Muddy Fiets - Sundays in My City

Pronounced feets (as if you made the word feet plural by adding an 's'...as if feet weren't already plural).  Fiets means bicycle but fiets is singular so it should really be Muddy Fietsen but that doesn't sound like an English word made plural.  I digress.

I've done posts in the past about bikes in Amsterdam (here, and here, and also here). I can't get enough of them!

These were probably fished out of the canal the day or two before (all kinds of things from trash to bikes and even cars end up in the canals and have to be routinely removed). Seems like Amsterdam is doing a whole bicycle cleanup with new signs and markings about where you can and cannot park your bike and where to go retrieve your bike if it is no longer where you parked it.  Perhaps this is something they do on a somewhat regular basis but I've never seen anything on this scale.

Do you enjoy foreign language words that sound like English words as much as I do?

Reflections - Sundays in My City

I was in Amsterdam for a couple days and I woke up at 4:30am and couldn't get back to sleep. So rather than fight it I went out and took pictures in the early light.  There was almost no one out and about and it was a good chance to work on getting the good shots of the reflections in the canals.

Amsterdam remains my favorite city although it's popularity as a tourist destination is increasing, even in the off season, which makes me enjoy it less due to the crowds everywhere. So it was nice to walk around while everyone else was still asleep.


On one hand, I'm glad more people are getting to experience European destinations but cities like Amsterdam and Venice and Paris and even less-well-known cities like Dubrovnik are starting to suffer under the strain of coping with so many tourists. Venice is talking about limiting the number of tourist who can enter per day.  Dubrovnik put a limit on how many cruise ships can dock each day (although that just made the cruise companies go to larger ships).  I don't know what the answer is. I know it's not a simple solution. 

Not the Year I Expected

This past week marked the one-year anniversary of my boarding a plane with 2 dogs and starting a new chapter in Italy.  I had the worst cough and cold that I'd had in many years which made the flight miserable.  A doctor prescribed me cough medicine with codine but I suspect the pharmacist forgot to add both the codine and the cough medicine because it did absolutely nothing to help.  We arrived in Milan and I struggled to find anyone to assist a very tiny woman with 2 dogs and 7 pieces of luggage (you needed a 2 euro coin to get a cart and I had none).  Eventually we made it out (two very nice American women did help and I'm eternally grateful to them!) and a few hours later arrived at our hotel...exactly 40 minutes before my boss arrived to take me to lunch. The dogs and I spent 29 days in the hotel before moving to a house on my birthday (coincidentally, we moved into a house on my birthday in the Netherlands as well). 

The dogs and I settled in.

Some Peace Corps friends visited in April and we went to Bologna and Padova.

Having fun at the Padova Botanical Gardens

My parents came for the month of May.  It was great having them here!

I made them pose with all the statues.

They spent lots of time with the dogs.

We went to Trieste (Italy), Ljubljana (Slovenia) and Villach (Austria) on one trip.

A beautiful day in Venice

My Gran was supposed to be here in June but she canceled her trip.  I was able to cancel most of our plans and reservations but one ticket was non-refundable so in I took a ride on the Bernina Express and spent the night in Chur.

Glacial lake...still frozen in June!

Then...well, then things got a little rough.  Jack's spleen ruptured and luckily I realized something was very wrong and got him to the vet in time to have them remove it - along with 750 ml (3 cups) of blood - and he survived.  However, the mass tested malignant and we went for a CT scan to see if they had managed to remove everything cancerous or if the rupture had deposited cancerous cells elsewhere in his abdomen.

While waiting for those results I took a quick trip to Greece in early July.

When I returned from Greece we learned that Jack had 3 kinds of cancer and he began taking a lot of medications.  We have a great vet here and she's been wonderful managing it all.

At the end of August, Cheyenne had what I believe was a stroke and died on the first of September.  It was, and still is incredibly painful.  I am somewhat comforted by the fact that she lived an amazingly  long life - 21 years!! - and that she didn't suffer a long illness or decline.  But she was with me for over 13 years; she moved with me a total of 6 times and approximately 15,000 miles. Not having her is like not having a part of my body.

Jack, if you remember, came to live with us after Tex died and Cheyenne was extremely lonely.  He was there for her then and he was there for both of us at the end, providing comfort at a very difficult time. 

Jack has had ups and downs in his cancer battle.  When he made it to 2 months after surgery the vet was impressed.  When he made it to 4 months she was amazed.  Some say that caring for a sick pet is no different that caring for a sick person.  It can be physically and emotionally draining. So in October I took a little trip to my favorite place to recharge.

Last week we hit 5 months and Jack is doing well.  So to celebrate that and our one year anniversary in Italy, and just to get away, we went to the mountains for a few days.  Early in his treatment he would get tired very quickly.  Now he's feeling well and we were able to take long walks UP and down some very steep mountain roads.  When we weren't out walking, we sat by the fire - him in my lap and me with a book.

He hates having his picture taken and refuses to look at the camera.

We did try to see what this was but it turned out to be too far to walk and when we tried to drive there was a log truck in the road and the road was too narrow to go around it.

It's been a difficult year with many highs and lows.  I have no idea what the next year will bring - how much travel I'll get to do or how much more time I'll have with Jack.  Obviously, caring for him is my first priority.  I'm not planning any big trips right now although I do have two training classes scheduled back in the US in 2018.

Next month, for my birthday, I'm hoping Jack hits the 6-month mark!  I couldn't ask for any better gift.

Random Things I Like - Sundays in My City

Sometimes there are pictures that just don't make it into other posts. Its time for some of those.

You know you're in the Netherlands when you see...

See the skinny red?  It's the skinniest house in Amsterdam.

Entrance to the library in Liverpool.  It's beautiful inside!!

A long time ago some guy (see how well I paid attention on the tour!) charted the tides at the Liverpool dock for a whole month.  This fountain represents the water levels each day of that month.

Linking up here:

This Kid

When I was a Peace Corps volunteer in Ghana, teaching high school math at a poor village day school, I didn't have a lot of exceptional students (exceptional in the academic sense...of course they were all exceptional people!).  One day one of the teachers (my next door neighbor and the social studies teacher) asked me if I knew a certain student. Of course I knew him; he was the smartest kid in class.  He was also about to be kicked out of school because he hadn't paid his fees.  Seems his father was a drunk and his mother had abandoned them years before.  My neighbor asked if I knew of any donors (they had this belief that we were all somehow in touch with an endless supply of rich people wanting to donate money) who could offer him a scholarship.  I said I'd see what I could do.

I did try to find scholarships but actual scholarships (as opposed to fake scholarships I made up to disguise donations sent to me by friends and family) were very difficult to come by.  So I talked to the student and told him that I was looking for a scholarship but in the mean time I would pay his fees so long as he didn't tell anyone lest I have everyone in town knocking on my door asking for money. He agreed and he held true to his promise. I never did manage to get him a scholarship but I did make sure his fees were paid even after my time there was over.

The school where I taught was not a school that prepared students for higher learning.  Every student in the country takes what is known as the WAEC (West African Exam Council) at the end of secondary school (equivalent to grade 12).  They take tests in subjects whether their school had a teacher for those subjects or not.  How any student from the school where I taught (which did not have teachers for all subjects) passes that exam I will never understand (but clearly they are smarter than I am!).  So this student managed to pass the WAEC and gain acceptance into one of the best universities in the country. He wrote to me (on paper through the mail!) asking if I could help with the tuition.  How could I say no?  Tuition there isn't free but it's insanely cheap compared to American universities.  A small sacrifice on my part for a huge return on his.

After graduating with a degree in sustainable agriculture he began his 2 years of national service.  Then he went to work for an NGO (Non-Governmental Organization) working on reforestation projects.  When I went back to Ghana in 2013 he told me he was applying to graduate school programs. I asked him why he had waited so long and he said he felt that he needed to stand on his own feet (his words), work and save money in order to be able to pay for the exams and application fees himself since he had been so fortunate to have had someone help him get as far as he did.  Not sure where he got that attitude since he certainly didn't learn it at home.  But needless to say, I was proud.

He emailed me (how times have changed!) last year to say he was in Wales on a one-year masters scholarship (he's also doing a lot of volunteer work with a beach clean-up project there so clearly he got something from me :D).  I wish I could have been there when he got on the plane...got off the plane...saw a supermarket for the first time...tasted cheese...so many new experiences!  I'm going to see him next month and I'm so excited. He's an amazing kid (I suppose I should call him an adult now but he'll always be my kid) and I can't wait to help him have more new experiences (including taking him to my old stomping grounds in the Netherlands)!

Here he is when I saw him in 2008 (in yellow, he was an undergraduate student then) and in 2013 (we didn't have digital cameras when I lived there so I know I have pictures of him from way back then but I don't have them digitally).

My boy is definitely now a very mature, passionate, determined man and I can't wait to see what he makes of himself and how he betters his country. When you do something like the Peace Corps it isn't always easy to see if what you're doing is making any difference and sometimes it seems as if beating your head against a wall would be more productive.  My kid tells people that if I hadn't helped him he'd be the hardest working farmer in the village. I like to think that he would have found a way to make it to better things on his own but I'm definitely very proud of what he has done and so happy to have played a small part in his success.  And I'm so looking forward to seeing him soon!

Were Am I Going?

In 2 weeks I'm leaving on a three-week trip!!! WHAOO!!!

**IF YOU ARE INTERESTED IN DOING A GUEST POST ON THIS BLOG WHILE I'M AWAY PLEASE EMAIL ME dorothyfarfromkansas@gmail.com**

Here are some hints as to where I'm going...

First stop: Unpronounceable volcano names and these



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Second stop: Cymru,  Llanfairpwllgwyngyll and



[source]

Third stop: Mijn 2de land! 

More to come!!

Do you know where I'm going?  Have you been there?  Any recommendations?