4th Grade, Garden and Lost in Translation

I received a care package from the Roland-Story 4th Grade, Mrs. Bauman's class. Many good things in the package, candy, coffee, soap, toothpaste, notebook paper/pencils, magazines and nice letters from each of the kids. I think their hand writing is better than mine. The letters made for enjoyable reading last night. My favorite question of the letters was "Can you ride bulls in the Army?" and my favorite statement was "One night I actually had a dream that you came home and the President gave you a medal for doing so well in Afghanistan." Thank you for the touch of home and all the great things in the care package. I'll be sending an e-mail with answers to all of your questions.

On Monday I also got a packet of garden seeds from my mother and father-in-law, sweet corn and cucumbers. I got them planted yesterday, if I can remember to water the garden, maybe something will grow. My own little experiment for the Agriculture team. More so that I can hopefully enjoy some good Iowa sweet corn and cucumbers before I leave here. These pictures are of the garden, I hope the next pictures of the garden have some green in them.

"Lost in Translation" - the contractors have to request permission and get a memo from us for everything they take on and off the base. They usually tell us in person, but the paving contractor likes to write memos to me requesting the memos. Some times he doesn't quite get

it correct in his translation to English, but does well enough I can usually figure it out. These are some of the better ones - "Blew color", "one salp for the grader" (a starter for the engine, never did figure this one out), "bring in as a gust" (a guest), "sine out on pawor" (take a paver off base), "tools like a hummer and range" (hammer and wrench), "a dum truck is grew" (gray dump truck), and the best "tractor is red company name is Missy Ferguson". Being from Iowa this one was easy, but I bet Massey would not like the translation.