Note from Erika

Erika tried to log on to update the blog, but couldn't access it. We'll try to work it out so she can post things up here, but until then she just e-mailed a message to me to post for everyone, so here it is...

Hi,It is actually erika from baghdad. our advance party arrived safely this afternoon with backpacks, duffel bags, kevlar helmets and flack jackets. we took a shuttle from BIAP (aka Sather air base) and met up with our point of contact (POC) at victory base complex. i've never seen 10-foot tall jersey barriers before, but they line the unpaved, uneven gravel road system here. i'm staying in a cushy tent (read: bare)with a few DOD civilian ladies that told me the scoop on the port-a-potties outside our door and the showers. there's no toilet paper in the potties today...good thing i brought plenty of travel kleenex tissues. also, the showers apparently DO have hot water...i'd settle for warm. this morning i woke up in camp arifjan in a bunkbed in a tent and woke up even quicker when i took an ice cold shower. now, i would whine if i was at home and that happened, but when i travel i make it a point to be as rough and tough as i can so i didn't even complain in my internal monologue. all i could do was wet parts of my body at a time and my head separately to ease the pain from the cold. i was thinking, however, that maybe i should send an email warning the rest of the team who's arriving next week about the water. then i thought i shouldn't because it would just make them bitter before they even arrived.

so, i am part of the advance party of four of us who are giving a presentation to MNC-I (multi-national corps iraq) tomorrow. we're also the guinea pigs to see how smoothly or bumpy the in-country travel goes. we're bringing 12 more people over next week to join us. apparently, MNC-I is located in The Palace. I guess it's Saddam's former palace and I've heard it's decadent...marble everywhere. it should be pretty interesting. the four of us ended up on a c-17 flight this afternoon from ali al saleem, kuwait along with about 200 other military personnel heading into baghdad. the trip was uneventful and short...about 75 minutes...however I did cringe a little bit when the "red lights" came on. inside the aircraft they have red and green lights lining both of the walls. the lights turn red when the aircraft officially enters a combat zone...i.e. baghdad. yeah...that kind of put a lump in my throat. oh, the other thing that i forgot put a lump in my throat was when we were loading up the plane to take off and i could see the pilots up front through a porthole...they were putting on flack vests...yeah, the fact that they had to have those on just to pilot the c-17 was also a bit jarring. in any case, i apologize for the lack of capitalization and/or proper sentence structure...really no time to or energy for much of that. i'm in a morale welfare and recreation facility (MWR) and they are giving salsa lessons upstairs...i wish i could join...then i could say i learned how to dance in baghdad. take care, erika