twenty-something years of "what have you been up to?"

  • Once and Future Books

    I placed an order with Powell’s Books last Wednesday. On Friday the books left the warehouse and are speeding towards me. I’ll tell you when they get here, just so you can see what it’s like. I’m dying for:

    Everyday Fashions of the Thirties as Pictured in Sears Catalogs a Dover book
    Rosie’s Walk, a picture book for Stefan
    30 Heirloom Projects with Complete How-To-Knit Instructions by Melanie Falick, I love, love, love her Weekend Knitting, in spite of it’s problems,I can’t wait to lay my hands on this.
    Around the Year by Elsa Beskow, can’t believe we don’t already have this, and they had a used copy!
    Special Topics in Calamity Physics by Marisha Pessl. Anybody read this?
    The King in the Window by Adam Gopnik, recommended to Camille by the charming 12-year-old Dev, who we met in Rome. It’s about an American boy living in France, and written by the guy who wrote the delightful Paris to the Moon.

    PinocchioI picked up a copy of Pinocchio in Rome (but the book’s in English, c’mon) and started reading it aloud to kids while we were there. It’s great to read a book about a naughty, naughty marrionette, who then feels bad, only to be terribly naughty again. Stefan loves hearing about someone who is so badly behaved. “Read another chapter,” he says. All the chapters are really short, and have spoilers as chapter headings: “Pinocchio weeps upon learning that the Lovely Maiden with Azure Hair is dead. He meets a Pigeon, who carries him to the seashore. He throws himself into the sea to go to the aid of his father.” As Pinocchio says, “Mamma mia.”

  • Gifts from a far

    We got comfortable with our life here in Niger. The things we missed were kind of stored away somewhere to keep ourselves from craving and obsessing. And periodically, between net-grocer shipments, we think of something we should order but it often gets forgotten before the next order is placed.

    Rome was kind of a tug back in the sense that there were all those stimulating visuals and tastes. Gelato twice a day! Candy stores and pasta shops. Is that bacon cooking that I smell? I couldn’t finish my pizza and salad and had to ask for a box to take it back to the hotel to savor later. “You’re not Italian,” remarked the waiter.

    Coming back to Niamey was different. We still love it but oh how I miss that coffee! There certainly is a difference between a plate of Italian cookies vs a Nigerien wheel barrel mound full of green and red peppers. Both can be stimulating and overwhelm the senses. But I think you tend to miss the ones you can’t get.

    So it pleased me to the bone when I received my birthday care package from my loving family on Wednesday. I thought perhaps I might get a book or a CD (they know me well). But this delighted us all like Christmas! There were chocolates, dried fruits, boullion, organic pastas, cookies, and easter candies. There were two CD’s and not just a book, but books; some for the kids and 6 for me! We hadn’t expected these suppressed stimulants for at least another 2-3 months.

  • Scarlett and Steve, ’90 and ’89

    Hokies

    Can you imagine Peter and I hopping out of the car ready to have our giraffe picture taken with our Humboldt flag? Do we even have Humboldt flag? I am proud of my alma mater and happy that I went there, but I fell over laughing when these guys wanted me to take this picture last fall. Scarlett thought my business cards were maroon and orange because I’m a Hokies fan. I had to apologize for being a west-coaster, until I met these two, I was so out of it that I didn’t even know Virginia Tech existed, and in such a big way.

    I’m sorry now because everyone has heard of Virginia Tech, including the French parents at Camille and Stefan’s school who are expressing their condolences to me. And to all of us gun-toting Americans.

    If Steve and Scarlett are an example of the kind of person who comes out of VT, we just lost 32 intelligent, patriotic, honorable, fabulous human beings.

    Their other beautiful daughter has seen the giraffes so many times she stayed in the car to read a book. “We love you, even though you won’t get out of the car!” shouted Scarlett as I snapped the photo.

  • tree knows it’s spring

    Africa_blooms_3

    This tree lost all it’s leaves and now it’s come up with these flowers that look like lilies. I just love the way the bouganvilla has joined the party. When I starting taking pictures, all the little neighborhood kids ran up and wanted their picture taken.

    Kids

    Then I went to look at fabrics at the neighborhood of fabric stores, just a research trip. If you don’t like thrift stores, you may not like shopping here, it’s sort of a hunters paradise. I found lots of great gingham, but no dotted swiss, which I am dying for, or some kind embroidered white on white. When I tried to leave, a taxi had blocked my car from behind and I couldn’t move. Two guys came up, opened the taxi door, put the car in neutral and pushed the taxi out of the way for me. We all laughed. I hope it was okay, these situations make me feel a little weird, even though we had a good laugh over the whole thing, and they didn’t seem to expect anything, but I gave them a dollar.

  • bespoke

    Amina took me to her tailor’s shop today. The place has no name, unless it’s the only thing painted on the side of the small storage unit-like building: Overt 9:30-12:30.

    James, of Four Kinds of Hot, says one of the many difficult adjustments to Niamey is that when you see a store here, it just doesn’t click that what you are looking at is a store. My early, reptilian mind looks for the clues that tell me, “I can buy something there.” Clues like signage, a parking lot, a door; and not seeing any of these things my developed-world early brain decides there is nothing to buy and moves on.

    You know it’s a tailor because there are two guys sitting in a the small space, each at a beautifully old-fashioned treadle sewing machine. One guy has an electric Singer sitting on the same small table as the foot-powered one, almost on top of the other machine, if you could put one sewing machine on top of another. One guy is sewing beads onto a child’s tie-dyed shirt–huh? on these machines I think they should only be sewing clothes appropriate for Beatrix Potter– and another guy is doing a very nice job on a man’s dress shirt.

    I bought a ton of this great, almost vintage, probably vintage, brown gingham from the Netherlands at Big Boss–you know the owner is French because she waves you in the direction of what you are looking for with a hand trailing the smoke from her cigarette. Her place has a sign, a parking lot and a door, so I know it’s a store, by the way. So I gave the tailor the fabric and a shirt of Stefan’s to use as a pattern. Stefan is going to smell like he like smokes Marlboro lights.

    I haven’t gotten my Boden dress yet because they sent it to my pouch street address here, with all the city information for Portland. So I took some white with red dots fabric I got at the Grand Marche for like $3–I mean I bought yards and yards of it for $3, but I think everything should be either white with red dots or brown gingham right now, don’t you?–and the picture of the dress from the website. The guy took three measurements, told me this would all be roughly $12, and to come back next Wednesday. I can’t wait. I asked him if he could do the embroidery shown in the photo and he said yes, he has the right machine and he patted the treadle Singer.

  • easter egg hunt

    Hunters

    Easter_

    And don’t you love it that in a country that is 98% muslim, Easter Monday is a national holiday?

  • violetta

    Violetta_2

  • Roaming

    Family

    The medical conference lasted 5 days. We were recertified as BLS instructors and ACLS. I met a lot of people from various posts that I hadn’t met before. We connected with our friends and wandered around Rome looking at all the sites, wandering with the Sunday hordes down Via del Corso and eating pizza, pasta al pomodoro, grilled eggplant salads. But the real bonus was that MED released our bid list for 2008. Check it out!

    accra
    addis
    asmara
    astana
    bangkok
    beijing
    brasilia
    bucharest
    budapest
    chisinau
    havana
    kiev
    kigali
    lilongwe
    moscow
    pretoria
    quito
    sarajevo
    tirana
    tokyo
    yaounde
    yerevan

    Tomorrow we fly home to Niamey.

  • no place like rome

    The colossem. Candy shops. Melon and mint gelato on one cone?! Up and down and up and down and up and down the Spanish Steps. Camille ate ravioi in creme sauce twice and is now craving it on a regular basis.

    Peter’s conference keeps him busy while we spend half a day at the first toy store we’ve seen in seven months. We wandered the Villa Borghese with another family that Peter met last spring at orientation, they have been so gracious to tolerate us, especially Stefan the wild child. It’s like we came here with friends.

    We were looking at the photos outside a restaurant of the famous people that have eaten there, Sophia Lauren, George Cloony, Pope John Paul. The picture of the pope is one in which he is playing boules. Stefan said, “And there is a famous bowler!” I stole Atya’s joke and said, “Yes, but he’s better known for his other work.”

    Spanishstepsfountain

    We have also gotten a rough version of the bid list, listing 25 or so cities in the world, one of which we will be calling home in 2008.

  • roman holiday

    “What if lightening came in the hole?” asked Stefan as we all gaped at the circle of blue sky and shaft of light coming into the Pantheon. We can step outside and there is the whole sky, clear and blue; why is that circle of sky and shaft of light so awe-inspiring?

    The Romans don’t want to put away the furs, so they are still wearing coats. It’s not that cold, but a little chilly for Stefan to be in flip-flops, the only shoes we brought for him. I wanted to get him some 1930’s looking high-top t-straps, but he would not go for it. So his new shoes are more modern, they have a wing-tip design I like, and he says you can run as fast as Spiderman in them. So we are all happy.

    Now it’s teatime. We are back in the room, trying out the new chalkboard and markers and tiny parking lot for toy cars, waiting for Peter to get home and tell us about his day over pizza.

    Camille_roman_hotel