my first-line supervisor, SGT Prupis. Following that I will conduct personal hygine in the shower trailers (pre-fab buildings simular to our "Containerized Housing Units" or CHUs) then get breakfast chow to-go from DFAC 3 (Dining Facility 3), which is only a 2 or 3 minute walk from my housing area, H7. Housing areas (H4, H6, H7, etc.) are broken up into "pods" (I am in G-pod) or smaller areas enclosed in protective concrete modular T-walls (one such pictured above) usually consisting of between 20 and 40 3-room CHUs and maybe a half-dozen 2-room CHUs.
There are between 5 and 20 pods in each housing area, and a Shower/Latrine "cluster" (several shower and latrine trailers grouped together) will service between 3 and 7 pods. Latrine trailers have flush toilets. The nearest cluster to me is a pod away, but there are several chemical toilets (porta-johns) to a pod, outside of the T-walls. Each housing area is serviced by a housing office to administer over repairs of damages to CHUs, furnature in the CHUs, and safety inspections, as well as letting people into their CHUs in the event of a lock-out. In the same building as the housing office is a Laundry Point, for drop-off and pick-up of laundry. They have a 3 day turn-around (drop off today, pick up the day after tomorrow).
After getting breakfast, I will go to the nearest bus stop, which is just outside our housing area. There are a half-dozen bus routes that service Joint Base Balad, and nearly any major destination is either directly serviced by a route, or is within a 5 minute walk of a bus stop. I take the bus right to the Battalion HQ, as there is a bus stop right there. I usually arrive to work sometime between 0830 and 0845, I'll e-mail my supervisor letting her know I'm in the office, then make some coffee in a French-press travel mug I have, eat my breakfast, and call Katie on my office's DSN line.
I get an hour for lunch. I'll usually walk two blocks over to DFAC 2 (the Air Force DFAC) and get a to-go-plate, bringing my lunch back to the office. Usually around 1600 I am released for the day, or sometimes earlier if there's nothing going on. Monday, Wednesday, and Friday evenings I go to an aerobics class at 1700 in the Red Tail Gym, inside the Air Force's gated and fenced-in housing area, H6. On those days I bring my PTs with me in a backpack. After that I'll go to DFAC 2 again for dinner, usually getting a to-go-plate and heading back to the office to eat while I call Katie again. Then it's over to the bus stop to head back to my CHU, or sometimes I'll walk if I'm impatient (the busses seem to run slower in the evening). It's only 7 blocks.
In the evening I'll work on school work, study for the AFAST, read one of the several books I'm in the middle of, watch AFN or play Xbox on my TV, or watch a DVD or play a game on my laptop. Then it all starts over the next day. I have Sundays off, affording me the opportunity to catch a movie at the theater if I'm interested. There are no Lutheran services here anymore, and so I usually do some devotions on my own.
The two main tennant units here at JBB (Joint Base Balad) are the Army's 3rd Expeditionary Sustainment Command and the Air Force's 332nd Air Expeditionary Wing. Each are commanded by a flag officer, though I'm not sure which of the two are the Installation Commander, or in OIF terms, Base Mayor; I'm not sure they know. The Air Force likes to think they run the place but that is really only true inside of their gated community. It is interesting to note though, that the official "Installation Chaplain" is the 332nd AEW's Wing Chaplain, a full-bird Colonel. (It is my understanding that a Wing would be roughly equvilant to an Army Division.) The Religious Support section of JBB is interesting in that, like I just mentioned, the Installation Chaplain is Air Force, and so is his Chaplain Assistant (Installation RST NCOIC). But the 3rd ESC provides the Staff Chaplain(s), and all other Installation-level Chaplains and Assistants (Resource Mgr, Plans NCO, Training NCO, etc.), and provides the office space for the Installation Chaplain, though he does not use it, instead preffering to be based out of the Air Force Chapel (Gilbert Memorial Chapel) in H6. An interesting colaberation to say the least.
A couple final notes about the 332nd AEW. The 332 AEW continues the tradition of the WWII 332 Fighter Group, The Tuskegee Airmen. They flew a veriety of aircraft, including P-40 Warhawks, P-47 Thunderbolts, and P-51 Mustangs, the tails of all their aircraft painted red. Today the Wing continues to honor them with their motto and by naming just about everything they can "Red Tail" and they even use it in callsigns for ground support units. The 332 AEW now flies the F-16, A-10 Thunderbolt II, HH-60 Pave Hawk (Combat Search & Rescue), and MQ-1 Predator (a UAV), as well as a small contignent of C-130s for air mobility support. I have yet to see an A-10 in the sky or on the ground here (I don't even know if they deployed with the rest of the Wing here), but I see Predators all the time, and F-16s are constantly taking off and landing, and taring around the skys above the base.
As I mentioned earlier, I am in college again, finally. I am taking online classes with American Military University. This school affords me the ability to take classes even while I'm traveling, because I can do my assignments on my own laptop, and turn them in either on my own computer if there is Internet access available, or transfer my assignments to a work computer and turn in my assignments that way. I am almost finished with my first class with them, a manditory "Introduction to Online Learning" class. My next class, HIST 121 "Western Civilization Before the 30 Years War," starts on the first of June and lasts 8 weeks, taking me right up to the end of my deployment.
Some other things I have gotten questions about:
they drive on the right here, just like we do in the states
the country abreviation is "IQ" and their Internet TLD is .iq
the currency here is Iraqi dinar (IQD)
the Iraqis are avid football players. It's basically their national sport.
the native electric system here is 220V/240V and 50Htz requiring the use of transformers for all but our laptops or other items purchased from the PX that are 220V-compatable (all TVs, DVD players, microwaves, fridges, etc. they sell are 220V)
The only thing I need a transformer for is my Xbox. Everything else I have is either 220V or dual voltage, to include even my (US-bought) cell phone charger. You'd be suprised how many things we buy in the States are dual-volage. All that's requred is cheap $2 plug-adapters.
It should be also be noted that outside of the Middle East, the denominational difference between Shi'a and Sunni is just that: purely denominational, deriving from a split in the Muslim religion concerning who should take over as the "chief disciple" following the death of Muhamid, and is not a particularly great source of conflict. Here in Iraq, however, the troubles between the Shi'a and Sunni (and don't forget the Kurds) are more geopolitical than anything else. It's not about religion anymore, it's about the haves and the have-nots. The minority Sunni (or even greater-minority Kurds) could be likened, in a way, to other minority political parties of these United States, such as the Green Party, the main difference being that the political parties here are essentially directly derived from ethnicity or locale. At least this is my understanding of everything going on here.
It would take me a lot longer to discuss how the Muslim religion does play a part in their culture, but I am far from fully qualified to talk about all that. Suffice it to say that the troubles here are Geopolitical (and to a lesser extent, Ethnopolitical), not reglion-based.
[edited 06 May 09 at 2343, GMT +3]
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