I have now seen the video from which the picture below was grabbed. On the video it does not seem as if Obama was checking out the girl, who is apparently the daughter of the Brazilian President, instead he is turning back to help Michele down the step.
However, in the video Sarkozy practically bends over backwards to follow the girl's path. It is truly comical, obviously the French have absolutely no shame about being caught checking out someone. If Obama had done what Sarkozy did he would probably be in the middle of getting impeached, I wonder if the story even ran in France?
Friday, July 17, 2009
Friday, July 10, 2009
On a completely different note
Isn't the look on Sarkozy's face hilarious? Given the positioning of the various bodies he was no doubt checking out the same girl and then his eyes come across Obama, and he gets a perfect Gallic "aha" look on his face. I can just hear the conversation tonight around the Sarkozy-Bruni dining room table, "See, Carla, he is not perfect, he is human, just like all of us (imperfect men)."
That last part in brackets would only be implied, it is so understood that it never has to said out loud :-)
Sunday, July 5, 2009
Anthony's and Sidonie's Marriage Day
The reason we all went to Abidjan was for the wedding of my friend and colleague Anthony Tanoh to Sidonie, his partner of 10 years. The concept of Ivoirian weddings are a bit different that the American theory. Most couples in Côte d’Ivoire don't go through any marriage process at all, and for most people this lasts for the entirety of their time together (which would become common law marruage in the States, but apparently there is no equivalent in Côte d’Ivoire). The decision to get married in Côte d’Ivoire comes after couples have been together for quite a while, and they usually have children. Getting married symbolises that the couple intends to stay together forever, separating is no longer on the table. While in theory this is also the idea of marriage in the States the fact that roughly 1/2 of marriages end in divorce tends to obviate the theory.
My favorite quotation about life in general (this is probably related to the work I have chosen to do in life) is attributed to Albert Einstein: "In theory, theory and practice are the same. In practice, they are not." American marriage is theory, Ivoirian marriage is practice.
So our family went to Côte d’Ivoire to witness Anthony and Sidonie announce to society that they were going to stay together through thick and thin. Anthony and Sidonie had named their third child "Christophe," which we initially took to be more of less the equivalent of being named a godfather in American terms (an honor with few obligations), but which we learned is far more symbolic in Ivoirian culture. In essence the formal naming of a child after a friend in Côte d’Ivoire bonds the two families together for life. This became clear a few years ago when Christophe was born and, in both formal and non-formal settings, we began to meet more and more members of Anthony's extended family. In the picture below Anthony and Sidonie are getting ready to pose for wedding pictures, their 3 children (in descending age), Henri- known as "Junior", Yann, and Christophe are to Anthony's right (the flower girls in green dresses are all relatives, but not the children of Anthony and Sidonie).
The wedding day had 3 main components: a civil service overseen by the mayor of Cocody, Abidjan; a religious ceremony at an Episcopalian Church (Anthony's family are Protestants, Sidonie's family is Roman Catholic, the Protestant's won out); and a dinner reception for about 500 people on the grounds of the National Library. I will put together a brief movie of all of this for a future post, these pictures were taken off of the video footage. The above picture was taken on the banks of the Abidjan lagoon between the civil service and the religious service, the picture below of Stefan below was taken at the same time, he is doing his best Leo DeCaprio impersonation (I just watched a $1.50 bootleg copy of "Body of Lies" last night, I'm not kidding, check it out, he just needs a Brazilian Supermodel girlfriend). Brooks Brother suit compliments of a doting mother...
From here we went to the church, which thankfully had many ceiling fans, as spending a full day outdoors in Abidjan in a tie and suit was an idea that had never previously crossed my mind as something one might consider reasonable. Luckily, it was abnormally cool the week we were there. Here is a picture of Anthony and Sidonie at the front of the church during the middle of the ceremony.
From the Church we went to the dinner. Kathy and I had been the witnesses to the Civil Ceremony, two other friends were witnesses to the religious service, interestingly, each pair of witnesses got premier seating at the dinner. The two people we would consider "Best Man" and "Maid of Honor" sat out of sight behind the dais, their roles were much more support than honor. Below is a picture of our two boys at dinner, we were finally allowed to jettison our jackets, though I am proud to say that they sucked it up until I went first (I'm obviously a bit biased in my picture choices...).
I'm not sure that I've exactly covered the day, but I'm running out of gas and it is past dinnertime, so this is what you're getting for today. Best to all.
My favorite quotation about life in general (this is probably related to the work I have chosen to do in life) is attributed to Albert Einstein: "In theory, theory and practice are the same. In practice, they are not." American marriage is theory, Ivoirian marriage is practice.
So our family went to Côte d’Ivoire to witness Anthony and Sidonie announce to society that they were going to stay together through thick and thin. Anthony and Sidonie had named their third child "Christophe," which we initially took to be more of less the equivalent of being named a godfather in American terms (an honor with few obligations), but which we learned is far more symbolic in Ivoirian culture. In essence the formal naming of a child after a friend in Côte d’Ivoire bonds the two families together for life. This became clear a few years ago when Christophe was born and, in both formal and non-formal settings, we began to meet more and more members of Anthony's extended family. In the picture below Anthony and Sidonie are getting ready to pose for wedding pictures, their 3 children (in descending age), Henri- known as "Junior", Yann, and Christophe are to Anthony's right (the flower girls in green dresses are all relatives, but not the children of Anthony and Sidonie).
The wedding day had 3 main components: a civil service overseen by the mayor of Cocody, Abidjan; a religious ceremony at an Episcopalian Church (Anthony's family are Protestants, Sidonie's family is Roman Catholic, the Protestant's won out); and a dinner reception for about 500 people on the grounds of the National Library. I will put together a brief movie of all of this for a future post, these pictures were taken off of the video footage. The above picture was taken on the banks of the Abidjan lagoon between the civil service and the religious service, the picture below of Stefan below was taken at the same time, he is doing his best Leo DeCaprio impersonation (I just watched a $1.50 bootleg copy of "Body of Lies" last night, I'm not kidding, check it out, he just needs a Brazilian Supermodel girlfriend). Brooks Brother suit compliments of a doting mother...
From here we went to the church, which thankfully had many ceiling fans, as spending a full day outdoors in Abidjan in a tie and suit was an idea that had never previously crossed my mind as something one might consider reasonable. Luckily, it was abnormally cool the week we were there. Here is a picture of Anthony and Sidonie at the front of the church during the middle of the ceremony.
From the Church we went to the dinner. Kathy and I had been the witnesses to the Civil Ceremony, two other friends were witnesses to the religious service, interestingly, each pair of witnesses got premier seating at the dinner. The two people we would consider "Best Man" and "Maid of Honor" sat out of sight behind the dais, their roles were much more support than honor. Below is a picture of our two boys at dinner, we were finally allowed to jettison our jackets, though I am proud to say that they sucked it up until I went first (I'm obviously a bit biased in my picture choices...).
I'm not sure that I've exactly covered the day, but I'm running out of gas and it is past dinnertime, so this is what you're getting for today. Best to all.
Saturday, July 4, 2009
Back in Phnom Penh
The Krasovec Grundmann clan is now back to being spread out all over the world again after having spent last week together in Abidjan for the marriage of our friends Anthony and Sidonie Tanoh. This holiday weekend (it never feels much like Independence Day outside of the States) finds Kathy in Bamenda, Cameroon doing some work for EGPAF and the Cameroon Baptist Convention Health Board; Nico slumming around Bangkok at the start of his 7 week S.E. Asian adventure with his friend Max; Stefan in Washington, D.C. starting work at FINCA (a micro-finance organization); and me sweating lightly under a fan here in PP.
I have mentioned before that Cambodia is quite hot, but that we've seemingly adapted to it faster than I would have expected. This was reinforced during out trip to Abidjan. I've been to Cote d'Ivoire a couple of dozen times and not once did I ever think that it was anything but hot. On this trip it seemed almost cool. Admittedly, it rained almost every day, but it does here in PP as well. Unless it was a freakishly cool period in Ivoirian climate history (which nobody alluded to) the only conclusion can be is that it is really, really hot in Cambodia...
Our trip to Cote d'Ivoire was also interesting for a completely different reason. For the whole time I worked in CI Americans did not need visas. So we assumed Americans still didn't need visas. Bad assumption. Kathy, Nico and I all arrived in Abidjan on the same flight and were met at the gate by a friend of Anthony's. As we approached Immigration we were joined by another friend of Anthony's, who turned out to be the head of the Airport Police Division. He asked for our passports to jump the lines waiting for their passports to be stamped (VIP service, in other words). He casually mentioned that we must have visas. After 3 minutes of discussion where we made clear that we did not have visas, he made a snap decision and walked us right by all of the immigration officials, waving them off and telling them that "we'd be back". Which, of course, was not true. So we ended up in CI for a week illegally without visas.
The problem was that Stefan was arriving 24 hours later and would face the same problem. So we called him and caught him in the Atlanta airport between the first and second of the 3 flights that he was taking to get to Abidjan. We told him that he would be met at the plane and whisked through immigration. Both the friend and the policeman said that they would meet Stefan the next night. But for some reason I had a bad feeling...
So, 30 hours later we were waiting for Stefan at the airport as the Air France flight came through immigration and customs. No Stefan. Then a policeman arrived and asked us what Stefan looked like, which didn't seem like a very good sign. Turns out that the Police Chief had taken ill, and that the friend had decided to watch the Cote d'Ivoire-Burkina Faso soccer game rather than go to the airport. Stefan had found himself at immigration without a visa, had turned to the closest policeman for help when the Immigration Officer started shouting at him in French, and soon found himself being marched over to the departure wing to be put right back on the Air France flight out of CI. He had the presence of mind to argue enough with the policemen that his parents were awaiting for him and they let him come out front to see us (otherwise he would have just been whisked around in back and we would never have known what was happening).
Anthony arrived on the run and, 3 hours and a whole bunch of phone calls later, we all left the airport together. The sick Police Chief had ordered him off of the plane (over the phone from his sick bed), but the police who had ordered him on the plane refused to officially reverse their decision, so we had to wait for a shift change before he got the paperwork that let him into the country. The irony was that in the end Stefan was the only one who got a visa, and Nico, Kathy and I had to be escorted back through departure Immigration by the police chief to get out of the country. So we went all week without visas, which was a little stressful because there is always a small risk of getting pulled over at a police stop.
In the end we got some stress and Stefan got a story for life.
I have mentioned before that Cambodia is quite hot, but that we've seemingly adapted to it faster than I would have expected. This was reinforced during out trip to Abidjan. I've been to Cote d'Ivoire a couple of dozen times and not once did I ever think that it was anything but hot. On this trip it seemed almost cool. Admittedly, it rained almost every day, but it does here in PP as well. Unless it was a freakishly cool period in Ivoirian climate history (which nobody alluded to) the only conclusion can be is that it is really, really hot in Cambodia...
Our trip to Cote d'Ivoire was also interesting for a completely different reason. For the whole time I worked in CI Americans did not need visas. So we assumed Americans still didn't need visas. Bad assumption. Kathy, Nico and I all arrived in Abidjan on the same flight and were met at the gate by a friend of Anthony's. As we approached Immigration we were joined by another friend of Anthony's, who turned out to be the head of the Airport Police Division. He asked for our passports to jump the lines waiting for their passports to be stamped (VIP service, in other words). He casually mentioned that we must have visas. After 3 minutes of discussion where we made clear that we did not have visas, he made a snap decision and walked us right by all of the immigration officials, waving them off and telling them that "we'd be back". Which, of course, was not true. So we ended up in CI for a week illegally without visas.
The problem was that Stefan was arriving 24 hours later and would face the same problem. So we called him and caught him in the Atlanta airport between the first and second of the 3 flights that he was taking to get to Abidjan. We told him that he would be met at the plane and whisked through immigration. Both the friend and the policeman said that they would meet Stefan the next night. But for some reason I had a bad feeling...
So, 30 hours later we were waiting for Stefan at the airport as the Air France flight came through immigration and customs. No Stefan. Then a policeman arrived and asked us what Stefan looked like, which didn't seem like a very good sign. Turns out that the Police Chief had taken ill, and that the friend had decided to watch the Cote d'Ivoire-Burkina Faso soccer game rather than go to the airport. Stefan had found himself at immigration without a visa, had turned to the closest policeman for help when the Immigration Officer started shouting at him in French, and soon found himself being marched over to the departure wing to be put right back on the Air France flight out of CI. He had the presence of mind to argue enough with the policemen that his parents were awaiting for him and they let him come out front to see us (otherwise he would have just been whisked around in back and we would never have known what was happening).
Anthony arrived on the run and, 3 hours and a whole bunch of phone calls later, we all left the airport together. The sick Police Chief had ordered him off of the plane (over the phone from his sick bed), but the police who had ordered him on the plane refused to officially reverse their decision, so we had to wait for a shift change before he got the paperwork that let him into the country. The irony was that in the end Stefan was the only one who got a visa, and Nico, Kathy and I had to be escorted back through departure Immigration by the police chief to get out of the country. So we went all week without visas, which was a little stressful because there is always a small risk of getting pulled over at a police stop.
In the end we got some stress and Stefan got a story for life.
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