written Sunday, June 22: At long last, Viktorija and myself slept in a real room with a real bed last night. Since our arrival, we had been sleeping on a mattress in the living room of the Thanda volunteer house where all of the foreign volunteers live. We used two bookshelves, a line of string, and a pink sheet to create walls. Every morning we were awoke by Mike, one of our eagerest volunteers, who would wake up a quarter to seven every morning (though he swears he uses no alarm clock, we would hear him at exactly this time without [View Full Entry]

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Arthur, our friend and owner of Khaya LaManzi (which means ‘Ocean Home’ in Zulu-it is a bed and breakfast here in Hibberdene), says that the recent storm was a freak of nature. It was created by a high-pressure system that came in from out at sea, unlike the normal weather patterns that should send storms up the coast in a low-pressure system. He says he has never seen this type of storm at this time during the year. It began very early last Tuesday morning with heavy rains and high winds. The seas were roaring and groaning, waves crashing hard, water [View Full Entry]

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Another update from Kaunas Lituanica!! They won the tournament. Here we go: Email from Donatas, Kaunas Lituanica 2B: "I will give you long story of our tournament in Kutno. So relax and have fun reading this e-mail. We went 5 cars different times so we all used GPS system to get there I went with Sigitas, Vytas and Algimantas. The road was not good cuz there was some road fixing and road blocking by the people who are angry about raising gas prices. Also stopping in coffes to eat or drinking coffee. Finaly we reached our goal then Shaq, after half [View Full Entry]

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Hi folks.... here's some notes from one day at Thanda. Our internet is very slow here so i am unable to upload photos. I will do so in a few weeks when i spend time in Poland (our dance show will perform there on July 7), but for now, just stories......hope they will generate images in your head of what it is like. We left the house early today, earlier than normal. Viktorija and I left with the early car with Tyler who had to arrive early to Sacred Heart Children's Home. The head sister at the convent had planned a [View Full Entry]

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I have now been here for one week: here are some reflections. Apologies if I jump around a bit. These are random fragments from my journal..... Monday: first day on the job. We load up in the truck: the truck goes straight to the sight and the van goes into town to run a few errands. The drive to Thanda/Sacred Heart School is breathtaking. A 40 minute drive straight away from the coast inland, through rolling hills. The road is paved for the first 10 minutes and then breaks into a dirt road. Lined by sugar cane fields as far as [View Full Entry]

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To my dear blog readers: I am now in South Africa. There are so many stories to tell, and the will surely be poured out on the pages of my blog. But Right now I have only a few minutes of internet time and so i thought I would do something different for a change. It is so amazing being here in South Africa I can not even tell you. There are some pluses I did not expect, and some minueses that I did not anticipate dealing with. But on the whole, really incredible. One thing that I was surprised by [View Full Entry]

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**First: i want to mention for those of you who may have missed the transition.....and you probably missed it because i made no transition in my writing........between dance and baseball. I arrived here in Kaunas two weeks ago to play three weeks with the team. For the moment we have finished with rehearsals, and do not pick up the work until september when we rehearse and then premier in the US. So for several months you will be hearing mostly about baseball, about me and my ponderings on life, and about South Africa (where Viktorija and I will be in one [View Full Entry]

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While standing in the outfield during a game two weekends ago in Bois-Guillaume, a sacrifice bunt was laid down that moved the runner over to third base. It was one of those plays that, given the situation, (it was late in the game and we were ahead by several runs), we were happy with the play because we got an out (and at this point in the game our goal is to get outs and finish the game), and they were happy because one of their weaker players was at the plate and had done something productive--moved a runner from second [View Full Entry]

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So I'm back in Kaunas!! My fourth season playing for Kaunas Lituanica. Man I am getting old..... I arrived at the field at around 1:30 PM. I was the second to arrive, just after Gedas and Sigitas. Gedas was wearing nice street clothes, and Sigitas was dressed already in his uniform having worn it for the previous game (the younger team played earlier in the day). I immediately took out a trash bag and began picking up trash, remnants from the previous evening’s festivities. Gintaras Stadium, our stadium, has no fully-enclosed fence around it. We do not own the field. Thus [View Full Entry]

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Yesterday I was out at Kaunas Stadium mowing the grass. I really enjoy mowing grass. It gives me time to think, time to be with myself, it is this repetitive yet artistic activity. Back in North Carolina this is the way that I made spending money during the summers—I mowed lawns. I loved it. I remember the summer before my senior year in high school and first year in college I really got into mowing. It was a particularly wet summer, which meant that the grass was growing and so was the lawn-mowing business. I began with two lawns and by [View Full Entry]

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