Going shopping

I continue to post emails from the boys even though I know most of you get these....I do know that I get random readers every once in a while and I want to keep a good record of the boy's experience...something for prosperity I guess. Here's Eli's latest email:

Dear friends and family,

Seth and I just returned from spending the past four days in Baghdad. While driving there I once again witnessed very normal scenes which is still a weird sight for me as I roll past this normalcy in a heavily armored and heavily armed military vehicle. While driving down the highway past Ramadi we saw a soccer (or football depending on who you ask) game taking place. There was a crowd of people watching the game and nobody except a few young boys even turned around to pay our convoy any attention. Once again it was like we were not there.
One of the days while we were in Baghdad we went to an Iraqi Bazaar on the base. They had all types of vendors set up with a wide variety of merchandise for sale. Seth bought a copy of the Koran which had both the Arabic and English translations, and I, going along with the theme of football (soccer), bought an authentic Iraqi football (soccer) jersey. The vendor, Amir was his name, and I got into a long conversation about Iraq's soccer team which recently won the Asian Cup. Amir spoke decent English and so we were able to carry on a pretty good conversation. He told me their football team was the proudest thing for their country. He said he would give me any jersey I wanted, whatever number I like. I asked for #10, Katy's number in basketball, and so he went digging through the jerseys he had, but no luck. I then told him to pick his favorite player and that is the one I would get. So, not only did I get Amir's favorite player's jersey, I also got a nice little run down of all Amir's favorite players. The jersey I got was #7, Emad Mohammed, who leads the team in goals scored. Iraq's last match was against Pakistan on October 28 in Damascus, Syria. The game ended at 0-0 and was a world cup qualifier. All of the Iraqi football players are natives of Iraq, but none of the players currently reside here. They practice and play all of their games outside of Iraq, for obvious reasons.
I know Christmas decorations start showing up earlier and earlier every year, and the same goes for the bases in Iraq. The PX at Al Asad and at BIAP (Baghdad International Airport) are already displaying all of their Christmas decorations and sales. Crazy! Also, along with the Christmas decorations, the start of a new month (which is always something to celebrate), we had another sign that winter is approaching the desert....cold weather! The other night we were up and at it around midnight to stage our vehicles, we had a 2am mission brief, and our mission started at 3am, and it was in the 50s....which to us was frigid.Even though we were cold, it was a great feeling!
I hope you all are doing well. Thanks for all the support and encouragement you are sending this way...it is greatly appreciated. Take care!
Love,
Eli