Budapest

Friends;
I always used to read with envy about those suave international travelers
who were whisked away across continents, staying in fancy business
hotels and seemingly never home. Unfortunately, now that my life seems
like a pale comparison to them I wonder how good it must be. It has been
a busy fall, as they all seem to be with travel taking center stage.
Since September work, and some pleasure have taken me, and on a couple of
trips Sue to:
the Julian Alps in Slovenia, Vienna Austria, Kiev, Ukraine (with a 3 hour
visit with Seth thrown in there in Rokytna) then to Finland with Sue and
an 8 day tour with Duluth's Ken Gilbertson of parks and forest areas, then
off to Istanbul with Sue to watch our cross country running team win their
Eastern and Central European regional championships. In a couple of days I
am off again to Madrid for an international education conference,
participants will represent schools from seemingly everywhere. And so,
today, on this dreary wet, rather forlorn day in mid November I thought
it might be good to drop you a note.


Sue and I are 'empty nesters' now: a term I was not sure I liked much, it
bringing images of impending retirement, old age and senility. But, we
celebrated in style with me running the Budapest 1/2 and full marathon
while Sue ran in the marathon relay and then a few weeks later the Women's
10k. So, we have tried to stay in shape if nothing else.
We both find that although the house is indeed much quieter now than it
used to be we are able to log onto the computer to both Seth's and
Morley's blogs (http://sethspencer.blogspot.com/)
(http://refluentmind.blogspot.com/) both of which have been great fun to
follow and comment on.

Moo is at St Ben's in Minnesota, enjoying her freshman year and getting
used to the US after nearly 7 years absence while Seth is starting his own
big adventure with the Peace Corps. He is in Ukraine and I urge you to go
to his blog to read up on what he will be doing, should be fascinating, if
not a little overwhelming. I admire his courage though and wish him the
best . We can text one another by cell phone so its great fun to send
him a quick blurb out of the blue.
Jeremy has been named manager of a Target store in Austin Minnesota and so
he and Andrea are in the process of buying a house there, evidently
minutes away from the Spam Museum. We are way proud of each of their
endeavors, so cool to see 'children' become so successful.
As for Sue and I, well, we are plugging along, travelng, missing friends
who have left as well as the kids and contemplating what to do next. Our
thought is to stick around after this year for one more. With Seth only one
country, and I mean entirely one country away as he will be snug up against the
Russian border, close to Stalingrad, it makes sense for us to be close.
Then, next year we will figure out what to do. Even this year the
counseling jobs open for next year number in the low 30's, from Tunisia to
Thailand, Nepal to Vietnam, Peru to Oman. But, we are in good shape here
and will use this year to get ready for next and our last year in Budapest.
We will be back in the US on December 16th, one month from today and
look forward to tracking many of you down. It is always so good to see
friends and family at Christmas.
Thanks for being in touch,
David