The trip is going very well. Actually it has been awesome... you know, to be precise. Yesterday, I spent most of the day at Casa Gabriel (a mission for street kids in Quito). Great experience and also great to see people from back home. Last night I got back to the hostel around 7:15, and dinner was still not quite ready. Over dinner I met two guys from the UK. We talked about everything from American and British politics to history to conservation to global travels. One of the guys, named Joe, was planning to go to Mitad del Mundo ("Middle [View Full Entry]

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Not much to say about the trip down - four flights, sleep deprivation, actually slept through a take-off (second time ever). I arrived around 8:30 PM and got to the Secret Garden hostal (www.secretgardenquito.com) around 10:00 PM. The cab ride was normal... but I kept wondering if he was taking me to the right place. The hostal is quite the experience. Five floors with the top floor being a terrace overlooking the Old Town (more colonial architecture). I stayed up a few hours, got a coke/rum/lime drink (it does have a name, but I forget) and hung out with the other [View Full Entry]

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Day 5 - Fence Removal and Odd Jobs I was feeling much, much better this day. The group had finished mucking out the house the day before while I was mending, so we went to another location - Gentilly Presbyterian Church. The group drywalling was still working on the other site. Apparently, the Gentilly location will be used as a headquarters for the Presbyterian Disaster Assistance in New Orleans; the current headquarters is in Baton Rouge. So, basically, we were doing odds and ends to help get one of the building ready to be the headquarters. One of the main activities [View Full Entry]

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Well, wow, what can you say? New Orleans is unique and scenes of the Katrina disaster are blended with scenes a revitalized community - new homes, refurbished homes, businesses open, contractors (and non-profits and mission groups) all over the place. Day 1 - In-transit We started out on Sunday morning (Jan. 28) at 6:00 AM -- 9 degrees F. We drove and drove (a rather, thankfully, uneventful trip except for a random tray that broke part of the van's grill and dented the radiator) and arrived at the volunteer village in Luling, LA around 8:30 PM. They went through the rules [View Full Entry]

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This entry is long overdue (writing it as of 02/04/07). The trip to Ireland was wonderful. My mom, while planning the whole trip (England, Bahrain, Ireland), found out that the cost to stay over a day in Dublin didn't add any to the price of the airline ticket. So, it was a great opportunity for us to drop in and visit cousin Thea and for mom to see Dublin. We arrived on an overcast day, but the approach of the plane was close enough to the ground to see the shoreline, some Irish countryside, and parts of Dublin. After arriving at [View Full Entry]

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Once again, I found myself in Bahrain... but now visiting not only Shawn, Augusta, and Kai... but also Quinn, my newest niece. She is a very cute baby. We are still trying to figure out which features she got from her mom and which from her dad. She definitely has Shawn's feet and fingernails. But she also looks a lot like Augusta did as a baby. The last trip in April it was hot (but not Bahrain summer hot). This time it started out very chilly -- I was told by one of the locals that it was the coldest he [View Full Entry]

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This trip is the first time I have ever travelled out of the United States. All of my children and grandchildren travelled to a foreign country before I did! Although I am an adventurer at heart, I must admit I was anxious about going on this trip. It had been over twenty years since I'd flown commercially, and the thought of being on a large crowded airplane for seven hours at a stretch was what I dreaded most. As it turned out, the flying was fine. And when I thought about how people used to cross the Atlantic on ships that [View Full Entry]

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Started the day by heading out from Cambridge towards Oxford. There is not a single main road between the two, and even if there was it wouldn't have mattered since my mom wanted to see the countryside. So we stopped at a petrol station along the way and bought a more detailed map that would show us how to navigate through the small towns and country roads. In the morning the weather was partly cloudy, however, it got darker throughout the day and rain slowly moved in. Driving through the countryside was a great experience. Many of the buildings still have [View Full Entry]

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Woke up around 2 AM and, after tossing and turning for half an hour, decided that getting back to sleep was probably too much to ask. So I grabbed my Spanish Grammar book and studied out in the hotel lobby for three hours while Sky News cycled through its early morning programming; most of it was related to speculation on when Saddam would be executed. After breakfast we continued our adventure as we set out from London (Buckhurst Hill) to Cambridge. The drive went relatively well, but it was a cold and drizzly day as many are during this time of [View Full Entry]

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On this trip I am travelling with my parents (John and Adele), which is different. I'm used to, well, travelling alone and not having to think about working with others. But I like travelling with them better. We made our way from St. Louis through Raleigh (NC) and then on to London. The flight from Raleigh to London was only about 6.5 hours. We landed at 6:30 AM, went through customs, and then picked up a rental car. Of course, they drive on the left hand side of the road here and the driver's side is on the right side of [View Full Entry]

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