I'm still here.

Hello. I'm still in Iraq. Sorry I haven't updated the blog in a long time. I was finishing up my two college classes and had a 10 page paper to write for each class, so that took up most of my non-working time. Plus I'm kind of running out of things to talk about. Things are very much the same day in and day out here. You go to work, get off, do whatever it is you do in your off time, then repeat. Of course it's the same back home, but you have a lot more options of what to do with your free time there. Here are some random photos. My photo taking has died down a lot too. Everything is just brown. Brown dirt, brown sky, brown people, brown rocks, brown brown brown.

This is the bootleg DVD store at the "Ur Market" which is a little building just outside the interior gate of the base where they sell such things. Sorry for the really blurry pictures, I didn't want to use the flash in case they didn't appreciate me taking pictures.

The production values are actually quite high, considering they are all downloaded off the internet or ripped from commercial DVDs. They come in nice cardboard boxes with gold embossed lettering. You can buy an entire series (series, not season) of a TV show for about $20. For instance, every X-files that ever aired, or every Everybody Loves Raymond, etc. I have not purchased any to see the quality but from what I hear it's pretty good.

They also sell collections, usually by actor. So you can buy "The best of Brad Pitt" or "The best of Angelina Jolie" or even "The best of Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie" and each one will have about 30 of their movies on it, probably for $20 or less. They have some crazy collections like "The best 700 Disney cartoons", etc. They come in huge boxes with like 40 DVDs.

They also have brand new movies, usually as soon as they come out in theaters, as camera rips. It's the same stuff you can download online but they just charge you $2 for the individual movies.

The Ur Market sells other things as well, like electronics, knives, trinkets, etc. The main draw is the movies though. Some guys love to go up there and barter with them and get them lower their price to a fraction of what it was. I suck at bartering though.

This is a sign in one of the cadillacs warning us to wash our hands or face the runny poo. There's a little picture of Mr. Hanky on the bottom. For those that don't watch South Park, he's a little piece of talking poo that comes around Christmas time, bringing presents to good boys and girls that eat food with a lot of fiber. Wikipedia, of course, knows all about him. He is also pretty hilarious.

We had another dust storm storm bad enough to turn the world orange again the other day. Very very windy as well. Luckily the site I was working at that day was mostly inside. Again, those pictures are unedited, it really did look that orange when you stepped outside. That is of course if you could see at all because your eyes would be full of dust as soon as you stepped out the door.

More dust.

Here's the little kitty that hangs out by Ciano's, the Italian restaurant. The Iraqis I was working with today thought it was cute and motioned for me to take a picture of it.

Again if anyone has any questions about anything over here let me know. I'll answer if I can, though a lot of things are off limits for obvious reasons.