Happy Halloween!

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Dear Dr. Seymore Gutz,
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I hope that your Halloween is very fun and safe.  Your dad will miss taking you trick or treating near your mom's house this year.  We will do it up big next year!
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Here's a picture of your Dad in his Halloween costume.

Love you more than a bag full of Halloween candy,

Dad

It's Raining ...

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It's pouring
Your old man is snoring at work.
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Hi my man,
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A real live rainy day in Baghdad today.  I even saw lightning and heard thunder on my walk to work.  I didn't really get rained on, but there were still sprinkles when I came to my office.
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I'm sure it would be no big deal to you since it's been raining in Virginia so much, but it was pretty exciting here.
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Love you like a lightning bolt,
Dad

Mommy, I mean, mummy!

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Hello my friend,
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One of the most memorable things about studying ancient Egypt is learning about mummies.  The Egyptians believed in life after death, at least for the kings and queens, and thought that you would need your body again after you died.
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So to make sure that your body didn't rot away to nothing, or get eaten by animals or worms (yuck!), they invented mummification.  That's a long word for turning a dead body into a mummy.
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They would make special cuts in a dead king's body and wrap it in gauze and then dump a special kind of salt all over the wrapped up body so that all the water would come out.  With no water in it, the mummy would last a long time.  Thousands of years, even!

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I hope you like studying mummies as much as I did.  One of my earliest memories was being sort of scared seeing a mummy for the first time in a museum.  But, it was really cool...

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Love you for as long as a mummy will stay mummified,

Dad

Is it civilization yet?

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Dear Patrick,
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One of the ways that we know that ancient people like the Egyptians were civilized is that they were able to get their workers together to build big (huge, even!) projects.  In Egypt, those projects were the pyramids.
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The pyramids were tombs for the dead kings (called pharoahs) of Egypt.  They took so long to build, the Egyptians would start building a pyramid as soon as a new king was named.
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The great pyramids of Giza are considered one of the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World.
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The civilizations in Iraq built big projects too.  Projects like the Ziggurat of Urr showed that they were organized into a society.  The ziggurat was not a tomb, though, it was just to show off!
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Love you with love as big as a pyramid,
Dad.

Not too much to say.

Hi Buddy,

Don't have too much to say today.  I'm at work and trying to get some stuff done.  Hopefully, later this afternoon, I'll get out of here and do something fun.

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One week till Halloween!  You must be excited!  Your mom told me that your costume came.  I can't wait to see a picture of you in it.
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Love you like a Halloween that falls on a Saturday!!!
Dad

Old Rivers; Old Civilizations

Hey Buddy,

I think it's great that you are studying Ancient Egypt.  There are a lot of things that are the same between Ancient Egypt and Ancient Iraq.
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Both are very old civilizations.  Egyptian civilization began about 5000 years ago and civilization in ancient Iraq began about 7000 years ago.  The area of Iraq was called Mesopotamia.

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Both Egypt and Iraq began because it was warm and there was plenty of water from big rivers.  In Egypt, it's the Nile River.  The Nile is the longest river in the world.  In Iraq, it's the Tigris River and the Euphrates River.  Mesopotamia means "land between rivers."

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Without the rivers, no one would have ever lived in Ancient Egypt or in Ancient Iraq.  There never would have been great civilizations like that where people could learn how to live together in big cities.

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The rivers are part of human beings' ancient history.

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Love you as long as the Nile,

Dad

Good Game. Good Game.

Hi Big Guy!
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Your mom told me that you had another good game this weekend.  She said you had a header and impressed everyone.  I thought that was especially cool since sometime you and I practice headers together.  That's what is great about sports sometimes is that you get to try in games what you work on when you practice.  Here's a DC United striker heading it away from the goalie.

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She also said you had a backheel to keep the ball from going out of bounds.  Here's a video of a backheel from Ronaldo, one of the best players in the world, to score a goal.  He was playing for Manchester United then.  That's one of my other favorite teams.

Love you like a sweet soccer move,
Dad

Halloween Decorations

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Dear Scary Patrick,
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I liked your picture so much, that I printed it.  My roomate and I hung it on the door and now it is our Halloween decoration.

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Here's our door.

Here's what it looks like on the door.  Pretty cool, huh?  We're the only ones with Halloween decorations.  So far anyway.

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Love you so much it's scary,

Dad

Good Talk. Good Talk.

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Hey Dude,
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I had a good time talking to you on the phone last night.  I was sad that the Skype video didn't work, but you told me lots of great stuff about your week and your weekend, so in the end I didn't feel so bad.
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I want to see the pictures that you were talking about soon!  Your school picture, your soccer picture, and a picture of your scary, scary costume.
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Love you in my heart like a camera holds a memory,
Dad.

Being a Redskins Fan

.Dear Fellow Redskins Fan (that's you Patrick),
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Your mom told me that you watched part of the game on Sunday, but that you stopped watching after a while.  She said you told her that you were "tired of watching them lose."
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Boy, I understand how you feel.  I love the Redskins and I've been watching them for a long time, but sometimes I get tired of watching them lose too.  But I like watching them, even when they are bad.

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It's hard to explain why, but I guess that when you are a fan of a team, it's because you love them.  And when you love someone or something, you stick by them through thick and thin.

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But sometimes I yell at the TV when they are playing and get upset because they aren't doing well and I feel sad when they lose.  So I guess being a Redskins fan is kind of hard.  But that's what makes it special.  Sound weird?  It probably is.

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And another part of the fun of being a fan of a team is rooting for them, whether they are good or bad, with people you care about.  So when I root for the Redskins, I feel closer to Babbi and Grandfather, and also to you.  No matter where we might be.

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But the really good thing is, Buddy, that we are also North Carolina basketball fans.  And they hardly ever lose.  :-)

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Love you WAY more than my favorite teams,
Dad

No Animals!?!

Hi Monkey,

One thing that is weird about living here at the Embassy is that there are almost no animals to see at all.
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There are some birds.  There are brown ones that look very much like the little brown birds that we have in Virginia.  They like to sit on the ground in the shade when the sun gets hot.  There are pigeons, which I think might be the same all over the world.  There are big black ones with white wings, that might be like crows, but they don't come close enough to tell.
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There are LOTS of bats.  They come out at night and swoop around and eat the bugs.  I love to watch them fly.  It is very cool.  The picture is one that someone else took at another place in Iraq but they are bats from Iraq, so I thought you'd like it.
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There are a couple of stray cats that somehow get on to the compound.
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There are some working dogs that help us stay safe.
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And there are a few lizards that you can see sometimes if you are looking very carefully.  They are small and brown, so they are really hard to see.
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Love you like an animal,
Dad

No School!

My own explorer,
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Today you have no school in honor of Christopher Columbus who sailed in 1492 searching for India and found the Caribbean Islands.  His trips back and forth across the Atlantic helped people from Europe find out about the "New World."  At the same time, his visits were very hard on the people who had been living here for a long time before he came.
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Whatever he did right and wrong, he changed the world.
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I hope you had a good day off!
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Love you like a new world,
Dad

Big News!

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Dear son,
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I have big news!  I made the plane reservations for my trip home in November.  Now we have the actual date to look forward to!
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It's safer if I don't post the date here, so ask your mom when it is, and you can circle it on a calendar.  I'm so excited to know when the actual day is and to be able to know when the flight will be.

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I hope the time between now and my first trip home will fly by!
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Love you like anticipation,
Dad

The whole earth is a great big ...

Magnet!  Did you know that buddy?  It is the biggest magnet in the whole world, because it is a magnet!!!
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Remember when you studied compasses with your continents and maps?  Well, compasses always point north because they are magnets and they react to the Earth's magnetic field.  Pretty amazing, huh?
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Ancient Chinese sailors knew that compasses pointed north.  I wonder if they knew why?
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Remembering that the Earth is a big magnet is a good way to remember what you call the ends of a magnet.  The ends of a magnet are called its poles.  Just like the North Pole and the South Pole on the Earth.

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I think that's neat.

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Love you with the force of the Earth's magnetic field,
Dad.

Halfway to seeing you!

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Hey Buddy,
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Today there are 46 days until I see you again.  That's exactly one half of the 92 days that it was when I left from Washington D.C.
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Your mom told me about your soccer game and I couldn't be more proud of you.  I love to get all the great pictures that your mom takes of you playing.  I like the pictures where you kick the ball and even when you pick it up off the ground for a throw-in. 
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Did you know that when you go hard after the ball when the other team has it, some people call that getting "stuck in?"  Funny, huh?
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I'm glad you had fun at HalloScream with Auntie Q, and Kayleigh, and Meghan.  Did you see Jack?  Were there scarecrows on stilts?  Did you have a snack while you were there?
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Love you like all the souls,
Dad

Oceans

Hello my fishy!
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Do you like the oceans better or the continents?  I think I like the oceans a little better, but if you didn't have continents, where would you stand to look at the ocean???

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You've been on both sides of the Atlantic and when we flew to and from Latvia, we flew over the Arctic (just a little bit).  I've flown over the Pacific, the Atlantic, and the Arctic (just a little bit).  Did you know that even though I've been right up to the edge of the Pacific (in both North America and South America), I've never been swimming in it?  Weird, huh?
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I hope you are having fun learning about the oceans and continents.  I think maps are fun and I like to travel so this stuff seems really cool to me.
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Love you with a love deeper than the ocean,
Dad.

Let's talk about the weather.

Hello my friend,
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I was thinking today, as I got ready for work, that it is starting to cool off here in Iraq.  But do you know what that means here?  It means it is only in the 90s rather than over 100 degrees!
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I see that back home in Virginia, the temperature is getting down into the 50s.  That's real Fall weather.  In Iraq, we won't get into the 50s until December or January.
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In other words, buddy, it's hot here.