Back from two weeks in Nashville. A good time spent in the company of my (Vee’s) family. My brothers and I are all direct communicators with a love of debate, competitive personalities and a huge amount of respect for each other. Add a skill for story-telling and just the perfect touch of insanity and those around us are in for some entertaining evenings. We stayed with my Mom and under the tutelage of my Step-father and Mother, Stewart learned the correct mixture of soil needed to grow tasty vegetables and how to fry up a mean mess of fried green tomatoes. We both attempted to eat a bit of meat, but our vegetarian stomachs were not happy with it and our vegetarian taste buds were shocked to realize that the flavor of today’s meat didn’t come close to the memory of meats eaten in bygone days. This experience led to the joint decision that we shall remain vegetarians during our stay in Nepal, unless abstaining from meat-eating causes our host family to be offended in some way. A leg of our flight home was delayed in Denver, resulting in a Sea-Tac arrival time later than the last bus between the airport and our apartment. So, Tues. night/Wed. morning, we had an interesting, very complicated trip through Seattle, by train, shuttle bus, and taxi cab…rubbing shoulders with the ‘night-walkers’ of the city. We got home around 2am. Interesting how…no matter where you’ve been or how long the trip….it is always wonderful to get home.

We now move on to clearing our lives of material items. By the end of July, everything we still own will be very important to us and also be able to fit in a corner of Daughter Liz and her family’s garage.

Peace Corps has implemented our Pre-Departure Plan. This week, we have received several e-mails from Washington DC and Nepal containing assignments with due dates. Nepali language skills must show some progress before September.