The Contrasts

Sarah is in Ghana. We are in Belgium. Today we went to the flea market where Benjamin bought a WW2 gas mask complete with instructions in French and Dutch. Our friend Marilyn bought a crystal bowl and a set of silver spoons. And a really cool chair for 15 euro. Then we came home and ate chocolate. Then we went to the Garrison shop and the library. Then we had a lovely dinner of grilled salmon with roasted celery root and leeks Now we are watching American Idol.

Here is a synopis of Sarah's first couple days as told by one of her chaperones:

"After much travelling, we have settled into our village. As I write this email, your children are making bricks out of soil, digging, and clearing brush.

Hot and humid air greeted us in the Ghanaian capital at about 2:00 am local time. Rather than spend two or three hours in a hostel, we decided to strike out for our village. Unfortunately, I can't report many of the details from our bus ride, since I slept nearly the entire way. We arrived at our village at about 1:30 in the afternoon (yes, unsurprisingly, the trip took more than 6 hours).

The rest of the day was spent settling into our accommodations and seeking shelter from the rain. Four families evacuated their houses for our stay. We are sleeping on thin mattresses and our mosquito nets have been installed. The kids have quickly adapted to their homes for the next week and a half. The villagers are extremely friendly and have gone out of their way to make us feel welcome. The village children are abundant and adorable. At our orientation meeting this morning, many of the village kids were comfortably resting in the laps of ISB students. We also had the pleasure of experiencing our first tropical storm yesterday. It began pouring (yes, pouring, not a Belgian drizzle) at about 4:00 and didn't stop before nightfall. This didn't pose many problems, though, as most kids were asleep --yes, asleep, not just in bed -- by 8:00! Really! It was reassuring to hear local people say it only rains once or twice a week.

We were up at 7:00 this morning in order to eat breakfast at 7:30. We were at the work site, which is just around the corner from our houses, by 9:00. A sweat had been broken by 9:15. After making sure everything was in order, I left the work site at about 10:00 to travel to an internet cafe, which is about an hour away from our village. The students, who are brimming with excitement, are interacting with villagers and learning that patience is required in Africa."

I cannot tell you how happy this e-mail makes me. It is spring break and Sarah is up by 7:00 and sweating by 9:15. I am really looking forward to seeing if the patience piece sticks. Actually she is already pretty patient, but there is nothing wrong with more. And for the record, I would gladly give up the chocolate to be mixing mortar with my girl.

The Names of NATO

Sometimes in the evenings, David tells us about his day. Here is an exerpt from tonight's briefing (we call them briefings).

"The International Staff calls us the Dirty Dozen. But Stephano and Ilona admitted that they shouldn't call us that to our faces because everyone in that movie dies."
"Who is "us?""
"The Like Minded Nations--Juozus, Nikolay, Frantisek, Dorothee, Judit, Svetlana, Marcel, Khan, Grethe, Tomas, and Ross--he is from Canada--the others clearly aren't."

David had to spell everyone's names out for me because let me tell you, other than Ross, none of these are pronounced remotely phonetically. And this really isn't an accurate list because David doesn't have his cheat sheet here where he has the appropriate key codes to make all the squiggly marks over and around the people's names.
People's names can be problematic. Here is an example: Yesterday Dave sent the US update to the Swedish CEP handbook (he is pleased because he cut it down by two pages although the legal section is still weak) --Oh no, I am now getting OpSec comments--to Tor-Bjorn who he is not sure he has ever met and is uncertain of his/her gender. He met someone from Sweden last week but can't remember the guy's name. But he is very tall.
I was never very good at names, but this environment offers a whole new realm of challenge. How do you remember a name that you have never heard before and would have to practice repeating 14 times before you can pronounce it correctly? I tend to stick with the Susans and Bruces at parties.
David is better. He gets more practice. He will be meeting with Ole, Christian, and Ragnar later in the month.

Muffins For Mortar

Sarah is going to Ghana for spring break. The High School is sponsoring a trip in conjunction with Habitat for Humanity. These kids are going to spend 15 days in a small village in the bush, living and eating with villagers, building houses. No running water, no stores, no toilet facilities, no Little Debbies Snack Cakes, no civilization. The sponsor clearly stated that the kids can use as much water as they could haul out of the well.

Despite the primitive conditions, this is not a cheap trip. Because Sarah got stuck with the parents she did, she has a chunk of money to earn for the trip. A big chunk. Besides babysitting, she has had one primary source on income: Muffins. Each week she bakes about 50 muffins and sends them to work with Dave. He has recruited a couple willing souls with prime office space to hock the muffins for her. Two muffins for 1 Euro. So far she has been quite successful. She has even had a few pre-orders. After trying several varieties, Pumpkin Chocolate Chip emerged as the clear favorite. People have come to expect the weekly offering and if she is a day or two later than usual baking them, people track David down to ask about the muffins. So, with about one month left until departure she has about $250 left on her tab. Only 500 muffins left to go...

Suicide Sledding

Let me start off by saying that this could never happen in America. Lawyers would be camped out at the bottom of the hill and ski resorts would be closing right and left. Europeans have a strong belief in personal responsibility--If you are dumb enough to try it you can take the consequences.

Suicide Sledding, otherwise known as night tobogganing, requires a person to simultaneously navigate a downhill slope in the dark, steer and brake with only your feet, avoid trees and other sledders, stay on the sled and out of the snow, avoid careening through the snowbank off the side of the mountain, and keep from wetting your pants. I am completely not exaggerating.

Our friend Anita suggested we do this night toboggan thing because her husband had done it once as a child and still remembered it as one of the highlights of his childhood. Sounds great! Sarah, Anna, Anita, and I slogged on over to the toboggan rental shed (which happened to be adjacent to a slopeside bar--read "Must be drunk to undertake such a foolish venture") And rented our sleds for a mere 5 euros each. We then got stuck in the turnstiles 3 times before actually making it onto the gondola for the ride up the mountain.

When you think of sledding, you probably think like I did that you sled down a pretty steep hill for two minutes of exhilirating speed and then you pull your sled up the hill and do the whole thing again. Strike any preconceived notions from you head. This is a completely different league--think Chutes and Ladders versus War of the Worlds; Goodnight Moon versus The Oxford English Dictionary; a can of Raid versus Men in Black. Are you getting the picture? The first run down the mountain took about 1 hour. Yup, ONE HOUR of hair blowing, snow eating, bruise gathering speed.

Anna and I shared a sled, and about two minutes into the run I was convinced that one or both of us were headed for the hospital. We almost made it down the first slope before we flew from the sled and landed in a splayed heap of arms and legs and wood and snow. It took us about 10 minutes of rolling off the sled every 100 yards to figure out how to keep from veering toward the snowbank that separated us from certain death down the side of the mountain. Oh, and we kept colliding with Sarah and Anita as they crashed in front of us on alternating 100 yards. We finally got in a groove after about 15 minutes. That is when we encountered the bumps. So picture this: About 100 or so sledders flying down the mountain. As these sledders encounter small bumps in the course, they push snow up against the bumps as they pass over. With each sledder that passes by, the bumps get bigger and bigger until they are pretty good sized moguls. Since we have already established that steering is a challenge, avoiding these things is a near impossibility. Anna and I hit a patch of about seven in a row, and after literally flying through the air and landing really hard on the wooden sled seconds before being launched into space again, I decided my best bet was to jettison myself off the back of the sled and let Anna go at it alone. She did great for two more and then all I saw was snow spray. As we were collecting what was left of our dignity, the sled slipped from Anna's hand and took off down the mountain. We looked like actors from a Mr. Bean movie, chasing after the runaway sled, yelling and waving for someone to catch it.

About one third of the way down...

We found it a pretty good way down the slope stuck in a snowbank. I have to interject here that part of the challenge of navigating this absurdity was that we were laughing so hard that we could hardly breathe. Between rolling off the sled, watching Anita and Sarah crash and splash, trying to keep our sled with us at all times, and attempting to keep ourselves alive, we were hysterical. At the base of really steep hills, groups would gather to watch other sledders tumble, roll, and scream their way to the bottom.

At one point in our descent, we came zooming around a curve to see a 10ish girl and her mother standing in the middle of the track. We had no time to steer around them so as we made contact at full speed with the girl and her sled, Anna literally picked her up and set the girl on her lap. The little girl's sled flew into the snowbank and it was probably a good 200 feet before we could stop and let the poor kid off. We managed to figure out about half way down that if Anna and I both dug our heels into the snow as hard as we could we were able to control our speed to a reasonably degree. The only problem with this is that as you dig you heels in, snow flies up in your face and up your pants by the bucketful. Anita and I both pulled huge snowballs out of our pants. The snow would get up there and just roll and churn until it was packed tight as a softball. You got off the sled and it looked like tumors had developed at the base of your calves.

We got to this really steep hill, and Anna and Anita decided that the only prudent thing to do was to walk. That left Sarah and I to go screaming down into the abyss. We finally made it to the bottom and decided that the only acceptable option was to do it again! I wish I had taken pictures of my bruises. They were beauties!

You will have to use your imagination on that one, but here is a picture of Anna's best lump, sustained while running into the back of Sarah and Anita's sled. I can't wait until next year!

HAPPY VALENTINES DAY

Last Sunday we got out the old scrabble pieces to try to come up with a cute Valentine's Day Card (read VERY late Christmas card) and things didn't really turn out quite as I had envisioned them. So, there will be no Valentine Cards. However, Matthew got creative in English and French to convey our Valentine wishes to you. So, Happy Valentine's Day!
P.S. Matthew inherited my spelling prowess. Our strengths lie elsewhere...

Look What I Found!

Ok, so I found Berlin. It was still on my camera. Sarah had posted the previous pictures on the blog for me so I could write at school and I only thought I had downloaded them to my computer. Technology...Teenagers...Slow and shocking brain-decay.

...more on Day 3:

I have been to the 4th of July Celebration on the Mall in DC and I thougth that was crazy. It doesn't even compare with New Years in Berlin. Picture thousands of bundled up, firework weilding, stone drunk, loud speaking Germans lining the street for at least a kilometer, shooting fireworks in every possible direction for 12 straight hours. Apparently there are no restrictions on fireworks in the city and these folks went crazy. We saw several people pushing shopping carts full of either a) empty champagne bottles or b)unbelieveable amounts of explosives. Fortunately we made it back to the apartment unscathed, and by morning, Unter de Linden was returned to it's orderly, stoic self. Wow.

Day 4: So today we revisited the fabulous suprise. We have discovered that the phrase "If you build it, they will come" definitely holds true in Europe. We ventured an hour (again) out of Berlin to the largest indoor tropical paradise in the world--Tropical Island. This place is amazing. It is roughly the size of 8 football fields and is comprised of a full sand beach, a lagoon with waterslides, grottoes, whirlpools, and waterfalls, 5 resturants, a tent village for overnight stays, a kids play section and an extensive spa. We were pretty excited about the spa. Sarah, Benj, and Anna and I eagerly ventured over to the spa side only to find out that participation required nudity. Yikes. Now, the Europeans do not have a problem with this--but my kids and I definitely do. We ended up searching in vain for a sauna that allowed swimsuits while periodically muttering emphatically "Avert! avert! Look left. Old naked man on the right." Talk about bonding experiences. We are only slightly scarred. The human body looks so much better clothed.

Ok, so even clothed bodies can still be shocking. Sarah stalked this guy to get the lovely picture.

Day 5: David, Julia, and I braved the snow and the pre-dawn sleepiness to climb to the top of the Richstag. The building was originally built between 1884 and 1895. It's burning in 1933 sparked the transfer of power that allowed Hitler to build his empire. The building was later rebuilt with a glass dome to symbolize the transparency of government and it's accountability to the people. There are generally monumental lines to get in, so we decided to beat the rush. The view was fabulous and the city looked amazing under the blanket of snow.Overall we would rate Berlin pretty high on the family fun scale.

Then we drove for 9 hours through the snow in our very small minivan. Vacation over...

Middle School

Iam subbing in the middle school this week and I can emphatically state that middle schoolers are the same all over the world. Race, nationality, language, race, income, or opportunity don't really factor in much with this bunch.

I'll take elementary school any day.