Sylvia's Journal

We are back in winter and back at home. The short distance on the map made a world of difference otherwise. I woke up to snow on the ground as if we needed a reminder that we are back in the north.

Yesterday morning in Falls Church we got up fairly early for a vacation day but we did not want to wait until our hosts’ guests arrived. We would have emerged out of the guest bedroom directly into the living room in our jammies. This is OK with friends but not with total strangers. We had a delightful breakfast with our hosts and their visitors, an elderly couple, during which we heard all about how they are trying to raise a community out of poverty through networking and coalition building between civil society groups, government agencies and private citizens. The issues of rural American poverty are actually quite similar to those I see in developing countries. The common strategy is about building trust which comes from sitting together and talk and listen, not necessarily from orchestrated meetings (at least not at first). We ended our breakfast with an orange juice toast to Obama who knows how to harness local energies like that. We are all hopeful that he will continue to do this.

We drove into DC proper to visit our friends Tisna and Fred and admire the results of the long and painful renovation of their enormous brownstone near Dupont Circle. It was indeed magnificent. We also discovered that Tisna was hobbling around the house with a cane after a fall from an attic ladder on Christmas Eve. Son Victor who is an EMT diagnosed a sprain rather than a break which saved them from having to spend Christmas Eve and Christmas morning in a city hospital emergency room. Aside from both being Dutch, the same age, married to an American and working in the same industry we now also have a defective right ankle in common.

We had a lunch with several Dutch (Northern European/Lowlands) delicacies and then headed to the airport. We drove through the center of town and noticed much activity related to the inauguration: houses on the route being washed and painted and scaffolds for seating being erected amidst the general confusion of tourists who look at their maps rather than the traffic when they cross the streets.

National airport was also in a state of confusion. Delta claimed it had something to do with New York’s airports not releasing or accepting planes on schedule. We watched whole plane loads of passengers being reshuffled from one gate to another and back again and then squeezed into smaller planes. To our great surprise everyone remained in a good mood and despite the downsizing of the plane no one was left standing at the gate when it closed. Our plane was also hours late (presumably for the same reason) and got us to Boston several hours behind schedule. It was probably thanks to the very funny ground staff and flight attendants who saved the day with their good sense of humor, that no one was getting angry or agitated. In fact we were a jolly plane load that got deposited in Boston.

Despite our late arrival we came home before Tessa and Steve returned from work. There had indeed been a party, as we jokingly suggest when we leave the house for a few days to the care of our children. We could tell that from the bags of empties by the front entrance (but no empty kegs and at least the bottles were not hidden). The kitchen and living room were cleaned and most signs of a party had been erased. I did notice that the Palin action doll lay splayed (as if being quartered) on top of a vase amidst dried out roses. It is nice to have such grown up and responsible kids.