Kathy and I are in Beijing on the last day of our trip. Looking at this blog I realize that it has been 2 weeks since I posted, but I guess that means that we've been having a really good time and sitting down at a computer seemed too muck like work.
We managed to score tickets to last Monday's track and field events at the Bird's Nest, and had a great time sitting 18 rows up from the track and at about the 30 yard line (if there had been a football field). We had a great view of the women's pole vault competition where Elena Isinbaeva set a new world record and American Jennifer Stuczynski came in second. Note to all parents of young girls, if you want your child to be extremely fit and good looking to boot, I would encourage them to start pole vaulting. I'm not sure what it is but pole vaulters are hands down the most attractive athletes around. End of sexist remarks...
Anyway, I'll post the rest of the trip after we get home, I took a lot of pictures and we went to some great places (I cannot recommend Luang Prabang, Laos highly enough, the New York Times was right, it may be the best travel destination in the world (at least if you like bucolic, Laos doesn't exactly rock).
Speaking of bucolic, next stop, Luray.
Wednesday, August 20, 2008
Sunday, August 3, 2008
Halong Bay
Kathy and I took an overnight trip to Halong Bay, which is in the very north of Vietnam near the China border and is a very striking place, deserving of its place as a UNESCO world heritage site (What with the stone pillars, Lijiang, Halong Bay and other, not seen, sites, UNESCO seems to have been very busy here in Asia, apparently they kept working after Ronald Reagan tried to get rid of them).
Halong Bay is unique for thousands of limestone islands, kind of bigger versions of the stone pillars in China, that dot a large set of connected bays. Kathy and I cruised the bay for 2 days on a modern junk called the Halong Jasmine. Very nice with air conditioned cabins and great food, I'd highly recommend it if you find yourselves in Vietnam.
The first picture gives a sense of the bay.
The second shows our junk amidst a bunch of islands, we had climbed 400 feet up one of the islands to get an overview of the bay (as with China, tourism in Vietnam can be a bit more physically strenuous than the American equivalent).
Sunset as we were cruising to our night anchoring point, the boat in front is the sister ship to our junk.
Sunset over Halong Bay, a beer in my hand, a tropical rainstorm coming up from behind us, life can be nice.
Halong Bay is unique for thousands of limestone islands, kind of bigger versions of the stone pillars in China, that dot a large set of connected bays. Kathy and I cruised the bay for 2 days on a modern junk called the Halong Jasmine. Very nice with air conditioned cabins and great food, I'd highly recommend it if you find yourselves in Vietnam.
The first picture gives a sense of the bay.
The second shows our junk amidst a bunch of islands, we had climbed 400 feet up one of the islands to get an overview of the bay (as with China, tourism in Vietnam can be a bit more physically strenuous than the American equivalent).
Sunset as we were cruising to our night anchoring point, the boat in front is the sister ship to our junk.
Sunset over Halong Bay, a beer in my hand, a tropical rainstorm coming up from behind us, life can be nice.
More later...
Saturday, August 2, 2008
Hanoi
Kathy and I are back in Hanoi for a few hours before heading down to the beach town of Nha Trang. We spent the last two days taking a junk cruise on Halong Bay, but before I get to that I'll give you some pictures of Hanoi.
Hanoi is a nice combination of a modern Asian city (now 6.2 million people) with a somewhat slowed-down, French Colonial overlay. We stayed at the Metropole, first built in 1901 and a favorite haunt of Graham Greene, and it feels exactly like the sort of place that Graham Greene would have liked (albeit, now with air conditioning).
Hanoi is a city of motorbikes and bicycles, there are more and more cars, but still far fewer than most cities. This first picture captures the feel of the street, as a single woman bicyclist slowly moves as as scooters flash by.
The Vietnamese like to drink beer, and every afternoon at 5:00 PM open air draft beer parlors spring up on street corners. A draft of Bia Hanoi costs about 35 cents, and everybody sits around sweating lightly and drinking a good, and cold, beer. If the police comes all the tables are swept up and put inside, 5 minutes later all returns to normal. The kindergarten sized chairs just add to the ambience.
Some images are so graven into our minds that they seem almost trite. Cone hats and the double hanging baskets are deeply embedded into my memory, this picture needs Walter Cronkite's voice in the background telling us how the war is going.
All in all, Hanoi is a lovely city, I can see why it is Kathy's favorite city in the world, I could easily see living here (now we jsut need someone to offer us jobs here...). This is a picture looking across Hoan Kiem Lake towards the Old Quarter of Hanoi, a rabbit warren of little streets and shops, selling everything anyone could want.
Hanoi is a nice combination of a modern Asian city (now 6.2 million people) with a somewhat slowed-down, French Colonial overlay. We stayed at the Metropole, first built in 1901 and a favorite haunt of Graham Greene, and it feels exactly like the sort of place that Graham Greene would have liked (albeit, now with air conditioning).
Hanoi is a city of motorbikes and bicycles, there are more and more cars, but still far fewer than most cities. This first picture captures the feel of the street, as a single woman bicyclist slowly moves as as scooters flash by.
The Vietnamese like to drink beer, and every afternoon at 5:00 PM open air draft beer parlors spring up on street corners. A draft of Bia Hanoi costs about 35 cents, and everybody sits around sweating lightly and drinking a good, and cold, beer. If the police comes all the tables are swept up and put inside, 5 minutes later all returns to normal. The kindergarten sized chairs just add to the ambience.
Some images are so graven into our minds that they seem almost trite. Cone hats and the double hanging baskets are deeply embedded into my memory, this picture needs Walter Cronkite's voice in the background telling us how the war is going.
All in all, Hanoi is a lovely city, I can see why it is Kathy's favorite city in the world, I could easily see living here (now we jsut need someone to offer us jobs here...). This is a picture looking across Hoan Kiem Lake towards the Old Quarter of Hanoi, a rabbit warren of little streets and shops, selling everything anyone could want.
Wednesday, July 30, 2008
Lijiang
I've shown you kids and old ladies from Lijiang, so maybe it is time to give you a little sense of Lijiang. Lijiang is located at the tail end of the Himalayas where they sort of peter out on their eastern side, it is at about 8,000 feet altitude. It was hit by a large earthquake about 15 years ago which pretty much destroyed the town except for the old quarter where all the houses were built of wood and somehow managed to ride out the quake. At that point someone realized that old Lijiang was pretty cool and that maybe they should make some attempt to keep it around, an uncommon idea in China where almost all towns and cities are being rebuilt at a frenetic pace (I've read that 70% of all tall cranes and 50% of all the cement in the world are in China, and when you are there both estimates seem low).
Here is a peak into a courtyard in Lijiang, most of the houses are built around open courts.
It had a lively market, and when we walked in the first thing on display were copper pots. If it were easy to ship home 200 pounds of stuff from Lijiang I would probably be the proud owner of various copper woks, hot pots, and other stuff. As it was I just lusted...
These women were selling walnuts, the baskets are filled with whole, shelled walnuts. The women in the back with a cleaver (a very sharp cleaver) is taking off the outside shell with 4 precise whacks, something I would not have thought possible if I hadn't seen her do it about 20 times. Not one crushed walnut to be seen. The local restaurants served the walnuts lightly fried and sugared, they went great with beer.
This gives you an overview of old Lijiang (though I just realized that this is the part made out of stone and concrete, rebuilt after the quake to look just like it had before). The streets are narrow and no cars are allowed, it is sort of a non-watery, Chinese version of Venice, I guess. It is surrounded by snow-capped peaks (even in Summer, we're told, due to glaciers), but it was overcast the whole time we were there so we didn't get to see any peaks, we'll have to go back someday.
Here is a peak into a courtyard in Lijiang, most of the houses are built around open courts.
It had a lively market, and when we walked in the first thing on display were copper pots. If it were easy to ship home 200 pounds of stuff from Lijiang I would probably be the proud owner of various copper woks, hot pots, and other stuff. As it was I just lusted...
These women were selling walnuts, the baskets are filled with whole, shelled walnuts. The women in the back with a cleaver (a very sharp cleaver) is taking off the outside shell with 4 precise whacks, something I would not have thought possible if I hadn't seen her do it about 20 times. Not one crushed walnut to be seen. The local restaurants served the walnuts lightly fried and sugared, they went great with beer.
This gives you an overview of old Lijiang (though I just realized that this is the part made out of stone and concrete, rebuilt after the quake to look just like it had before). The streets are narrow and no cars are allowed, it is sort of a non-watery, Chinese version of Venice, I guess. It is surrounded by snow-capped peaks (even in Summer, we're told, due to glaciers), but it was overcast the whole time we were there so we didn't get to see any peaks, we'll have to go back someday.
Old Ladies in Lijiang
Well, we're 3 days into Hanoi and I'm still blogging about China, the good news is that I'm not spending much time in front of my computer, which sort of equates to work in my head, so I must be on vacation.
Anyway, to accompany the pictures of kids, here are some pictures of old ladies. The first women was carefully picking out which vegetables to buy, older men and women clearly spent more time doing this than younger customers.
This women was selling live fish and eels of various sorts, and was doing a lively business.
This woman was walking so determinedly through the market that I had to take her picture, even if only in profile. She was wearing a bandanna-like face mask over her face to protect her from pollution, a common site in China (though there was no pollution to speak of in Lijiang).
This was another common site, 2 women (or men) walking slowly together doing their morning errands. They are walking in what I think of as the distinctive Chinese style (at least for older Chinese) with their hands clasped behind their backs. Kathy and I could crack up our colleagues just by imitating this slow-gaited walk.
Anyway, to accompany the pictures of kids, here are some pictures of old ladies. The first women was carefully picking out which vegetables to buy, older men and women clearly spent more time doing this than younger customers.
This women was selling live fish and eels of various sorts, and was doing a lively business.
This woman was walking so determinedly through the market that I had to take her picture, even if only in profile. She was wearing a bandanna-like face mask over her face to protect her from pollution, a common site in China (though there was no pollution to speak of in Lijiang).
This was another common site, 2 women (or men) walking slowly together doing their morning errands. They are walking in what I think of as the distinctive Chinese style (at least for older Chinese) with their hands clasped behind their backs. Kathy and I could crack up our colleagues just by imitating this slow-gaited walk.
Monday, July 28, 2008
Kids in Lijiang
Kathy is big on me taking pictures of either kids or old people, not sure what this says about her, but it makes for some good pictures. We spent two days in the mountain town of Lijiang (of which more later), and here are some pictures of kids.
These three were on some sort of school assignment where they were asking tourists (both Chinese and non-Chinese) to write their names down in a notebook. A young teacher was silently following them around as they did it. No explanation was given for the military dress. The boy in the middle was quite happy until the moment the photo was taken, I was quite surprised out the outcome.
These kids were in class learning to write, a quite complicated task in China given the thousands of characters one needs to learn.
This was the very happy child of a vegetable vendor in the market.
Another market vendor's child, he is already learning how to go to work picking up garbage.
These three were on some sort of school assignment where they were asking tourists (both Chinese and non-Chinese) to write their names down in a notebook. A young teacher was silently following them around as they did it. No explanation was given for the military dress. The boy in the middle was quite happy until the moment the photo was taken, I was quite surprised out the outcome.
These kids were in class learning to write, a quite complicated task in China given the thousands of characters one needs to learn.
This was the very happy child of a vegetable vendor in the market.
Another market vendor's child, he is already learning how to go to work picking up garbage.
Odds and Ends
As you can see, I've been fiddling a bit with the layout of the blog, and I found a layout that uses the full screen width, which I like better than the narrower layout I was using, so, thanks to Google Bloggger, presto, a new look.
Another impressive part of Blogger is that it appears to be adapted to half of the languages known to man. When I was in China all of the instructions appeared as Chinese ideograms, and here in Hanoi they appear in Thai, luckily I've learned that if I hit the uppermost right hand corner it sends me back to post in our blog with English back as the primary language. Truly revolutionary I think, when people the world round can easily post their whims and ideas into a free market of thought. I wonder when they will get a Burmese version out...
Speaking of language, you haven't experienced language until you've read Chinglish, the literal translations that the Chinese use on signs all over China. Some examples:
"Beware of the landslide" - beneath a stick drawing of a man slipping on a wet floor (I mean, I know I'm a bit overweight, but a landslide?)
"Warm and Fragrant Hint" - the phrase frequently used before any behavioral request, like "Don't grind out your cigarette butts in the carpet"
"Baoshan Airport Chagning" - I think they met "changing", and were using it as we would use "exit". But this is pretty surprising considering that the freeway it was on was one of the most amazing feats of engineering I have ever seen, miles and miles of concrete cantilevered off of the side of near cliff faces, essentially bridges. Untold tens of millions of dollars (or hundreds of millions of Renmibi) to build the road and 50 cents for the sign translations.
"Genitl Emen" - signaling the way to a male toilet
Speaking of toilets... China may be booming and halfway to taking over the world, but they have to be close to dead last in toilet facilities. It is absolutely amazing how foul the average Chinese toilet manages to get over the course of time, say a day or so. I suppose it has something to do with their fondness for "night soil", i.e. fecal waste has been used a fertilizer in China for centuries. So they don't believe in pit latrines, your average rural Chinese toilet just rolls the waste out the back for easy collection by local farmers. And they still have a strong preference for squatting over sitting, so even modern sit down flush toilets tend to be disgusting because many of the people that preceded you squatted on the rim instead of sitting down.
I figured you would all want to know, remember, I wrote a page and half about Moroccan bathrooms in one of our Christmas letters a while back. It seems that toilets are something I keep track of. And you readers reap the benefits...
Another impressive part of Blogger is that it appears to be adapted to half of the languages known to man. When I was in China all of the instructions appeared as Chinese ideograms, and here in Hanoi they appear in Thai, luckily I've learned that if I hit the uppermost right hand corner it sends me back to post in our blog with English back as the primary language. Truly revolutionary I think, when people the world round can easily post their whims and ideas into a free market of thought. I wonder when they will get a Burmese version out...
Speaking of language, you haven't experienced language until you've read Chinglish, the literal translations that the Chinese use on signs all over China. Some examples:
"Beware of the landslide" - beneath a stick drawing of a man slipping on a wet floor (I mean, I know I'm a bit overweight, but a landslide?)
"Warm and Fragrant Hint" - the phrase frequently used before any behavioral request, like "Don't grind out your cigarette butts in the carpet"
"Baoshan Airport Chagning" - I think they met "changing", and were using it as we would use "exit". But this is pretty surprising considering that the freeway it was on was one of the most amazing feats of engineering I have ever seen, miles and miles of concrete cantilevered off of the side of near cliff faces, essentially bridges. Untold tens of millions of dollars (or hundreds of millions of Renmibi) to build the road and 50 cents for the sign translations.
"Genitl Emen" - signaling the way to a male toilet
Speaking of toilets... China may be booming and halfway to taking over the world, but they have to be close to dead last in toilet facilities. It is absolutely amazing how foul the average Chinese toilet manages to get over the course of time, say a day or so. I suppose it has something to do with their fondness for "night soil", i.e. fecal waste has been used a fertilizer in China for centuries. So they don't believe in pit latrines, your average rural Chinese toilet just rolls the waste out the back for easy collection by local farmers. And they still have a strong preference for squatting over sitting, so even modern sit down flush toilets tend to be disgusting because many of the people that preceded you squatted on the rim instead of sitting down.
I figured you would all want to know, remember, I wrote a page and half about Moroccan bathrooms in one of our Christmas letters a while back. It seems that toilets are something I keep track of. And you readers reap the benefits...
Sunday, July 27, 2008
The "Stone Forest"
It has been a while since we've posted, and we're now in Hanoi, but I am going to try and catch us up over the next 24 hours or so. Last Monday we traveled from Kunming to Mi Le for a retreat, and we just happened to drive by the biggest tourist attraction in Yunnan Province, the UNESCO-anointed natural wonder of the world, the Stone Forest. The Chinese are really into being tourists, and they like natural stuff, so the Stone Forest is a big winner. It was as crowded as Disneyland, which you can tell from the picture below if you look closely at how many people are crowded onto the observation tower/pagoda.
The Chinese make Americans look like slugs when it comes to getting around such sites, this one was laid out in a way that it was about a 2 mile walk (minimum) to get around it, and that involved walking up and down hundreds of stone stairs. And everybody does it, teenagers (much less jaded than their American counterparts), ladies in high heels, really old grandmothers and grandfathers, I mean, everybody. Pretty impressive. The forest was formed by water eroding the limestone at different speeds, the following picture shows a pillar that had an official name (I forget what, something poetic) but it caused a lot of snickers and chuckles and everybody took a picture, because it doesn't really take a poet to figure out what it really looks like.
And more pillars, this was a big place, probably a mile square. The surrounding countryside was covered with smaller pillars, but for some reason they were really concentrated in this one area, much to the delight of thousands of Chinese tourists.
Tomorrow, Lijiang.
Saturday, July 19, 2008
On the Road in Dehong and Tenchong Prefecture
Our first week in China was spent on a field trip with the Yunnan AIDS Care Center, the group that we fund to do PMTCT (Prevention of Maternal to Child Transmission of HIV) work in 6 counties in Yunnan Province hard up on the border with Myanmar.
This first picture shows us all in Luxi, the Prefecture seat of Dehong. The group includes those of us that flew in from Kunming and local representatives from the MCH and General hospitals. The director of the Yunnan AIDS Care Center, Dr. Zhou, is two people to the left of me. His wife, Dr. Chen, is in the red shirt over my shoulder.
This first picture shows us all in Luxi, the Prefecture seat of Dehong. The group includes those of us that flew in from Kunming and local representatives from the MCH and General hospitals. The director of the Yunnan AIDS Care Center, Dr. Zhou, is two people to the left of me. His wife, Dr. Chen, is in the red shirt over my shoulder.
The Chinese are really into cheesy touristy stuff. We had dinner in a Dai restaurant (an ethnic minority that lives in this area) and they hauled everybody up to dance afterwards. Here our translator, Haoyu, cuts the rug.
Just to show that we do some real work, at least some of the time, this is a support group for AIDS and intravenous drug user (IDU) orphans. Most are living with their grandparents and the local village doctor brought them together so that they would see that they weren't alone. They learn to sing and dance, and do various handicrafts when they meet. The girl int he middle (in the yellow jacket with blue and white trim) is HIV positive and has been on ARVs for the past 2 years. She never stopped smiling and laughing, it really puts one's own problems in perspective.
This is the same group of girls dressed in Ching-Po ethnic clothing for a village HIV Awareness Festival later that evening. 6 or 7 dance groups performed, interspersed with educational messages and some singers, two of which were reformed IDUs singing about how one shouldn't use drugs (they looked pretty beaten down, even while singing, it was probably a pretty effective message).
The two counties we visited are right next to the Myanmar border so a lot of heroin passes over as it is smuggled to the China coast to spread around the world. Enough falls off the trucks to lead to a lot of heroin addicts which is what initially drove the HIV epidemic here, the scary part is that the epidemic is now spreading into the general population.
That's all for now, we're off to dinner. There are more picture posted at http://picasaweb.google.com/cgrundmann/DehongFieldVisit/
That's all for now, we're off to dinner. There are more picture posted at http://picasaweb.google.com/cgrundmann/DehongFieldVisit/
Sunday, July 13, 2008
Sunday photos from Kunming
Kathy and I took a stroll in the neighborhood around our hotel this morning to shake off jet lag. So here are some scenes of Kunming, the capital of Yunnan Province in Southwest China.
The local market a couple of blocks from our hotel. Sort of hidden behind the man talking to the vendor you can just see the legs of the local delicacy, black chicken, Mmm, we're going to be eating a lot of that over the next couple of weeks, the guest of honor always gets to eat the best part, the head and the feet...
We strolled through Kunming University, a rather idyllic setting.
From the university we walked over to Green Lake, along with thousands of Kunming residents out for their Sunday constitutionals. This photo is looking back towards our hotel, which is the building with the sort of flying sauce bar on the top.
And what would a Chinese park be without a group of people doing Tai Chi? What I have never figured out that is Tai Chi seems to be practiced solely by people over the age of 60, but everybody seems to know how to do it (this group was all moving together). Where and when do people learn Tai Chi?
So we'll be blogging away fairly regularly on this trip. We leave in a few hours for Luxi, the capital of Dehong prefecture. I'll take photos every day, and we'll post when we have an internet connection.
The local market a couple of blocks from our hotel. Sort of hidden behind the man talking to the vendor you can just see the legs of the local delicacy, black chicken, Mmm, we're going to be eating a lot of that over the next couple of weeks, the guest of honor always gets to eat the best part, the head and the feet...
We strolled through Kunming University, a rather idyllic setting.
From the university we walked over to Green Lake, along with thousands of Kunming residents out for their Sunday constitutionals. This photo is looking back towards our hotel, which is the building with the sort of flying sauce bar on the top.
And what would a Chinese park be without a group of people doing Tai Chi? What I have never figured out that is Tai Chi seems to be practiced solely by people over the age of 60, but everybody seems to know how to do it (this group was all moving together). Where and when do people learn Tai Chi?
So we'll be blogging away fairly regularly on this trip. We leave in a few hours for Luxi, the capital of Dehong prefecture. I'll take photos every day, and we'll post when we have an internet connection.
Saturday, April 12, 2008
Health Center in Assueme, Cote d'Ivoire
Friends and relatives have been known to ask what I do when I travel to countries such as Cote d'Ivoire. A lot of what I do can be pretty boring and revolves around the managerial and administrative aspects of keeping a large project moving forward (our HIV/AIDS program in CI is funded at about $15,000,000 a year, so it involves quite a bit of management to function, of which I contribute a bit, mostly the sort of higher level "are we going in the direction we wanted to go" sort.
But I also do things that are closer to where the real purpose of the work lies. The photo above is of a health center in norther Cote d'Ivoire right on the Ghanaian border. Kathy and I went there to see how they were doing implementing a Prevention of Mother to Child Transmission (PMTCT) of HIV program jointly supported by Elizabeth Glaser and PATH (you can see the shiny new EGPAF car we drove up in). The site is run by a nurse-midwife who has a staff of 5 others ranging from nurses to a janitor. Not shown in the picture are two small houses to the right where the nurse-midwife and one of the nurses (male, older) live.
The site has running water and electricity and even, somewhat surprisingly, air conditioning (it was close to 100 degrees outside when this picture was taken). 30 women a month start prenatal care here and they each come in 3-4 times before they deliver. 15 or so deliver in this site each month. This number is lower than the prenatal care number because this site, located in a small village, draws some prenatal care clients from a larger town 6 miles away, and women from that town who go into labor in the middle of the night (as women are wont to do), cannot get transportation at that time out to this site, so they deliver in town at the local hospital.
All in all this was an impressive little health center: the staff was interested in expanding their services; the programs that we support were running well; they were eager for any advice that we could give them; and, they were committed to their patients. I wouldn't be surprised that if over the next year they didn't end up offering treatment services as well as PMTCT.
Tuesday, April 1, 2008
Uppity Children
Nico's post (below) goes to show what happens when you raise children to think for themselves. Mostly you get good, occasionally you get snide.
Kathy and I have been in rainy Abidjan for all of 3.5 hours now, we flew in circles over the center of Cote d'Ivoire for an hour before landing to avoid what was apparently one big thunderstorm. We watched the movie Juno flying down from Paris, it was a sweet movie with great music. You have to give Michael Cera props for being very good in two very good movies this past year - SuperBad and Juno.
More on Cote d'Ivoire later.
Kathy and I have been in rainy Abidjan for all of 3.5 hours now, we flew in circles over the center of Cote d'Ivoire for an hour before landing to avoid what was apparently one big thunderstorm. We watched the movie Juno flying down from Paris, it was a sweet movie with great music. You have to give Michael Cera props for being very good in two very good movies this past year - SuperBad and Juno.
More on Cote d'Ivoire later.
Wednesday, February 27, 2008
Blogging our life
Kathy, Nico, Stefan and I all lead pretty interesting lives, and friends have been known to ask me "Where are you living now". So I figured if we had a blog, everyone who cared could know where we are living now. And what we're doing, and what our favorite movies are, and who knows what else...
To elaborate, Kathy and I are living in our house in Luray, Virginia in the heart of the Shenandoah Valley, and commuting in to D.C. 3 days a week when we're not traveling to far-flung countries for work. Nico is living for a year in Gaborone, Botswana, working for the Harvard AIDS Institute before going off to medical school (accepted at Stanford, waiting to here from a couple of others). Stefan has just finished a quarter at the University of Sydney and is traveling up the East Coast of Australia on vacation before returning to Dartmouth next month in (hopefully less than utterly and completely freezing) Hanover, New Hampshire.
Even I, who lives this life, must admit it looks rather exotic when put on paper (or screen, or whatever). Funny that it doesn't seem so exotic living it.
"Wherever you go, there you are."
My favorite Zen saying.
To elaborate, Kathy and I are living in our house in Luray, Virginia in the heart of the Shenandoah Valley, and commuting in to D.C. 3 days a week when we're not traveling to far-flung countries for work. Nico is living for a year in Gaborone, Botswana, working for the Harvard AIDS Institute before going off to medical school (accepted at Stanford, waiting to here from a couple of others). Stefan has just finished a quarter at the University of Sydney and is traveling up the East Coast of Australia on vacation before returning to Dartmouth next month in (hopefully less than utterly and completely freezing) Hanover, New Hampshire.
Even I, who lives this life, must admit it looks rather exotic when put on paper (or screen, or whatever). Funny that it doesn't seem so exotic living it.
"Wherever you go, there you are."
My favorite Zen saying.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
