My friend became a new Mom last week! This is her holding her beautiful baby girl. I got to help teach her about breastfeeding and all the baby basics. She and baby are healthy and doing great...so precious!

The day after Thanksgiving, there is a holiday here called Eid al-Ahda which primarily involves animal sacrifices, usually a goat or cow. Suddenly all the goats roaming around my neighborhood are missing and the roads are lined with little makeshift tents like this where you can pick your sacrifice of choice.

Meet two of my awesome Iraqi friends. The girl on the left just discovered the Backstreet Boys and is completely obsessed. This family is a hoot!

Our first official health teaching! We taught all the women leaders in a local village about health topics like infection prevention, hand washing, nutrition, and breastfeeding. They were really eager to learn and we learned a lot about their health beliefs as well...it was a good time!

This pic is from my trip to the capital city. It's not unusual to have impromtu photo shoots when I'm walking around town. They just really love white skin! : ) These girls kind of came out of nowhere on my way to a taxi (note my luggage to the left) I'm not sure what they do with these pics, but I'm on camera phones all the place!

I got to go to Sea World on my way home from the capital city. Only $5 to get in and they let me take home one of these shark eggs. The shark had already hatched out of mine, but if you look close at these you can see the baby sharks inside.

This is also from Sea World. There was a little pool with sharks and stingrays swimming around and they didn't seem to mind me reaching in and picking them up. It was really fun!

This is a shot from a school where we've been helping teach English. The kids are so stinkin' cute!

Before school, the kids get together and exercise. Some of them have some sweet dance moves :)