"Valery has been saying for 2 weeks now that one of us had to cut his hair. I told him I cut hair, although with electric clippers, but he let me cut his anyway. Valery's hair turned out reasonably, so Sergey (who I think was waiting to see the outcome) volunteered to have his cut as well. After I got started cutting Sergey's hair, he asked how many times I had cut hair with scissors before . . . I told him twice. He looked a little concerned, but it was too late, I had already cut one side."

While haircuts seem mundane, her first and only spacewalk so far was anything but. In fact, it was "WAY COOL," she wrote. It felt like flying, and she says the experience still feels like a dream.

She had to be swung 180 degrees at the end of the Strela boom during the spacewalk. She called it the "yeehaw" maneuver. In the middle of it, an orbital sunrise began.

"It started off as only a thin royal blue curvilinear line. As the line thickened, the colors became richer and mixed with burning reds and oranges. Well before the Earth below was lit, the station began its own sunrise of color, sepia-colored, then golden, followed by brilliant whites as the rays from the sun touched us at this altitude, several minutes before lighting the Earth below. As Valery moved me into the final position at the worksite, the view was impressive, with an unexplainable depth of emotion, as the sunrise backlit him and the station."

Less poetically, their spacesuit communications suffered interference from airport communications, ham radio operators and even bits of telephone conversations.

In one letter, she describes a sunset: "I was pleasantly surprised a few min later to see a half-moon rise into view from behind the Earth. As the stars started popping into view, I was surprised again, as I saw a satellite pass by above us, looking so much like one of the other stars, but moving across the field of 'constant' stars. I had never thought about the fact that I could, as one of those satellites, actually see another! And then I saw a second . . . amazing."

The crew cleans house on Saturdays, vacuuming and using tape to pick up lint and cleaning up the spots made by escaped droplets from food and drink bags. As she's cleaning, she'll usually find lost items that have been sucked toward the ventilation ducts.

Whitson clearly loves doing science in space, and some is more fun than others, including experiments with toys.

"Later they were demonstrating hockey techniques and Valery was being the goalie in the hatchway," she wrote. "To demonstrate that he was the goalie, he put his hand over his face, with his fingers separated so that he could see as Sergey shot the puck at him. I was having problems holding the camera still, I was laughing so hard. Since we had just watched the movie 'Alien' together the previous weekend, I thought Valery looked a lot like one of the victims of an alien attack!"

"Alien" must be really scary in space.

The whole crew had a strong psychological reaction to the soybean plants growing on the station, wanting their pictures taken with them.

"I guess seeing something green (that stuff we re-hydrate that they say is broccoli doesn't count) for the first time in a month and a half, had a real effect," Whitson wrote. "Sergey, of course, thought we should eat them as a salad. I managed to save the science and get them into the rack before he was able to eat them!"

They have plenty of food, of course. "Normally, I would say that there is WAY too much food . . . but after seeing Sergey eat, I think we will be the first crew to finish our food!"

Meals are pleasant, despite having to eat everything out of a bag or a can. "So far, my favorite food, by far, is picante sauce. It seems to make everything else taste a little better and when that doesn't seem appropriate, there is always red pepper sauce," she wrote, echoing comments from previous astronauts about hot sauce improving bland space food.

The only time they get fresh food is when another ship arrives, and then members of the crew end up eating lots of tomatoes, apples, oranges and lemons as fast as they can, before the produce spoils.

"I showed Valery and Sergey an American (?) delicacy . . . peanut butter on apple slices, which went over big."

Fresh food and other supplies arrive on an occasional Russian Progress ship. Though unmanned, the first one Whitson saw made her surprisingly emotional.

"As corny as it may sound, my chest felt constricted and tears welled in my eyes upon seeing another space vehicle approaching ours," she wrote.

They get something else from home: communications from the people they love.

"One of the things the psych support guys do for us is send up photos from friends and family," wrote Whitson, who hails from Iowa. "These photos are automatically posted as background 'wallpaper' on the computers that I'm logged into. I have to say thanks for the great inputs! One in particular caught Valery's eye. It was a photo of my dad with some of the sows. His surprise was genuine and he said, 'These are not pigs, they are elephants!' He couldn't believe how large they were and he had many questions about raising hogs and cattle."

How do you close a letter from space? As she writes in one:

"Thanks for waving when I fly by . . ."

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