Where have we been?

We are in Russia, now. But that’s not the proper place to start. First, I have to say, to admit, we’ve had a bit of a prolonged break from the blog. The reason for this is unclear: we grew tired of keeping it up; life felt too mundane and repetitive to write about; our time on Trinidad, toward the end, brought a bit of island fever. It was fun, life is still fun, but has been missing its overriding narrative. Long stretches of time pass with little to show for it, like waves lapping slowly, unceasingly, to a distant shore, seemingly the same one day to the next, yet slowly changing the shape of things, eroding rock, depositing white sand, creating a scene to keep in the mind’s eye and cherish. Life can be this way; it can be repetitive. And yet, if you take a moment and pause, and you look around, you notice there is something there, after all. Every day is new, every day a little different. So, of course, we’ve been busy, we just maybe failed to appreciate all that was going on, or at least to condense it into a deserved narrative, something to share. Which brings me back to that opening question: just what have we been up to?

In April 2014, we went to Curaçao and Bonaire. This should have been a blog post, but at the time it seems we were lazy. We snorkeled and lay on the beach; drank wine, and drove around the island to look at the salt flats and flocks of flamingos.

Beautiful Caracao!

We left Trinidad at the end if June 2014. It was sad to say goodbye to good friends, many who left before us, and some who stayed behind.

We lived in cabin in the woods in Vermont for a month. We hiked Mt. Monadnock in New Hampshire and cheered on some friends in the Vermont 100 (the 100 mile footrace); and we relaxed. We also discovered craft beer. America, you have changed in some positive ways during our adventures abroad.

We moved back to Arlington, our old haunts, and studied Russian for 8 months. It was nice to be closer to family; and, at the end of it all, to be able to produce enough garbled Russian to get around.

Tulip season in Arlington, Netherlands Carillon

Nationals Park, day before departure

Finally, we moved to Moscow, and have been here for over a year, already. We’ve been busy rediscovering our love for travel, revisiting some of our favorite places in Russia, and visiting some new places, too.

Recreating a picture from our '06 trip, in front of the Church of Christ the Savior, Moscow

Hopefully, more posts to come as we strive to bring this blog back to life...

Beware the sea

I think the Forth of July is not my holiday.  Last year we went to the beach and I got terribly sunburned.  To make it worse, I had to put on a wool suit that night and work a big formal reception, enduring lots of solicitous comments on the lines of, "You're really burned, did you know that?"  This year I was determined that it would be different, partly because I got the embassy reception scheduled for July 2nd, so we'd have the 4th to just relax.  A whole bunch of us went to Maracas Beach to enjoy the day.  It's lots of fun going to the beach on American holidays, since we have the place pretty much to ourselves.  I've been to Maracas many times, and have been boarding there also many times.  Despite that, I got badly crashed on my first wave of the day.  Extremely sore neck, bleeding face, and a puffy eye.  I got through the rest of the day with some ice, but was a hurting unit.  By the next morning, I looked like Quasimodo.  A beautifully swollen eye, raw patches all over my face, painful back, etc....  Again, to make it all better, I had an early morning flight to Tobago to have a day full of meetings with a bunch of new contacts for my job.  I did as many meetings as I could that day with my biggest sunglasses on....  Sadly, I did not get any pictures - you'll just have to imagine it. To add insult to injury, we were planning a big day of diving at our favorite spot in Speyside since we were in Tobago anyway.  I somehow managed two dives, even though the combo of my scuba mask and the water pressure made my face feel less-than-awesome.   Tobago was beautiful as always though, and we had a relaxed snorkel on Sunday before flying back to Trinidad.

One image I want to remember from the weekend:  our hotel was really short-staffed on Sunday, with our dear dive instructors Tanja and Adrian working as cooks, waitstaff, reception crew, boat driver, and dive leaders at the same time.  We were waiting by reception that afternoon to check out and pay our bill while the crew was out diving, when a boat pulled up to shore, Tanja dove out and swam to the beach to come up and settle our bill.  It was straight out of a Bond movie. 

Hello, Goodbye

In the Foreign Service, the only thing worse than when your colleagues and friends leave post is when you have to leave yourself.  We are still a year away from our next departure, but now that summer transfer season is here, we're having to say goodbye to some great people.  It was a bittersweet run for Team Banshee (long story) up our favorite mountain road this morning as our fearless leader is departing post tomorrow.  Such is the life....

This is a 'before' picture.  We were significantly grosser after the run.

Carnival

Have rum, will travel.

Trinidad and Tobago is known for having the best Carnival blowout in the region; some make the claim that it's even better than Brazil.  Huge multi-day drunken street parties are not exactly our thing, so we mostly laid low and had a great long weekend at home.  On Carnival Tuesday though we did go downtown to see some of the big parade.  There are quite a bit of variance in the bands - lots of 'beads and bikinis' which lure young (and not so young) tourists [Andy's comment to me after watching one of the bands go by:  "I'm so glad you're not on duty this week!"], and some more traditional bands with elaborate costumes and themes.  It was really fun to see, for about 2 hours.  Then we happily went to the beach.

One of the bands had a zoo/circus theme.

A bit of a loss with this one.. hippie dreamcatchers?

Resolution Review

In short, I had decent success in 2012.  I had 2 goals - to visit 4 new countries, and to write 36 blog posts.  Well, we visited 5 new countries (and Trinidad & Tobago are 2 islands, so one could almost count them twice..) , but I only did 29 blog posts.  I blame my family for showing up for a visit on Dec 1 and proceeding to keep us way too busy to write about anything for the next 2 months.  I love blaming my family for stuff.

 A representative sample of our house, circa December....