Blogs from North America - page 9715

We are home at last. And at peace. I hope you have enjoyed our trip. We did. Now it is 35 years later and Patty and Dianne will summarize for you what they remember so well about this trip. That's it for Nell and Yours Truly. Love you all, Lamar. Patty's comments: First, I want to thank our brother, Tommy, for assisting us on this project. It was a labor of love. It has been fun looking back at this wonderful trip we made with Mother and Daddy 35 years ago . . It was one of the most enjoyable things I've ever done. I have to admit, Dianne and I acted like teenagers some of the time ...but, Ma and Daddy didn't seem to mind too much. Well, except for the time that Dianne and ... read more

I watched last summer when Tommy and Jackie flew to Europe and picked up their new car. Each day he wrote a diary entry (Nell says it is a blog but I don't know what she is talking about). Well, I taught Tommy everything he knows about writing. Just because I never did like those darn computers does not mean I can't beat him at writing diaries. So, Nell, Patty and Dianne and I will be sending you a daily diary (okay, blog) of our trip to Europe. We had just as much fun as Tommy and Jackie did. I made Dianne and Patty write their comments every night. Nell and I took photos and then added comments to them. Now don't be sending me any messages asking me how I am doing this. I have ... read more

Diary 19720729 Our orientation for going to West Africa started officially today. There are about 120 volunteers going to Nigeria, Sierra Leone or Ghana. This part of our orientation is to make us more aware of our personal attitudes toward our own culture and all other cultures. We are all living in one residence building in the basement of which there is a library of films, articles, and books. This morning we played a game in which we were blindfolded, so we could see how it is to learn with a handicap. 19720730 It seems that much more than one day has gone by. We started a “simulation game” which supposes that our plane crashes on an unknown island in the Atlantic on the way to Africa. There are only the twelve survivors of our group ... read more

The 1968 Los Angeles Geographical Society trip to Africa began with a TWA transcontinental flight from Los Angeles to New York. This was the heyday of TWA's "Foreign Accent" service wherein flight attendants wore all sorts of exotic getup with a supposed foreign theme. Our were outfitted in gold lame minidresses, a French accent. It was also the heyday of JFK Airport as the dominant gateway for overseas airline traffic to and from the USA. Many airlines had built monumental terminals at JFK. We arrived at the TWA Flight Center (Terminal 5) and transferred to the Pan American Worldport (Terminal 3). Pan Am flight 150 left New York at 5:00 p.m. for West Africa destinations. Our first stop was to be Abidjan. The DC-8 made intermediate stops at Dakar and Monrovia. I recall at Senegal an ... read more

A car with a local guide drove my mother and I to the Teotihuacán archaeological site, about 30 miles (50 km) outside Mexico City. The structures here are the remains of the largest pre-Aztec city in Mexico. Teotihuacán means The City of the Gods in the Nahuatl language. At its height (ca. 500 CE), it encompassed some 8 square miles (20 square km) and supported a population estimated at 125,000–200,000, making it, at the time, one of the largest cities in the world. It was the region’s major economic as well as religious center. When we visited, the site centered on the two main pyramids, the Pyramid of the Sun and the Pyramid of the Moon, connected by the Avenue of the Dead. Not too many people were there, and one could freely climb ... read more