Like nomads, but with more stuff

 Back when we bought the cabin, a friend alerted us to a canoe going cheap. We bought it and stored it under the deck at Terry's dad...

 #21.  In a very generalistic, vague picture of reality, I'll explain that most of my days are spent trying to teach, coach and convince...

 I'm back from three weeks in Doha helping move Afghan evacuees from Arrival Point #1 (Doha) to either Final Destination (for American c...

Our fabulous sponsors invited us to accompany them to Shakespeare on the Bow , which is Calgary's version of Shakespeare in the Park. T...

Other than teaching and the foreign service I'm not sure of too many other professions that have a tenure process. Essentially, it is w...

I've been here about 10 days now, more or less, and so far everything is both exactly as I expected and totally different. There's ...

The car is on its way. The house seems bigger with so much less stuff in it. In the last few weeks I said "so long" to friends an...

After just about 36 weeks, I took my language exam and passed.  This means the American government feels safe sending me out to Germany to ...

Yesterday in class we practiced some strategies for handling certain parts of the test. I hadn't been working on these particular parts...

In addition to spending our days in the classroom slogging through the language, we also have other opportunities to play with German.  Two...

FSI is like a college campus on reunion weekend, every day. Where else do you find so many adults with jeans and backpacks?  I'm gues...

Language training is still wonderful. I definitely speak German better now than I ever spoke Russian, even after banging my head against th...

... too many wheels, to be honest. Right before we returned to post from R and R last year, we bought a cheap car for a cheap price. Then...

We've been in class about 3 weeks now and settling into our routines and slowly developing some ability.  Some highlights include: ...

This one is a good one. A really good one. Our car got packed up to head out of Astana about six weeks ago.  On Thursday afternoon it was d...

[Oops, somehow this never got published....] In the two weeks before packout we had excitement - some serious stuff, some less serious, s...

We are back at work, which means we are in language training. During the next several months our full time jobs plus off-time hobbies will ...

The kids and I left Kazakhstan, most likely (but in this crazy world never say never) forever, on August 1. it feels like a lifetime ago....

Dear Business Class, You've changed in the years since we hung out together regularly.  Mostly, for the better. Back in the day I cou...

In typical Soviet fashion, we received a message this afternoon from the kids' summer camp that tomorrow is the talent show/party and e...