On Saturday, the last of my boxes arrived, Ahamdillallah (God’s good!), and inside was my Sonicare sonicare toothbrush charger! Dynamic cleaning action is back!

The 1st week I was here I had only about 15 seconds of juice in my brush, and for the past 2 weeks I’ve been manually brushing—as if I’d gone back to the stone age. Last night I got a powerful 3-minute teeth cleaning and it really made me smile!

This weekend went too fast. And now I’ve been back in the ‘ol Iraqi one month. One month down, one to go. There has been talk of promotion this past week, which would mean a slight extension, but I haven’t signed on any dotted lines yet. Insha’Allah.

Friday night I went to a pig roast, which at the 11th hour was demoted to a chicken BBQ in order to adhere to cultural sensitivities at an NGO inside the IZ. I knew a few people and met a few more, but it was boring. Everything is the same here, but the people are much less interesting.

On Saturday I skipped off campus across the street to see Tom, we commiserated about how much we miss Tampa and normal life and then proceeded to take out our stress chipping golf balls off the roof of the former Baath party headquarters. And I continued to self-medicate by shopping in the haji shops.


(this is the building we were on traipsing on the roof of)




But the real highlight was brunch. Baked eggs in a vodka tomato sauce.
Oh.my.gooood-ness. So Savory. And this meal moves into the top 3 that I’ve ever had in Baghdad.

The recipe came from Smitten Kitchen http://smittenkitchen.com/2008/09/eggs-in-tomato-sauce-contest-winners/ And while we added zatar-a Lebanese spice with our bread, salad and olives, and vodka in the sauce (hey, it’s the weekend) the outcome was similarly scrumptious. I suggest you try yourself when you need a weekend pick-me-up meal better than you will buy in a restaurant.