Sylvia's Journal

I woke up from Ethiopia dreams to find Ethiopian coffee waiting for me in the kitchen. Axel went shopping yesterday and bought it to get me acclimated to my new destination; an Ethiopian warm-up of sorts.

With a trip so close on the horizon the work that is generated by coming back and leaving is squeezed into this very short time frame. People asked me whether I had some time to recover from Afghanistan and the answer is no. It is like the touch-and-go’s that I practice in my small plane; no stopping.

My flying buddy Bill called me last night and we are going on a trip Saturday; via Portsmouth to Laconia and then back via Concord or Manchester, flying on VORs (instruments) only. It has been a long time since I last did that and I am glad I am flying with an experienced pilot. It will be a great day for flying, as it was yesterday when I came home to a glorious Lobster Cove where a little plane overhead made me want to go straight to the airport. Instead we walked around the loop and saw the bulbs come up and trees leafing out right in front of our eyes. We stopped for a while at the place where the header of my blog is taken. The current header is from 2006. In the meantime a house has gone up on the right and so we need a new set of seasonal shots. The house is actually quite nicely designed into the landscape. Axel is waiting for that special day when the sun is right and all the trees are covered with a thin veil of young green. That’s when he will take the spring picture.

Fatou is out of the hospital and I am trying to arrange a meals-on-wheels kind of arrangement since she has no help at home. It is time for us to give back what we received last summer and fall. We know that she will heal faster if she is surrounded by friends. Her family is in faraway Senegal, so it will have to be friends that circle around her.