Life on the Vine

This will be my last post for a few weeks. And it's going to be short and sweet. I'm heading home tomorrow for some rest and relaxation with my honey and fuzzy kids. I should be back in Iraq in early April. It's been a busy few days. Yesterday we had a St. Patrick's Day parade around GRD compound. GRD is being supported by the 416 th Engineer Command right now and many of the Soldiers are from the Chicago area. We were "adopted" by Chicago's South Side Irish Parade committee and a group called ComPadres . They sent us tons of fun St. Patty's Day paraphernalia . PAO did a float for the parade. We also got some great media coverage. A Reuters photographer covered the morning 5K and 10K walk/run races and a visit to the hospital to give wounded warriors some of the donated items. We also had a reporter from AFP (a French version of the Associated Press) cover the parade. The link below will take you to the resulting article. Enjoy the photos

Last week I traveled across town to Victory Base Complex to attend a day of orientation briefings on Multi-National Force - Iraq. While the Gulf Region Division has roots to the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, GRD is considered a major subordinate command of MNFI. The training was held in Al Faw Palace, which is the headquarters of MNFI . The palace is extremely beautiful and the pictures I'm attaching do not do it justice. I thought about bringing my own camera that day but I decided to leave it because truthfully I didn't think we'd be allowed to take pictures in the palace. Well, I was wrong, but fortunately one of our branch chiefs, an Air Force lieutenant colonel, brought his and he took a few pictures for me. If I get a chance to go again I'll be sure to take my camera. The lighting inside the building is really tricky for a point-and-shoot camera so please forgive the blurry aspects of the photos. Al Faw Palace was one of eight palaces u