I won't say the week flew by, but I am starting to understand the phrase "the days take forever, but the weeks fly by." As I told a friend today, I can't wait to hit my stride so I can wake up one day to realize that 4 months are gone in the blink of an eye.
This is also parade ground where Saddam Hussein would work the crowds in to a dither and fire off his rifles in to the air. I imagine at some point it was quite impressive, but years of neglect and non-use make it a shell of what it must have been.
It's in the heart of the IZ and the Iraqi equivalent of the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier is near by. I'll try to grab a picture of that the next time I am in the area.
Here are some other pictures of my adventures this week....
Helo ride...love it. I love helicopter rides!I have taken dozens of photographs, but the bandwidth here is so bad that it took almost an hour just to upload these photos. I'll have to figure out how to post them some other way.
More adventures await me this week...can't wait to fill you all in on them down the road....
Interesting story about the sabers. They were built to commemorate Iraq's "victory" over Iran, which the current Shiite government isn't really down with (they like Iran a lot better than they like the Iraqi Baath Party). The hands are directly modeled from Saddam's. An Iraqi government commission was going around in 2006-07, removing Baathist art from public buildings, and they had partially dismantled the sabers before the U.S. Embassy noticed. We told them they should stop, because those are someday going to be a major tourist attraction, so they did. But I notice they haven't repaired the parts they removed from one hand. Is the pile of Iranian helmets still there around the base?
ReplyDeleteYou are my hero!
ReplyDelete1. No whining. (I'm whining because of the time change!!)
2. No tossing your cookies in helos. (No experience to compare it to but I'm not liking the idea.)
DebO
So I added your blog to my "favorites" on my computer. Every few days I would check it to see your updates and never saw any, it was always on Monday number 1. I thought, maybe she's really busy and doesn't have time to update things right now. Then I thought, maybe she hasn't been there longer than a week yet... but that was just crazy-talk. Then today Coil was explaining to me, in graphic detail, the sabre picture you had posted. She actually stood there with her arms raised over her head to illistrate to me what the photo looked like. She said you had indeed been updating the blog, to which I replied, "Coil, you are a filthy liar!" She then decided to show me your updated blog and I knowed right then and there it was true... I have yet to apologize to Coil, pretty sure I'm not going to. When I "favorited" your blog, it stayed on Monday number 1, I have to refresh it to get the updates. Hope all is well, we're thinking about you!!!
ReplyDelete