What happened to Monday? And Tuesday, and Wednesday...

I am safely in Iraq again! It was a bit of a rough ride here, since I got food poisoning from a 2am dinner in Nairobi, so spent the last hour of my flight to Istanbul and the better part of a day there pretty miserable. I met up with the team in Istanbul about an hour before our flight. We boarded our plane at 2:30am. I found my seat, stuffed my backpack under the seat in front of me and thought, "Am I really going to Iraq again?" Then, we were promptly deported off the airplane. After being counted numerous times by the Turkish Airlines staff assigned to evicting us, they herded us back to the gate, called the Iraqi government again, and finally allowed us to re-board. As you can imagine, it was quite the happy reunion when we rejoined our fellow flying mates after they anxiously awaited our return on their now-delayed aircraft.

When we arrived in Iraq, we were bused to a holding area and seated under a "non-Iraqis" sign for about 2 hours while they approved our visas. We were met by a battalion of fairly friendly and very well armed security personnel, who drove us to our guest house. (Via the most indirect route possible, which was either intended to deter followers, or...they got a little bit lost!)

Our bathroom window, and guests.

The guest house staff are quite accommodating. They served us monstrous portions of lamb and bread before we settled into our rooms. The rooms are big and well-heated. The house condition and furnishings are a mix of very nice, and very, um...unique? The girls' bathroom has a large hole in the window screen, which we learned is the personal escape route of a mother pigeon who has nested inside one corner of the window. She has a newly hatched chick to take care of, and Erin, one of the nurses on our team has curtained off the window of the bathroom with a blanket to give the birds some privacy. (Oh, and us too. =) We haven't named either of them yet and are still taking suggestions.

Internet has been on and off, and still off, and off again, and back off, and then on. If it stays, there will be more updates very soon! If not, don't worry about me, things are going fine!