chasing ice

A few years ago, when we still lived in Chicago, S got invited to attend a public health conference in Denver. We both went, taking advantage of the opportunity to do a bit of hiking and catch up with friends we had not seen in years. While S was at the conference, D spent the day hanging out with a friend from high school who had moved to nearby Boulder and was working on his first film. At dinner, Jeff told us how, after several years of editing, he had nearly finished putting the footage together, but that he did not like the way he was telling the story and was thinking about re-editing his near-final cut.

adieu

When does it start feeling real?

here’s to you, Nairobi

A brief note of heartfelt thanks to all the people — the young, and the young at heart — who have made our first Foreign Service tour an unforgettable experience.

65 boxes

It’s hard to say what’s more unsettling: arriving at a new post and moving into an empty house that remains barren for weeks, or even months, while one’s belongings are in transit, or packing up one’s possessions and sending them away with a moving company and then living in the empty house that seems all the more bare because for years it had been filled with the things that make a house a home.

Emmie was decidedly unsettled by our pack-out.

down to the wire

Despite the team of movers that descended on our house to crate up our belongings for the overseas move, we’re still struggling to come to terms with our imminent departure. The mind’s inertia to change is remarkable.

approaching nostalgia

Two weeks and change left before we bid adieu to Kenya and close the book on our first Foreign Service tour overseas.

festival of colors

According to an old Hindu myth, there once lived a king of demons who was granted near immortality by Brahma, the god of creation. He grew powerful and arrogant, attacked the heavens, and demanded that all people worship him alone. However, his own son refused, instead offering prayers to Vishnu, Hinduism’s supreme being. Unable to kill his own son, the demon king commanded his sister, Holika, to burn him alive.

separation anxiety

With the possible exception of scorpions, few things in life sting as sharply as the reproachful eyes of a pet that feels betrayed.

at last

Nearly lost in the shuffle of Kenya’s elections, our departure preparations, and last-minute travel was the fact that S has a new job, which she started at the end of January. In fact, she had accepted the offer to join the Embassy’s Economic Section last June, but the new job required a security clearance, which took many months to acquire.

spring cleaning

One of the biggest draws of the Foreign Service is the opportunity to move every couple of years – to explore a new country, become familiar with a new culture, and then relocate to a new place to start the process of social exploration all over again. One of the few drawbacks to this lifestyle is that one has to move every couple of years. Packing up one’s whole life to start afresh elsewhere is apparently much more difficult and time-consuming when one has pets, kids, cars, and a whole house full of stuff than it was when we packed a couple of suitcases to study abroad for a year in college or join the Peace Corps.