Sylvia's Journal

We have a full house again except the sleeping places are reversed: Sita and Jim in the upstairs room and Tessa and Steve in the barn. Actually Jim was downstairs working (or playing) on the computer when I got up at 5 AM. His night had not yet started when my day began.

Sita and Jim drove in from Western Mass. to celebrate Axel’s birthday. Steve and Tessa made breakfast and prepared dinner which consisted of grilled meat in a spicy Thai salad. Everyone had brought wine and ice cream to accompany the meal. This also included a partially bought, partially picked fruit salad with whipped cream in the color of Axel’s choice (green). We ate and drank until our bellies were too full. As a birthday boy Axel sat happily on his throne, a chair decorated with flowers, and we reminisced a bit about last year but not too much. In addition to choosing the main cours, the wine and the color of the whipped cream, he also got to select the dinner music and he picked Abba first. We ended the meal with Jimmy Cliff and we all sang or drummed along. It was a noisy and joyful celebration of our complete family. After dinner we laughed together over YouTube movies; the one that got us laughing so hard that we had to hold our (bloated) bellies was an Indian movie set to English text (google: Benny Lava).

At work, yesterday, the final big day of presentations, over which the students had obsessed intensely ever since I started teaching, had arrived. They had all taken the feedback to heart and outdone each other in flow, logic and visual esthetics. We have all come a long way since we started this experiment three years ago. Everyone was glowing with pride and a deep sense of accomplishment. After all, these projects are not irrelevant student projects but real attempts to alleviate suffering in the three countries selected. Paul was on the line (from Nigeria) to attest to this and comment (positively) on the experience.

I left work early to take care of some final course related matters and then joined everyone at home where preparations for our Axel fete were in full swing. This included Axel mowing the lawn himself while puppy Chicha kept putting a ball in front of the lawn mower, hoping for a throw and a catch and then a repeat.