In The Bedroom

Having a Van Gogh-of-a-good time with Nana on Museumplein yesterday.

Hotel Rwanda

And he's off!!

Doug departed for Rwanda five days ago to begin a month-long solo volunteer trip.  It's a country for which he has great affection; one where he's always hoped to spend more time with the people and to contribute in way that is meaningful on the ground. It's an opportunity that came up recently as a result of some professional changes that I wrote about back in September. 

Of course Abby, Reese, and I will miss him greatly, but we're also excited for Doug and the valuable ways in which he can share this experience our kids.

However, I'm not sure we thought it meant lounging by the pool with this amazing view!

We like to give him trouble, but Doug has worked tirelessly in the past few months to connect with various organizations and plug into existing aid and humanitarian projects.  The hotel pictured above is Hotel Rwanda, made famous in the mid-90's when the hotelier tried to hide and save fellow citizens in the hotel during the Rwandan Genocide when approximately 1 million people were killed during a 100-day period.  If you've never seen the 2004 movie depicting these events, it is well worth the watch.  Here's the link:  Hotel Rwanda.

Doug stayed at Hotel Rwanda for his first few days before finding a bedroom in a group house in the capital city of Kigali, which he will be his home base over the next few weeks.

We get a lot of questions about Ebola in this area of Africa, and certainly we are not cavalier about the risks. 

But, as you can see from this map, Rwanda is on the other side of the continent from West Africa, the area of acute outbreak.

Below are some photos from Doug's first trip to Rwanda about two years ago.  During the trip, Doug's team visited coffee farms that supply coffee to Starbucks and built a medical clinic in the village.

Bubbles.  Simple, but a real treat for these kids.

Doug visited during the 20th anniversary of the Genocide:

Masters of Disguise

I love this construction barricade.  It's around the corner from our house where the tram tracks and underground piping are being replaced. It gives new meaning to a neighborhood night watch.

Date Day

Simon Pearce Mill in Quechee, Vermont.

Ah, Fill the Cup

The first stop on our grand US Tour was in New Hampshire to visit my grandmother--Abby and Reese's only living great grandparent.  To me, she's Nana; to my kids she's Nana Kay.  Nana Kay is 88 and still doing . . . pretty great (that all rhymes!).

I wrote about her last year when we took a two-week trip around Wales where Nana grew up.  It was my first time.  She came to the US in her 20's, after WWII, to marry an American soldier who had been stationed in Wales/England.  My grandfather passed away when I was a baby, and Nana has been living on her own ever since.  She has a tight community of English friends and fellow Anglophiles and spends a lot of time with her church.

I remember visiting her as a child and thinking she always decorated her home with such purpose.  She has the expected British bric o brac, but what always stuck with me was the smell of Pears Soap and the paintings of city street scenes that she had acquired over the years.

It was comforting to return.

Of course, Nana (my mom) and Papa O joined us, because they-we would have it no other way.  :-)





 A new teapot for her collection . . . Delft, of course:

There was lots of Uno (of course) and Monopoly.

And my mom sweetly continued my birthday celebration with a special dinner, cupcakes, and a present . . . a date day with Doug.

I spy a Nana who adores her grandkids!

  And most especially, we maintained a tradition with Nana Kay at the Lobster Boat:

My Nana and I talk a lot about books.  She reads a lot.  I read a lot.  This visit, she was reading the poems of a 12-century Persian monk that the pastor of her church had given her.  Her reading material isn't usually so esoteric, but even so, it's not so hard to appreciate her favorite passage from this collection:

Ah, fill the Cup, what boots it to repeat

How Time is slipping underneath our Feet

Unborn Tomorrow and dead Yesterday

Why fret about them if Today be sweet!

These 900 year old words are made all the more meaningful this week because my grandmother fell while voting in the mid-term elections on Tuesday.  She will be fine, and she didn't break any bones.  But she spent the day in the hospital and is rather banged up.  

Life is fragile, indeed.  For all my loved ones, let's see each other as much as we can, and laugh as much as we can.  You and me.