For me, the money is worth it, as long as I'm around to spend it.
My bank accounts get fat pretty fast.
Adventures?
The Iraqi kids are just awesome, they love America and they want to be either GI Joe or John Wayne. Most of the girls haven't figured out yet that they too are going to get to be something. We're trying to get some qualified women to go over for us to provide that role and to help us calm some of the more skittish women down.
We don't want the Iraqis to come hangout like they are our friends, because that's just asking for infiltrators, we do however want them to like us more than they like Haji.
Haji is a trip, Haji seems to be fearless, but Haji responds to incoming fire as if he's allergic to the 72 virgins he's been promised. That is he hides and runs, runs fast too. Lucky for him we are so weighted down with gear that we don't move nearly as fast as he does him having one rifle and a few magazines or an RPG and a couple of rockets.
We carry alot of gear just in case we lose the rig and are either stuck in place waiting for the next rig to pick us up or we chose to fight our way out to a safe point. We can dump gear if we want to, and blow it in place, no freebies for Haji.