When you are out of the office for any significant amount of time, you get those “While You Were Out” notes. I’m just now catching up to what was going on.

• Things are a whole lot greener. What a difference a week makes. When we were using coats just a week ago, now things are mild and the skies are sunny. Looks like summer again.
• The War: When we were leaving Baghdad had just been taken and our forces were moving toward Tekrit. Now it looks as if the war is over. Gas prices are falling, the alert level has been dropped to yellow and the world is a better place. Or at least I hope so. While I was in El Salvador I saw a bumper sticker which said (in Spanish) “Stop the war in Iraq.” On a similar note, I saw in one of the classrooms, a student’s essay on the WTC. Big events like that are truly world events, even in the remote area of Usulutan.
  We did get our first substantial news when we reached the hotel on April 17th. There was a USA Today from April 14th in the lobby area. We had already heard of the rescued P.O.W’s via our group leader who had a laptop and internet access. So the days old USA today was sorta old news by then. We had internet access at the hotel and CNN International on the TV. CNN International was fairly boring. They showed the same thing over and over again. It was either SARS or the Iraq War coverage. No domestic US news.
• Friends: Scott updated his weblog. He seems to update it only when he has something to gripe about. Meanwhile Todd updates his weblog constantly, with no rhyme or reason. Scott’s main concern these days is Bluecoat DCI stuff. I’m not sure if he realized I was out of the country. Anyways I think Todd is going to volunteer for DCI stuff this year. Those crazy college kids. Who knows what they will get upto next. DCI is so much smaller compared to the big picture of things. I’d like to see Todd volunteer at MJ’s church camp because he was a good positive force last year. But to each his own.

That’s pretty much it for changes to my little world for these past few days.