October 14 through October 30
On Oct 14th we went to bed at 11:00 and got up two hours later to start a 24 hour trip to the US. Oy! We flew from TBS to Munich with a layover then on to London with a layover then to SFO where we took a shuttle to San Jose, which took two hours. That last two hours put me over the top. I could not get comfortable after so much sitting and my back let me know ‘enough already!’ We arrived Friday late afternoon. We went to San Jose for Ron’s ICMA annual conference which started on Sunday morning and ended on Wednesday. After checking in to our hotel in downtown San Jose, we unpacked and walked to a lovely restaurant nearby where we ate a light supper of appetizers and headed back to our hotel and to bed.
Saturday we rented a car which took 45 minutes. We were second in line but only one person was staffing the office and he kept taking phone calls while waiting on customers. Oy! We drove to Alameda to see our friend Wendy Wibbens, who I have known for 40 years. We met when I gave her a GED when she was 16! At the time she scored higher than anyone I had tested. We became lifelong friends. She went on to college where I was working at the time. We visited with Wendy and her daughter Jasmine who prepared a lovely lunch of fresh salad with lots of goodies and an omelet with smoked salmon and cheeses. Yum!
Afterwards we went to an outdoor art show and then we came home and rested due to extreme jet lag. Saturday was a beautiful sunny California day but Sunday it started with rain. I had planned to go to a mall to buy a sweater but ended up reading in my room and finding a great Thai restaurant for lunch. That night we went to a reception at the conference for dinner and later to a reception for dessert. Monday I made it to the mall and it was huge. After being in TBS for a year where most stores are the size of a walk in closet I got overwhelmed by the mall. I needed a basic black cardigan sweater and wandered around Nordstrom’s in an overwhelmed daze. Later I managed to go Macy’s and find just what I needed. I took a bus back to the hotel and rested.
On Wednesday we flew to home to Vancouver. What a treat! We hadn’t been home in a year. Although we were in the States in February and in May, we didn’t have time to go home. We arrived late Wednesday afternoon and Dana picked us up at the airport. She and her husband Wayne have been taking care of our home for the past year. On Wednesday we hit the road running. At 8:00 we had our first doctor appointment for check ups. We ended at 5:30 with me seeing the fourth doctor of the day. Then we headed to Jeri and Tony Holt’s for a great visit and fabulous salmon. Yum! On Thursday and Friday we spent our time doing a consumables shopping spree. We are allowed to ship up to 1250 pounds a year of consumable products: food items and things like shampoo, deodorant, wax paper, etc. We managed to spend $1800 in two days. What's this about a recession?
On Friday night we had dinner with Gary and Edmund, another couple whom we have known for years. They treated us to a wonderful meal of salad, homemade soup and bread. Gary made the soup and Edmund baked the bread. This was followed by apple crisp. Yum! On Saturday Dana and Wayne hosted us with Chris, our neighbor. We had chicken marsala, rice and salad. We ate well the entire time. After eating in restaurants in San Jose this was a most appreciated treat each evening.
On Sunday we flew to Los Angeles to see Sonia and Bob, Ron’s mom and her friend Bob. They recently celebrated 23 years together. We had a great time with them. Sonia and Bob live in a senior residence right next to UCLA. One day Ron took a trip down memory lane and we walked around campus where he got his undergrad degree. We went into one of the four original buildings and I was overwhelmed with the arts and crafts architecture. What a treat.
We ate each meal with Sonia and Bob at Westwood Horizons. The dining is restaurant style where we order from a limited menu each meal. I worried about gaining weight with the big meals I ate there. There was incredible weather while in LA. One day it got to 82 degrees. Our hotel was one block away so we were lucky that we didn’t need a car while there. We discovered right before arriving that Tom Cohn, an exchange student from Germany who lived with us in 1988-89 had recently moved to LA. So one day he came by with two of his kids and we had a brief visit. What a thrill to see him. He is no longer the skinny 16 year old we knew back then. He is all grown up and we so loved seeing him again. We saw him once in London in 1999 after he had married but before he had three kids!
We flew home on Thursday going from LA to San Francisco then on to Munich and on to TBS. Again it took about 24 hours door to door. We arrived here at 3:30 a.m. Oy! I managed to stay awake until 7:00 then slept until 1:00 in the afternoon. Ron however fell asleep sooner and woke up at 2:00, asking ‘is it really 2:00?’ For the next four nights neither of us slept well due to extreme jet lag and our bodies wondering what time zone were we in. I had been waking up at 3:00 or 4:00 and had been unable to get back to sleep. Last night was our first night where we both managed to sleep all night. What a relief.
Wednesday, November 3, 2010
A belated post about an Anniversary, an Armenian and San Jose
October 17, 2010
On October 4th Ron and I marked the end of our first year in Tbilisi. Our language teacher asked us what we liked and didn’t like about Georgia aka Sakartvelo in Georgian. I talked about the food and how limited the variety was: one kind of lettuce, veggies consist of one kind of potato, beets, carrots, eggplant, cucumbers and tomatoes, rarely get to buy broccoli and cauliflower, every supra and every menu in restaurants have the exact same dishes, etc. She said most people complain about the driving. I said that was a given. I must say that is what I absolutely despise about Georgia. Drivers are incredibly irresponsible, reckless and rude. Pedestrians have NO rights. You take your life into your hands crossing a street. Drivers routinely run red lights; turn right from the far left lane across multiple lanes of traffic, never yield to pedestrians, speed excessively in commercial/residential areas, park on sidewalks making it necessary to pedestrians to step into traffic and occasionally drive on sidewalks. Did I mention how they drive in reverse down the streets or that they think nothing of driving the wrong way on a one way street because it is more convenient for them? It is truly maddening. Have I described how they don’t bother to wear seat belts and many, many car windshields have ‘spider web’ cracks where someone has hit their head on the windshield and still the people in these cars don’t bother to wear seat belts. Are they stupid or obstinate? Then there is the frequent sight of children standing up in front seat without a seat belt. OY!
What do I love about Georgia? The scenery is spectacular. The people are gracious. I have noted that Georgians don’t smile when you see them on the street. I would imagine when the Soviet Union fell and Georgian became independent all that ensued caused them to be wary and untrusting. Any money you had in the bank at that time disappeared with the Russians. For along time there were no utilities. Imagine a winter with no heat, infrequent water and electricity, etc. So I can understand the reason for no smiles. Usually if I initiate a greeting I get a response.
On October 9-11 Ron and I joined other from the embassy and took a trip to Yerevan Armenia, about 6 hours south of TBS. We had a small bus and took off early Saturday morning. We stopped for lunch and arrived late afternoon. Several of us went for a quick walk and shopping downtown. Then out to dinner. Afterwards we went back to our rooms and collapsed. On Sunday we started early again visited the Genocide Memorial. This is a beautiful outdoor structure with an eternal flame. We were too early to visit the museum which I would have liked to see to better understand the facts of the genocide. As I understand it about one million Armenians were murdered in 12 contested provinces. Another one of the horrific events in our past where we still haven’t learned to stop killing each other. I assume we will learn since we have been doing this since time began.
Next we visited a huge outdoor market: paintings (mostly amateurs), embroidery (beautiful), real and fake jewelry, souvenirs, wood carvings, and a flea market with lots of junk and a few treasures. These markets are fun but a lot of work if you want to buy anything. It all requires bargaining and I don’t enjoy that. In the afternoon we visited two churches/monasteries out of town. Armenia is an orthodox apostlistic Christian country. Their churches are quite simple and plain: no frescoes or icons to speak of. I was told that the Ethiopian Christian church is the same as the Armenian. Sunday was Yerevan’s birthday so when we got back to town many streets were closed off. Ron, Kirsten, Aquil and I got out of the van before our hotel to do some more shopping. Afterwards we met our group for dinner. There were throngs of people on the streets to celebrate. Live bands we performing on many outdoor stages and fireworks were on display as we walked back to our hotel.
On Monday we headed for home and stopped at another church along the way. We had great weather and enjoyed the trip immensely. We arrived home happy but exhausted from having spent three days in a bus.
On Thursday we went to bed at 11:00 p.m. and got up at 1:00 a.m. to catch a plane for San Jose CA where Ron is attending his annual ICMA conference. Twenty four hours later we arrived at our hotel exhausted but thankful for an uneventful trip. We grabbed a light bite at a lovely, quite and delicious restaurant nearby and came home and fell into bed around 9:00. I managed to sleep until 3:30 a.m. but never did fall asleep afterwards. We got up bleary eyed around 6:30, showered and headed out in search of a good cup of coffee. We found a Starbucks and sat and read our newspapers while munching sweet rolls. We were desperate for a newspaper, one of the things I miss about TBS. I never seem to get to the TV to catch BBC and there are no English international newspapers. So it was a thrill to sit and devour two papers over a good cup of joe.
It took 45 minutes to rent a car at Enterprise. The staff of one arrived at 9:00 with six of us in line. We were second in line! But the employee took numerous phone calls and allowed for multiple interruptions from other customers before getting to us. The usual fee of $9.99 for a weekend rate had become $45 a day since we didn’t book it on line. Then we had to rent it for two days because they close at noon on Saturday and are not open on Sunday. Drat! Off we went and missed a turnoff due to our fatigue. We drove an extra 10 miles before realizing our mistake and turned around. We went to see our dear friend Wendy Wibbens in Alameda. I met Wendy almost 40 years ago when I gave her the GED. At the time she scored higher than anyone I had ever tested and we ended up becoming life long friends. Wendy starts cancer treatment on Monday so she took time to fill us in on the details. In the past month, three of our friends have discovered they have cancer. Wendy has a great attitude and we shared lots of funny moments with jokes about ‘butt cancer’. She has asked us to wear a brown ribbon during her treatment. Her daughter Jasmine treated us to a lovely brunch of a fresh salad, whole wheat toast, scrambled eggs with cheese, smoked salmon, goat and cow’s milk cheese. YUM!
Afterwards we headed to an arts and crafts fair in Menlo Park. We had planned to go to a flea market in San Jose but couldn’t find the roads on our Google maps print out. We decided we were too tired anyway and came home for a 90 minute nap. YUM again. We got up and headed to a shopping center to get some lipstick and dinner. Again we had a light meal of soup and salad. On the way home we stopped to get a few snacks of fruit and cookies for our hotel room. Once home we watched a TV movie before dropping off to sleep.
Sunday we got up and found a breakfast place nearby before Ron headed off to his meetings. I will join him at 5:00 for a reception followed by a dessert reception. In the meantime I have caught up on emails and now the blog so I feel free to go exploring around downtown San Jose. I need to replace a lost black sweater for all occasions.
On October 4th Ron and I marked the end of our first year in Tbilisi. Our language teacher asked us what we liked and didn’t like about Georgia aka Sakartvelo in Georgian. I talked about the food and how limited the variety was: one kind of lettuce, veggies consist of one kind of potato, beets, carrots, eggplant, cucumbers and tomatoes, rarely get to buy broccoli and cauliflower, every supra and every menu in restaurants have the exact same dishes, etc. She said most people complain about the driving. I said that was a given. I must say that is what I absolutely despise about Georgia. Drivers are incredibly irresponsible, reckless and rude. Pedestrians have NO rights. You take your life into your hands crossing a street. Drivers routinely run red lights; turn right from the far left lane across multiple lanes of traffic, never yield to pedestrians, speed excessively in commercial/residential areas, park on sidewalks making it necessary to pedestrians to step into traffic and occasionally drive on sidewalks. Did I mention how they drive in reverse down the streets or that they think nothing of driving the wrong way on a one way street because it is more convenient for them? It is truly maddening. Have I described how they don’t bother to wear seat belts and many, many car windshields have ‘spider web’ cracks where someone has hit their head on the windshield and still the people in these cars don’t bother to wear seat belts. Are they stupid or obstinate? Then there is the frequent sight of children standing up in front seat without a seat belt. OY!
What do I love about Georgia? The scenery is spectacular. The people are gracious. I have noted that Georgians don’t smile when you see them on the street. I would imagine when the Soviet Union fell and Georgian became independent all that ensued caused them to be wary and untrusting. Any money you had in the bank at that time disappeared with the Russians. For along time there were no utilities. Imagine a winter with no heat, infrequent water and electricity, etc. So I can understand the reason for no smiles. Usually if I initiate a greeting I get a response.
On Thursday we went to bed at 11:00 p.m. and got up at 1:00 a.m. to catch a plane for San Jose CA where Ron is attending his annual ICMA conference. Twenty four hours later we arrived at our hotel exhausted but thankful for an uneventful trip. We grabbed a light bite at a lovely, quite and delicious restaurant nearby and came home and fell into bed around 9:00. I managed to sleep until 3:30 a.m. but never did fall asleep afterwards. We got up bleary eyed around 6:30, showered and headed out in search of a good cup of coffee. We found a Starbucks and sat and read our newspapers while munching sweet rolls. We were desperate for a newspaper, one of the things I miss about TBS. I never seem to get to the TV to catch BBC and there are no English international newspapers. So it was a thrill to sit and devour two papers over a good cup of joe.
It took 45 minutes to rent a car at Enterprise. The staff of one arrived at 9:00 with six of us in line. We were second in line! But the employee took numerous phone calls and allowed for multiple interruptions from other customers before getting to us. The usual fee of $9.99 for a weekend rate had become $45 a day since we didn’t book it on line. Then we had to rent it for two days because they close at noon on Saturday and are not open on Sunday. Drat! Off we went and missed a turnoff due to our fatigue. We drove an extra 10 miles before realizing our mistake and turned around. We went to see our dear friend Wendy Wibbens in Alameda. I met Wendy almost 40 years ago when I gave her the GED. At the time she scored higher than anyone I had ever tested and we ended up becoming life long friends. Wendy starts cancer treatment on Monday so she took time to fill us in on the details. In the past month, three of our friends have discovered they have cancer. Wendy has a great attitude and we shared lots of funny moments with jokes about ‘butt cancer’. She has asked us to wear a brown ribbon during her treatment. Her daughter Jasmine treated us to a lovely brunch of a fresh salad, whole wheat toast, scrambled eggs with cheese, smoked salmon, goat and cow’s milk cheese. YUM!
Afterwards we headed to an arts and crafts fair in Menlo Park. We had planned to go to a flea market in San Jose but couldn’t find the roads on our Google maps print out. We decided we were too tired anyway and came home for a 90 minute nap. YUM again. We got up and headed to a shopping center to get some lipstick and dinner. Again we had a light meal of soup and salad. On the way home we stopped to get a few snacks of fruit and cookies for our hotel room. Once home we watched a TV movie before dropping off to sleep.
Sunday we got up and found a breakfast place nearby before Ron headed off to his meetings. I will join him at 5:00 for a reception followed by a dessert reception. In the meantime I have caught up on emails and now the blog so I feel free to go exploring around downtown San Jose. I need to replace a lost black sweater for all occasions.
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