I made it here!

Hello from Iraq! We got into the country early this morning after traveling for over 24 hours. All our flights went well and all our luggage came through, for which I am quite thankful! When we arrived, we were taken to our apartment, which is HUGE. We even have two bathrooms! (Although the only one currently working is a squaty, my personal favorite...) Our beds were made up for us and everything, with a cell phone and a Toblerone bar sitting on it. Since I've gotten here, I've felt very taken care of.

The people I'll be teaching with are all great. We actually met up with them in Frankfurt. I think it's a good balance of ages, experience, etc. And the people already living here who are in charge of us are wonderful. They've been teaching us lots of stuff about the culture, which is really good and also a little overwhelming.

The weather here has been very rainy since our arrival, and cold! However, we were told it will be warmer tomorrow. It's nice to look just beyond the city and see mountains covered with snow! But alas, no skiing...

We are beginning to teach on Tuesday. We are working on curriculum and getting settled until then. I found out today that we will teaching teaching on a Saturday through Wednesday schedule!

If you made it this far in the post, I have a somewhat humorous story for you. The bathroom had all these random faucets, so I turned one on. It didn't work immediately, but a few minutes later, water started shooting out. I tried turning the faucet off, but it spun around and water continued shooting out. So, there I was standing in the bathroom at 5 am, just arrived from 24 hours of traveling, with my finger plugging the faucet from shooting water all over the bathroom. (This was not just a trickle... this was soaking me and the bathroom.) I called my housemates, and they didn't know how to fix it. We called someone, who also didn't know what to do either. We ended up shoving an earplug from the airplane into the hole, then wrapping it tightly with duct tape. I KNEW I brought duct tape wrapped around my Nalgene for a reason.