Interactive

As promised, today's post will be interactive.
We begin with a letter from my neighbor:
"Dear XXXX,
Hi! How are you. I am fine. I wrote a haiku that I am sending to you. This weekend we had spring fling at school. I dunked my principal when he was in the dunk tank. O [sister] and me both won cakes but we forgot them at the spring fling."

And the Haiku:
THE WORLD
The world is so big
From Brazil to Botswana
To Barcelona

I am doing well, thanks for asking. Thank you for the letter. I know that your mother is checking this periodically, so I hope she tells you that I really enjoyed and appreciated your letter. I'm sorry you forgot your cakes. I heard you got to test the batch of cookies that were sent to me so I hope that helped take their place.

From JK:
"Dear xxx
There's a stomic virus at my school at first 35 kids went home 5 kids went to the hostpitle S got sik too.
I'm playing baseball I have a game on Sunday me and JY are on the cardinals are game on Sunday is at 2:30.
From JK

P.S hows the food there."

Well my friend, the food got much better with the package. Jerky is good. Cookies are good. And the rest of my food issues are slowly but surely being resolved. I hope everyone is feeling better and that the game went well.

From JY (JK's twin brother):
"Hi XXX
I hope you are making friends with the other solders.
From JY"

That was a very nice thing to say. I am meeting lots of interesting people and the community being what it is, I'm sure to run in to some of them in the future. I'm looking forward to meeting someone on the street and when my wife asks where we met, we'll look sheepish for a moment before saying that we worked together, and the awkward moment will make it clear that it was over here, where ever here may be.

From S (JK and JY's older brother)
"Hi XXX
How are you? Are you in Iraq now? I hope you do a good job wherever you are. When are you coming back? Are you in a combat unit? Right now I have the stomach flu. We all aren't going to school today.
From S"

We'll stick with "wherever" for my location. I can't even tell my wife or my parents. Sorry. My parents know when I'm coming back but I'm not really supposed to talk about that kind of information. My work is at a desk. Not exciting but needs to be done. There won't be any movies about what I do, but it has its impacts on mission success.
Think of it like your mom's baking. If the baker were the combat unit and the Babka the mission, someone had to make all the ingredients so that your mom could get them and do her magic. Someone had to make the oven. Other people had to make all the pieces and utensils that your mom used to make the Babka. The comparison isn't perfect, but if the combat mission is like baking, I make one of the ingredients.
I hope your stomack is feeling better. I heard about it from your brother. Sick days are never fun. You're home, but can't enjoy it, a waste of a day off. It's like when it snows on the weekend.

I hope you guys don't mind that I posted your letters. They were great and I wanted to share them and answer them.
I also highly recommend Mayflower by Nathaniel Philbrick. I just got it in the package and it is an interesting read.