The sign, "Hawler International Airport," greeted the author and her fellow passengers as their six-seater plane landed in July 2003 on a strip of concrete in the middle of an Iraqi field. Fortunately, the approach to this improvised airfield was direct, not like the spiraling in and out of Baghdad and Basra required to avoid possible hostile fire. Waiting were two vehicles, one from Research Triangle Institute, a contractor for the U.S. Agency for International Development, and the other from the Coalition Provisional Authority, the military entity that governed Iraq until the handover of authority to a transitional Iraqi government in June 2004. Arrivals at the airport encountered little: no buildings, no immigration, no customs, no X-ray machines--nothing but unrelenting 120-plus-degree heat. In this article, the author shares what has changed in Iraq two years since her previous visit.