Slacking off

I feel like such a lady of leisure these days since I essentially just took two (yes, two!!) days off this past week. Fortunately I wasn’t the only indulgent one this weekend – two of my co-workers with me on this program did essentially as little as I did, which may be a reaction to a very intense couple of weeks where everyone was doing the job of two people due to having co-workers on R&R.

On Friday we went up to the mountains for a very long walk along the ridge line where you can see down to Sulimaniyah on one side and across to more mountains and hills on the other side. It’s really a fantastic place because you encounter few people up there and you are surrounded by a deafening silence. You forget just how quiet things can be when you’re outside of a city. Following our walk, Khadzha and I went home and baked cakes – mine the imported Betty Crocker instant chocolate cake mix, hers the much healthier and much less artificial apple and pear tart. Continuing on our path of indulgence, we actually attempted watching a DVD that night as well, but for some reason when the DVD player was on, the TV would only operate in Black & White.

Saturday was meant to be more of a proper workday, but we decided instead that it would be much more useful to pick up items we still needed for the house. Three hours later, with a car full of bedding, lamps, kitchen items and groceries, we finally came home and decided it was absolutely necessary at that moment to set up as much as possible. Aside from the fact that we can only go to certain places, are never really free to walk around, get very little exercise, work essentially 16 hours a day, and must keep a very low profile, I would say that it’s a great life here in Iraq. Sitting in my room with a view, and with my all new furniture, it’s easy to forget that I was transient with no room at all for 7 months.