Those are shots of the inside of our room, lacking any decoration and only having one bed frame, and of the outside of our trailer. It's hard to see all the wires that are suspended above the walkway. The living area up there is older than that of VBC, so many of the wires aren't buried or hidden like they are here. That, combined with the exposed pipes and sandbags (here, we use twelve foot tall T-wall barriers), made the whole place seem very third-world. It wasn't all bad, however, since we spent most of our time working.
The top picture of the above two is one of my favorites. Clouds are a rarity here, and to catch the wispy cirrus at sunrise above brigade headquarters was kind of cool. Then there's me, in front of the main HQ building. They even gave us our own ride!
Camp Taji is a bit north of the city, and it's much, much quieter. Many of the buildings are hard-stand buildings, and are already wired with electricity. Since the Camp isn't a rag-tag collection of trailers and aluminum buildings, they were much more selective about generator placement. The only noise I really noticed was the UAVs taking off and landing at the nearby airfield. They're pretty loud, given their small size. So anyway, here's a few more Taji pictures for your viewing pleasure:
In other news, we are celebrating down here, as rumor has it that we could be home by the Super Bowl. We've been given notice to begin slimming down our possessions, and we're to move into the tents sometime next week. Hence, I've been packing my trunks and boxes to get sent home! We're looking at just over three weeks, at this point in time, until we're out of Iraq! It seems almost surreal. It's also amazing how much stuff you accumulate over the course of a year, even when you weren't trying. No matter, though, I'll be happy to sort it all out in a month!
