Lots of broken glass here so the sandals are still a must though the walk [to the showers] is shorter, but still a hike. . . . No mail here yet, for anyone. Also no plumbing, just field showers [and crude toilets]. They have set up an MKT (mobile kitchen trailer) which serves what's called a T-Rat meal, a seriously vile form of rations that are reheated. High in preservatives, I usually opt for MREs which get better every time you look at what the MKT is serving, and in general, are really pretty good and varied over what they used to be. Brown eggs and ham in a block form every morning for breakfast. I'll have to take pictures to amuse you with. They set up a field PX here, which sells hygiene items, and smokes, pretty much. . . .
I'm getting really good at wiring all different things to generators now, I have both 110 and 220 devices running off the same one, which I previously didn't know you could do but I found the manual (of all things) for it, so now we have that little film refrigerator (previously stolen and recovered) running off it. It has one roll of 35mm film in it and 30 bottles of water, as you can guess! It was 105 yesterday and got to 101 today, but still not as bad as I remember from last time over here. Of course, it' still May.
The Euphrates River Valley has lots of vegetation, is flat as a pool table, and has tons of canals and irrigation ditches. A little humid, but you really only notice that when the breeze cuts out, which seems to be from midday to later in the evening. You always smell trash (or worse) burning, as that seems to be the only way for both the Iraqis and the US troops to get rid of refuse. . . .

There are farmers bringing in their potato crop just outside the wall of our compound. We went over yesterday to see why a dozen Iraqi men aged between 16-38 were digging in the ground outside of our compound (naturally enough, we were curious). When we approached, I guess they thought they would be run off, or worse, so they started picking spuds as fast as they could. Once everybody realized what was up, and we told them they could bring in the crop, just had to be "guarded" by us, they were quite happy to carry on, and gave us 4 huge bags of spuds. I felt sorry for them, not just because we scared the bejesus out of them, but because they were out there picking spuds by hand in that heat, in fields that had to total 30 acres. We gave them bottles of water, and they seemed glad of it but didn't really drink all that much of it. I'm guessing all the crop isn't getting in this year. Looters made off with all the farm equipment.
We go to a school tomorrow that CA has re-started, I don't have film but will try to get one of the Army's digital cameras.