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

place2place

  • 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

  • From 104 – 35.6 degrees fahrenheit

    My week leading up to our departure for Rome was quite stressful. I don’t know if it was all the preparation with finishing up a lot of small projects, a conflict with a colleague, or a patient who had an unexpected outcome and I had to Medevac out to London that made it so sleepless. Plus our dear friends are leaving for Hawaii. He’s coming back but Sirianna and Eila won’t be so we had our last get together before we rushed home to pack and catch the flight. We all refused to cry because we know we’re friends for life and nothing could ever change that (but I did fight back a few tears except for one which fell into my wine glass when no one was looking ). Oh! And I had to go get my haircut as well.

    The plane left at 12:35AM and I was exhausted. Still, I had trouble sleeping on the plane. I reach a point after about 3 hours where it feels like my neck muscles have given up after all those head jerks and there is no position for relief. At 2AM I was vaguely aware of Camille eating the dinner they brought. At 3:15AM my neck snapped and I opened my eyes, only to see her laughing with a set of head phones on watching old cartoons. We landed in Paris on schedule but they couldn’t get the catwalk to work so we sat and waited on the plane for over an hour before they finally got some stairs. People were standing in the isles and they kept announcing, “Ladies and gentlemen, we apologize but we have a broken finger.” You can imagine where my mind went and the joke I made with that a la Gene Garson style. We missed the connecting flight to Rome. They rescheduled us for a 9:40 flight but since it’s Paris, we really didn’t mind; a magazine stand, a croissant and coffee, a beer? Why not? Everyone else is having one!

    Then we get onto the flight to Rome. There is a strange and menacing vibration and drilling sound heard from under the plane. The plane heads for the runway with frequent lurching stops (no relief to my poorly recovering neck). “Ladies and gentlemen, we unfortunately have a problem with our brakes and will have to return to the terminal. Thank you for your understanding.” Then, after a few more lurches, “We have reset our computer braking system and have rectified the problem so we will procede to take off.” Still a bronco ride while taxiing followed by an announcement that they are changing the braking system computer. “Thank you for understanding.” We sat just off the runway while they worked on the problem. Then, “Ladies and gentlemen, this is your captain speaking. I apologize for my premature optimism. We still have a braking problem and will have to return to the terminal. Thank you for your understanding.” Fine with me! After the first announcement, I had already written down “Problem with braking system! Pilot given the go ahead for take off anyway!” on the air sickness bag in case we were found and there was an investigation. At least the family back home could get a few mil.

    We stopped halfway back to the terminal, waited 20 minutes for a bus which took half the passengers back while the rest of us waited another 20 minutes for the bus to return. Back in the terminal there was chaos since nobody knew where to go or when to expect the next plane. Finally, they got us back onto the bus and delivered us back to what could have been the very same aircraft we had just gotten off of.

    We arrived in Rome at 4:30 PM. Our cab driver out raced all the other cabs for the hole shot and managed to write down some recommended “tipoco” Roman restaurantes that where not tourist traps while skillfully driving 100 miles an hour on a tight curvey highway. The drive in through the city was beautiful, right past the colloseum and all the antiquity. The hotel is beautiful. There was shocking news that it is against the law to have more than 3 people in a room (who passed that law I wonder?) and that we need to pay for an extra room but we negotiated and they compromized so we have to pay an obscene extra euros a night for an extra bed they brought to our room. Aren’t we lucky?

    Things quickly became better after our doorman directed us to a very nice Pizzaria just a 5 minute walk from the hotel “Il Pomodorino.” A brick oven pizza was ready in 10 minutes! And what a pizza! Why does it take so long to get a pizza in Niamey? Dina had a salad where they walk with her and she points out from all the different salads what she wants and they put generous portions on the plate and serve it to her with a fine wine and San Peligrino water of course. My sausage gorgonzolla pizza was unbelievably delicious. A fine meal. Kids are happy. We’re all happy. Just a short walk in the cold night back to our room. Ahhhhh!

  • american ladle: week 2

    Leopold is having a panic attack: his friend from Ghana hasn’t gotten here yet, so he doesn’t have anyone to help him in the snack bar who speaks English. I called around and found two people who might be able to help him, two women who worked at the snack bar in the past. One of them has a job only working on the weekends, and she is looking for other work, so it’s sounding hopeful.

    And! One of the three competitors for the snack bar prize has dropped out. Jul, who was suppose to have his debut this week, resigned before he even began. We gave Leopold so much advice this weekend I’m sure he’d like to do the same thing.