End of my vacation - sigh!

I am at the end of my break.

I spent 3 days in Paris for meetings at MSF headquarters, then I went to Indiana for a bit more than a week with my brothers and their families. I missed on of my nephews, who is working in Boston this summer – that was a problem with my timing. But everyone is doing really well, and it was a good trip. We had some great meals together, Mike and I moved my niece to Ball State University for her second year there, and I met her boyfriend. Byron's youngest daughter was amazed that I had never heard of Wii - she thinks that I live on another planet (yes, Congo is sort of another planet). But the thing is really fun! I explored Louisville a bit - it is becoming more and more interesting.

Finally, we had a "flash flood", if natural disasters are your thing. We had 15 inches of rain in some places (38cm) in 75 minutes. And since they already had a very wet season, the ground couldn't hold any more. In the parking of University of Louisville, there were cars hidden in the water! It was incredible to see. But no damage in my brother's houses.

I returned to Lyon on a Tuesday, and flew off Friday to Bucharest, Romania, to see a friend there. He introduced me to some other people, and we had a great day at the Black Sea, near Constanta. I was really impressed with the country – it is more developed that I thought, and the Black Sea is great. Bucharest is a huge, beautiful city, although I had very little time to explore it. This is Ceausescu's parlimentary palace, the second largest building in the world after the Pentagon! I did visit a "village museum" - a collection of houses from everywhere in Romania, reconstructed in a beautiful park, demonstrating the diversity of old housing styles. Many thanks to my friends In Bucuresti for a great weekend.

Then back to Lyon for about 12 days. That also has been nice. I saw some old friends, I met some new ones, and I missed out on a couple of people. I did nothing constructive! But I had a lot of aperitifs and ate some really good meals. I even went out dancing a few times. I bought a lot of books, electronics, and gifts for Congo. I also stocked up on deodorant, razor blades and Chapstick for the next year. And I spent a lot of time on the internet, since our connection in Congo is so bad. I caught up on a lot of things, and spent some time on some naughty sites, too. Bad boy!

So now back to Congo. I leave Lyon with the fast train tomorrow at 7:46am. I will be at MSF again tomorrow for last minute meetings. Then, I take the plane Thursday morning for Kigali, in Rwandan, arriving at 10:40pm. So the MSF driver will pick me up, we go to the hotel, and then we leave for Congo the next morning. I should be in Goma hopefully around noon Friday.

It will be really great to see everyone there again. The month has gone quickly, but I would start to get bored if I stayed with work any longer. Mind you, it was VERY nice to do nothing, but now I am ready to attack our big projects in human resources which are waiting for me. Plus my 1000+ backlog of emails, I imagine.

Anyway, my next break will be in January! (I hope I don’t spend as much money as I did this time – my account is EMPTY – but it was worth it. That is what the money is for anyway – to enjoy. And I did.)