With two-thirds of the main flight tickets in hand, here is a small map of our next big trip:
Otherwise known as our year-long East Coast, England, Scotland, France, Madagascar, Germany, Italy, Qatar, India, Malaysia, Australia, New Zealand, Argentina and West Coast trip. Phew!
For the last couple of months, I have barely contributed to the blog because, counter-intuitively, I've had too much to write. Mostly, I've discovered previously unknown (to me) family. Now that I've had time to ruminate...
During my heart procedure three months ago, the doctors deduced that given the lack of obvious risk factors I must have only one: a family history of heart disease. So, it shouldn't be a surprise that last December I started wondering about genealogy, especially my family back through my biological father, from whom I became separated when I was a couple years old. Wondering morphed into searching, just not by me.
Leah's parents have a passion for genealogy and are also each retired librarians. It wasn't long into the search that Adrien, Leah's father, started amassing records--birth, immigration, census, marriage, death certificates and death notices. And, one day, Adrien found my grandmother's address and phone number and indications that she was in her late 80's, alive and living in Florida. It was an utter shock. A couple of days later I called her.
My grandma was exceedingly happy to hear from me and we talked...for the first time. As it turned out my paternal family line, not surprisingly at this point, is filled with people with heart problems. Specifically, one particular heart problem related to the lower anterior descending (LAD) artery, the exact site of my stent. My father died at age 45 from heart disease, my grandfather died at 39 from a sudden massive heart attack, my great-grandfather died in his 40s of a sudden massive heart attack, my great-great-grandfather died of heart disease, and so on, presumably, into the past. It seems that by encouraging me to go to the doctor, Leah has broken a long tradition in my family of the males dying young.
Grandma Marjorie, with an endearing Australian accent, told me all sorts of family stories, including important genealogy bits. For example, my grandma's father and mother were born in England and Scotland, respectively, and I have several extended family members living in Australia. This will add a new dimension to future travels.
I also learned of other relatives living in Florida: an aunt, an uncle, cousins, even a first-cousin twice removed! Late in January, I went to meet them, all of whom made me feel quite welcome. The weekend flashed by; we met, talked, ate and my grandma, aunt and I went to play bingo (I had never played before and won with some help from my aunt, who won much more).
Obviously, a couple of days isn't enough time, so Leah and I are planning another trip in early May. Hopefully this time it won't take me more than a month to post about it.
Those of you who've managed to check in through our extremely lean posting period may have noticed a decided lack of clues for mystery vacation. December's nonexistent clue was due largely to all the excitement of seeing family and friends during the holiday season. Well, that and sheer laziness on my part. Since then, though, the absence of new clues has been more purposeful.
We decided, after considerable deliberation, not to go on mystery vacation this year. Sad, I know. But I'm rather tied up with the never-ending research I'm doing for my thesis, not to mention the actual writing of the piece. And we haven't had any 'down time' since last spring break, when we also decided not to go on mystery vacation. Of course that was because I was slowly going insane from having to organize two conferences at the same time, so it wasn't so much down time as it was more time to work on the conferences. And sadly, this spring break will be similar: David will get some down time, and I'll be scrambling to analyze the transcripts of the interviews I've conducted, trying to find something pertinent and useful to say about the resettlement of the Somali Bantus in Pittsburgh. But still, it will mean less stress in the long run.
I refuse to divulge the destination, though, as I may use it for a future mystery vacation. So until then, keep guessing.
Last summer, as we started to think about the this summer and where to go, David suggested doing something different and biking through Scotland. We talked about biking through England off and on, so this seemed like a neat way to sort of do that, but also go somewhere new. Through a series of birthday emails to Mama in July, the plan turned into a family trip, so all seven of us are meeting in Scotland at the end of May for two weeks. Exciting! And nerve wracking.
Biking through Scotland as a means of transport, though, we realized was not something we're really equipped to do. Though our skill level (well, my skill level anyway) is no where near some friends of ours, we vastly prefer mountain biking to road biking. Plus, Scottish drivers are widely reputed to be 'daring,' not something we're interested in experiencing on narrow roads with no shoulders to move to for safety. So, we started the inevitable discussion of what to do with the rest of the summer months.
I say inevitable, because our trip plans go through at least half a dozen iterations before we decide on whatever it is that we're really going to do. Much of the time we end up doing something else for somewhat practical purposes. Last summer we didn't go to Cambodia and Laos, our original plan, because it was monsoon season and the roads all get washed out. For people who rely on public transport to get around, no roads creates a bit of a problem. And then we didn't go to Mongolia, because we thought it would be too expensive: they don't really have roads, so we'd have to hire a 4x4 and driver, which is a bit out of our budget. China and Korea, then, became places we were interested in, but also could reasonably travel through.
So, for this summer's plans, after ditching the "biking in Scotland" idea, we thought we'd go hiking in the Alps, since we'd be in Europe anyway and hiking is something we love doing. That quickly morphed into having to go to Italy to see our friends there, too. And then David suggested hoping over to Morocco, since we'd be 'in the area' and visiting my host family from Peace Corps days. In the end, though, we realized that this will be the last time before I have to get a job, so we might as well do something really different. So we're going to Madagascar.
Madagascar has all sorts of things in which we're interested. 80% of the plant species on the island are only found there; lemurs are cute, and only found here, all 50 species of them; they have 109 endemic bird species; and all of this in national parks and reserves where we can camp! Plus the people, who are generally thought to have arrived only about 2000 years ago from Indonesia/Malay. So while some of what we see will be vaguely similar to what we're familiar with from Mozambique and Malawi, there will also be enormous differences.
Friday was very much one of those days. Running around like the proverbial chicken, I was supposed to be gone from the apartment all day from the time I left for a doctor's appointment at 8:50 until about 6:30, when I returned from meeting/tutoring a new Somali family. So of course I came home twice; once to get my phone and once to get my tutoring 'kit.' David is referring to it as the most poorly named plan of the semester thus far. And believe me, there have been several poorly named plans with which Friday had to compete. But it was not without its highlights.
Waiting for the bus to go downtown to do an interview (notice that is to 'do,' not to 'have.' I'm conducting 24 interviews for my thesis for public health, which is my excuse for not posting for so long. You'll have to ask David for his own excuse.), I watched two bags jettisoned from a bus by an older woman who had four bags altogether, plus a purse and a cane. She was clearly having one of those days, too, so after waffling between wanting to help and pretending to ignore her in the true American spirit of feeling that she might be embarrassed to have someone notice her awkward wrangling of bags, I went over and asked if she was going somewhere nearby I could help carry her bags to. She was, so we set off, chatting about what she was going to be doing for the weekend that necessitated so many bags. Basketball games in Cleveland, was the answer, although I'm still not sure if it's a professional team or college. Has anyone heard of the Cavaliers?
Completing her errand, we trudged back up towards the bus stop ritually complaining about the weather (it's been -20 degrees, so we had plenty to complain about), and then she tried to tip me for helping her. We argued, oh-so-politely about it, my point being that I had offered to help because I wanted to do so, not because I expected any compensation, and her point being that I was a student and so was always in need of extra money. I was truly torn over how to handle the situation because I couldn't figure out if it was ruder to accept the money, or to insist on not taking it. Since we were blocking pedestrian traffic for a good minute, I eventually took the offered bill and then found a way to sneak it into a zippered outside pocket of one the bags I was carrying.
We left each other downtown, with mutual assurances of good will and I went off to conduct my eighth interview before having to go home twice, interrupting David watching a docu-drama about LBJ and the Vietnam war. All things considered, it was actually a pretty pleasant one of those days.