We left Wednesday morning for Washington DC. Two events with a weekend in between triggered this mini vacation for Axel. He cashed in his points from American Express and got himself a free ride on my flights. We are staying at the Monaco hotel on the edge of Dc’s Chinatown. It is the old post office, refurbished in the style of grand old travel – when travel was painless and only for the happy few.
This was the same hotel I arrived at exactly three years ago, flying in from Kabul to present at the end of project conference of the LMS project I had served on for 5 years (plus all the four previous projects, each lasting 5 years).
One of our project’s invitees was the man who later became the DG for human resources in the Afghan ministry of public health. We went out to the suburbs to an Afghan wedding hall and had a great Afghan meal.
Along the way from Kabul to DC a virus settled into my inner ear. At the start of the conference I began to have this spinning sensation. I do like such spinning just a little bit (I used to love midways) but not the severe vertigo that quickly developed. I spent much of the morning lying on the ground with the world spinning around me. I did eventually do my presentation, sitting with my back against the wall and holding on for dear life. And then I spent the next 6 hours in the GWU hospital emergency room. The next day I flew back to Kabul.
And now I am back here with all these memories and my hubby. I have my feet firmly planted on the ground, in spite of the bad ankle. We had dinner with friends, interrupted for me by my weekly one and a half coaching telephone class – only 17 more to go. We had to let several metro trains go by so I could finish the call on my cellphone.
Today we are launching the Johns Hopkins project we are a partner on, the project that took me to Zanzibar and Ivory Coast earlier this year.
Sylvia's Journal 
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