Hillah, Iraq.

Whew. What a party. Really, the party was not all that spectacular by North American standards. It was just loud music, grilled meat, and a pool, which constitutes all the ingredients for a successful if not pedestrian weekend barbecue. But you have to understand this party in the proper context. When we are not out fighting crime, there is nothing to do here. Well, not nothing, but really, really, really close to nothing. So the prospect of a party is greatly anticipated.The pool has been a great source of entertainment and excitement, too. A lot of people have done a lot of work, and we were very excited to have it done.Given that there is nothing to do, the prospect of building a pool and then hosting a cookout seems suddenly like The World’s Fair. Besides, we are locked in a camp in the desert, but we have a pool. How cool is that?Anyway, the tale of the party will mostly be told in pictures.We finished up the deck, and the pool was ready for decoration.

All hands joined in preparing the food.

Ultimately, we had over 200 pounds of beef and chicken, as well as grilled onions, refried beans, and hand made salsa.The El Salvadorans volunteered to cook, which is good because this is a skill in which they excel.

Being the Fourth, we had to hang a flag:

The El Salvadoran colonel made a most appreciative speech:

Levi officially turned the pool over to the El Sals:

Then the ribbon was cut:

And the pool was officially opened:

And did we ever do some swimming:

We spent the day swimming, eating some excellent barbecue, waiting 30 minutes,
and then swimming again.

As evening fell, we started our own fireworks display. First we fired some star cluster flares. The red ones burst low, and drifted into a tree which failed to catch on fire, a result met with mixed reaction from the crowd. The white star clusters drifted into the tents of the El Salvadoran gate guards, requiring some brisk work with a fire extinguisher. We also nearly burned down the condemned building. Hastily concluding the star cluster portion of our firework extravaganza, we opted to proceed to our mortar illumination round show. This was cool because medium mortar illumination rounds fly hundreds of feet into the air, and light up whole city blocks.At this point, I marveled that we had drawn neither fire from the Mongols, nor a visit from the Polish camp administration.We had sent one of our interpreters out to buy fireworks in the afternoon. Iraqi fireworks, unencumbered by quality control or the possibility of legal recourse, are pretty exciting things. Exciting in the dicey way. The Roman candles were awesome, although the Marines had a tough time not aiming them at each other. The bottle rockets were a dismal failure, but the Iraqi version of the M-80 more than made up for the bottle rockets. Iraqi firecrackers are amazing. Of course, the Marines took to throwing them in the fire after they tired of throwing them at each other. The ones in the fire would easily kick out pieces of flaming wood, and I opted for a seat behind the cammie netting to avoid flying rocks.Overall, this was a pretty memorable Fourth of July. Certainly one I won’t forget for a long while.