Anne-Claire and Simon's Page

New Photos of Liam

2010-02-14T21:43:00.002-05:00

Hi all -- I will continue to post photos of Liam (and perhaps of other things from time to time) at this Flickr address: http://www.flickr.com/photos/47069275@N05/

All best,

Simon

A few more photos of Liam

2010-02-03T18:58:00.003-05:00

We've been home for a couple of days now, and everyone's doing well. Liam seems like a very sweet little guy. He's eating and sleeping and doing all of the other things babies are supposed to do, while his parents are trying to nail down a routine that lets them both get some sleep while still getting to spend a little time with one another. So far so good.

Here are a few photos from Liam's first couple of days with us:

Liam Neville Nicholson is born

2010-01-30T14:56:00.000-05:00

Anne-Claire and Simon are very happy to announce the arrival of their son, Liam Neville Nicholson. Liam was born in Washington DC at 5:57pm on Friday January 29, weighing a robust 8 pounds 9 ounces. He gave his mother a long day, but Anne-Claire was amazing throughout and will soon be ready to take the little guy home.

A few photos of Liam Neville Nicholson

2010-01-30T14:54:00.000-05:00

We’re back!

2007-05-28T16:08:00.000-04:00

And once again I’m way behind on the blog… which means I have a lot of territory to cover since we visited about six countries since I last wrote. But I won’t be writing much this time since by the time you read this we will have spoken with most of you.

So here’s the run-down…

Malaysia: In Malaysia, I (Anne-Claire) hopped off the boat and flew to Thailand (after just one day exploring Penang) to meet my little brother Guillaume for a ten day backpacking trip. This meant that Simon sailed from Malaysia to our next port of call, Vietnam without me. So I’m not too sure what he got up to while I was gone… it was some combination of teaching, grading and barely sleeping, I would guess… I’m sure he had more fun than he let on, but he has certainly been a very busy boy.

Thailand, Cambodia: Guillaume and I, in the meantime, had an exciting few days exploring the northern part of Thailand – the area around Chiang Mai, the cultural center of the country.

We hired a private guide and went on a three-day trek through hill tribe areas, sleeping in the homes of Karen people (a tribe that originated from Burma). Our guide, Pot, was fantastic and we had an absolutely fabulous time hiking, eating amazing food that Pot cooked for us, playing with the children of the villages where we stayed, and helping (very unhelpfully) with various village chores like separating rice grains from whatever it needs separating from – I don’t have the vocabulary to even describe this process.

From Chiang Mai we flew to Phnom Penh in Cambodia where we stayed just one day and night. And rather than seeing some of Cambodia’s amazing sites like Angor Wat (which is hours away in Siem Reap) or the Royal Palace in Phnom Penh, we spent the little time we had visiting memorials of the Khmer Rouge period – the mass graves or “killing fields” just outside of Phnom Penh and Tuol Sleng, the prison in the city where eventual killing fields victims were held before they were slaughtered. It was a sobering reminder of how horrifying humanity can be – and it makes me wonder what it takes to get to that point. Is it much easier than I think?

If you’d like to hear how someone who really cares about their blog describes their own experience in Cambodia (a few years ago), check out this great account: http://www.edwebproject.org/susanne/phnompenh.html

Vietnam: Guillaume and I then traveled by bus from Phnom Penh to Ho Chi Minh City to meet Simon the day he arrived in port. We then had a few days in Ho Chi Minh City with Guillaume before he took off for the beach. I had been to Vietnam in 2001 with a friend of mine – we had backpacked through Thailand, Cambodia and Vietnam for five weeks. So it was really interesting to see how things had changed. The last time I had traveled overland between Cambodia and Vietnam, the main road between the two cities was basically a dotted line – a little bit of road, a ten-foot wide three-foot deep crater the result of a bomb 25 years earlier, another little bit of road, another massive crater, and so on. Half the time spent driving down this road was spent off the road, trying to navigate around the holes. And this was during the dry season – in the rainy season the road became completely un-navigable, I imagine.

Anyway, seven years later, the road is now fully re-paved. And Vietnam is booming. It’s been growing at around 7.5% for the last five years or so and Ho Chi Minh City is at the center of all this economic growth. The streets are swarming with motorbikes, some with entire families on the backs of them. Crossing the street is an interesting experience. Anyone who has traveled to Southeast Asia will know what I’m talking about. The protocol for crossing the street is this: you step out (whether or not there is a gap in the traffic) and start walking at a steady slow pace across the street as the swarm of bikes navigate around you without slowing down one bit. It works beautifully, although it can be a little scary. When in large groups, it’s best to pair off in twos and be sure to be walking exactly side by side to create the smallest obstacle in the road possible.

In Ho Chi Minh, Simon, Guillaume, our good friend Reina (who had been working in Vietnam the week we arrived and stayed on to spend some time with us) and I took a little time viewing some of the war memorials and museums including the Cu Chi Tunnels. The Cu Chi Tunnels are a network of more than 150 miles of tunnels that were constructed over a 10 year period, creating an underground complex for 16,000 guerilla fighters just 22 miles outside of Ho Chi Minh City (I got some of this information from someone else’s blog, so don’t hold me to these facts). The tunnels are more than just tunnels – everything was taken underground from hospitals to kitchens to sleeping chambers and air raid shelters. Some of the tunnels go as deep as 23 feet. It was originally constructed for the war against the French, then later used in the war against the Americans – “the American War” as they call it. The place was a death trap to any American going in, which the US military soon understood, so they eventually tried to bomb it out of existence, but this strategy was quickly discovered to be futile. The bomb craters on the land above the tunnels stand testament to the B-52’s vain attempts.

We all went down into a section of the tunnels enlarged for Western tourists and traveled a short distance of maybe 100 yards or so (so five-ten minutes underground). And we all came out feeling very relieved to stand up and breathe fresh air, sweating profusely, our legs shaking from scampering along with our knees by our shoulders, having bumped our head and scraped our backs a few times along the way. I can’t imagine having had to live like that for several years. It’s an amazing testament to the Viet Cong’s ingenuity, courage, and determination.

China

This port was certainly interesting, but I can’t say it was fun. Part of the reason it was a little less enjoyable than the others is that we went on a 70-person monument-filled bus tour and Simon was trip leader – meaning lots of headaches and conflict mediation.

We’ve learned (what we already would have guessed) that this is decidedly not our preferred way of travel. Nevertheless we saw some amazing sites, from the Great Wall, the Temple of Heaven, the Forbidden City , and ajaw-dropping Chinese acrobatics show in Beijing to the Terra Cotta Warriors in Xi’an. I think I’ll just stop here on China and let you enjoy the photos.

Japan – Our final foreign port

Japan was fascinating. For such an advanced industrial country it is amazingly insular. We had an easier time withdrawing money from an ATM in India than we did in Japan because their banking system does not take international cards. You must have a Japanese bank account to use 99% of their ATMs. Very little, too, is written in our alphabet, although there’s apparently a lot more English writing than there used to be. Walking around in Japan gives you some idea of what it must be like to be illiterate. You see that there’s tons of information available all around you (there are a million signs on every building) but you can’t read any of it. Even if someone kindly writes down the name of a place you are looking for in Japanese characters, it’s hardly helpful since it takes a tremendous amount of concentration and an exceedingly careful eye to identify a matching character among the optical chaos in front of you. Perhaps if we had more than five days it would have gotten easier…

We had a wonderful time though, visiting a former employee of Simon’s dad who lives in Kyoto. She took us to see the Nijo Castle among other things which is famous for its ‘Nightingale Floors,’ cleverly designed wooden floorboards that creak with the slightest pressure. They sing like nightingales so that no one could sneak up on the shogun in his own home. Unfortunately, we were not allowed to take pictures inside so we have nothing to show…

We also went to Gion, Kyoto’s most famous Geisha district and saw a number of Geisha’s walking down the street, in a hurry I’m sure, to get away from the gawking tourists. (It’s probably difficult for a geisha not to appear in a hurry, as they can only step forward a few inches at a time in their narrow kimonos, so to walk at a normal pace they must take many tiny steps.) The whole experience was quite bizarre, though. Tourists treated the women like they were animals in a zoo – pointing at them and loudly exclaiming “there’s one!” and then jumping out in front of them to take a photo so that the geisha was forced to walk around them.

We also spent one day in Hiroshima, and walked by the “Atomic Bomb Dome” – the closest surviving building to the location of the bomb's detonation and now the center of the Hiroshima Peace Memorial Park. Only the skeleton of this beautiful building remained. Near the park is the Hiroshima Peace Memorial Museum which was truly powerful. Students in one of Simon’s courses were asked to gather “peace artifacts” in each of the ports on the voyage – embodiments of peace in the countries and among the peoples we visited. A snapshot of the whole city of Hiroshima would have qualified. The city, after enduring and reemerging from the horrors of the first atomic bomb dropped in warfare, is now a beacon for world peace – at once a potent reminder of the appalling effects of large-scale nuclear-age warfare, and a glowing representation of the power of the human spirit to overcome the worst atrocities. (I had Simon write this last bit.)

Going Home

After a one day stop in Hawaii (where we rented a Mustang Convertible for 12 hours with Mike Maniates, our fabulous academic Dean for the voyage, and Gene Hammond, a good friend and English professor), we headed for San Diego where we arrived last Tuesday (May 14). Simon and I are now back in Washington, DC where we plan to stay for the next two years. Simon will be teaching as an adjunct professor at American University for at least one year after he graduates this summer. And I have been awarded a two-year fellowship called the Mickey Leland Congressional Hunger Fellowship. I’ll be based in DC but will be traveling from time to time to various countries in Africa doing research on African organizations working in agriculture and rural development. We’re expecting exciting times ahead!

I think this may be my last blog update in a little while because I’ve discovered through this process that I strongly dislike blogging. I’m sure you’re all really sorry to hear this. You won’t get to read our pages and pages of outdated news anymore…

Cape Town, More Monkeys, Mauritius and India

2007-04-01T08:09:00.000-04:00

Another few weeks have whizzed by faster than I could keep up with…. I’ve now got three ports to report on all at once. Sorry about this. I’m a hopeless blogger…

Cape Town, South Africa: If you ever plan to visit (or re-visit) Cape Town there is one place you cannot miss! Monkeyland at World of Birds! World of Birds is a bird sanctuary/zoo (the largest bird park in Africa, apparently) where you walk into the cages with the birds – over 3000 species of them – and the various other animals they have there. In the heart of World of Birds is Monkeyland where you can play with squirrel monkeys (pictured below and previously pictured, I believe, in our update from the Amazon) – tiny little monkeys that run around like they’re on speed. These monkeys run right onto your arms and head and will jump straight into your bag to see what they can grab. They have the softest little hands and fingers and the tiniest little faces. I wanted to put one in my bag and take him home with me. (Unfortunately, or perhaps fortunately, they check bags coming onto the ship.)

Aside from World of Birds, we also climbed to the Cape of Good Hope which sounds more adventurous than it really was. We drove most of the way and walked a half hour on a very-nicely built trail to the tip of the cape. The views (as you can see) were amazing.

It was quite interesting coming back to South Africa after having been there in July for our honeymoon, particularly since we had the wonderful opportunity to listen to Archbishop Desmond Tutu talk several times about the undoing of apartheid and the challenges South Africa continues to face since the transition. In Cape Town it is much easier to remain unaware of these issues as a visitor (and even as a resident, I would imagine) since it is one of the richest (and most white) parts of the country. Nevertheless, one does not have to travel far to see stretches and stretches of corrugated iron shacks. We heard that some of the townships continue to grow at rates of 10,000 newcomers per month.

Much of our time in Cape Town was spent with our good friends Holger and Andrea and their two little ones, Noah and Zoë. Holger and Andrea helped us organize our honeymoon project in Durban, South Africa, and we were glad to hear from Holger that fundraising is underway by the Mangosuthu Technicon (where we started a scholarship fund) in order to supplement the “Hervy Nicholson Endowment,” we created with funds from our wedding gifts. We are now working on the ship to try to have some of the donations collected from Semester at Sea students (last year the ship raised a whopping $35,000!) directed toward the fund so that it can start disbursing scholarships a bit sooner. Keep your fingers crossed!

Port Louis, Mauritius: Our next stop was Mauritius, a tiny Francophone island off the coast of Madagascar that has often been described as “paradise.” We only had three days there so it seemed like we hardly landed by the time we had to go… which means I don’t have too much to say…

But I have a poem to share with you, written by a friend of ours on the ship, about the Dodo bird – the now extinct native bird of Mauritius. The Dodo was from the pigeon family but over time grew so big and fat in Mauritius (where it had lots of food and no predators) that it could no longer fly by the time the Dutch arrived. This made them easy prey for the Dutch who ate the bird to extinction even though they thought it tasted disgusting, and hence called it “the disgusting bird.”

DODO BIRDS: THE TRUE STORY

There once was a pigeon that flew
To Mauritius, an isle with a view.
So much food was in sight
The bird ate day and night
And got fat while it grew and it grew.

But then the bird’s fate took a fall.
Hungry Dutchman with guns came to call.
Not able to fly
The fat bird would die
While its killers did dine, one and all.

They called it the ‘dis-gusting bird.’
Tough and foul to the taste, was the word.
Yet they made it their prey
Each night and each day
Till not one ‘Dodo’ more could be heard.

Chennai, India: How to capture our experience there? It was, for me (Anne-Claire) by far the best port experience thus far – and they’ve all been wonderful. It was a very packed five days, each day quite different from the other.

First, I should say that Semester at Sea’s arrival in India was announced on prime time television. Not many cruise ships, I guess, stop in India, particularly in Chennai – an industrial town covered in a thick layer of coal dust (as was our ship on the last day in port). So our arrival was eagerly anticipated – particularly by shopkeepers and rickshaw drivers!

On the first day we participated in a “Dalit Village Work Project” where we went to a Dalit school (a school for Untouchables – the lowest of the Indian castes) to paint and walls and gates. As we stepped off the bus in the village (a “village” within the city – Dalit people are essentially forced to live only among themselves) a marching band was playing for us, a banner was stretched across the street welcoming us, and everyone from the village was on the streets smiling, waving and reaching out to shake our hands and greet us. It was so overwhelming I almost burst into tears. I believe this was the first service project of this kind in this area and the people seemed so genuinely happy to have us there. I have never felt so welcomed. The work we did was almost nothing – but I got the sense that just being there to serve them was what mattered to them.

During the official welcome ceremony at the school, Simon, as trip leader, was pulled to the front of the auditorium and given an ornate and sparkling beaded necklace-type of thing that hung all the way down to his waist and was about three inches wide. Then they draped his shoulders with a purple and gold shawl. He looked like the village chief. It was quite funny. He gave a lovely speech that had everyone clapping and cheering. Unfortunately, this is the best photo I have of Simon in his garb...

Then we were all put to work. None of us volunteers seemed to be able to do things right as every few minutes someone new would come up and show us how to paint or sand “properly,” each time showing us a different way than the last person had demonstrated. Some volunteers were even told to work faster and to stop talking to the students and teachers who were watching us curiously the whole time.

At one point, some of the teachers noticed that I had a wedding ring on and asked me if I was married. I said, yes, I am – Simon is my husband. When they heard this all four of them began literally howling with laughter and giggling things to each other in Tamil. I asked them what was so funny but they only laughed harder. It was pretty funny although I wish I knew what they were laughing about…

(Incidentally, the story about our visit to the Dalit village – with Simon’s little speech misquoted – made it to the second page of the Hindu Times.)

That night we left by train for Kerala, in the southern part of India to spend two nights on a houseboat in the backwaters of Allepey, a place known as the “Venice of India.” After a fifteen hour train ride (which was a lot of fun despite the lack of sleep) we arrived at Allepey and were taken by car to our houseboat, pictured here, and met our crew of three: a cook, a driver and an assistant (in India, it seems, you can never have too many people operating a vehicle). We spent two days and two nights enjoying the sights from the boat and hopping off from time to time to see a village or two. In one village we were invited to a family’s home where they taught us a few phrases in the local language (there are over 100 different languages in India – I had no idea) and offered us fresh coconuts (of course). As we talked with them, more and more people came to see who we were and take photos with us. By the time we were ready to go, about twenty people had come by to meet us…

On the last day (back in Chennai) Simon stayed on board to catch up on grading while I went around town with a small group to do a bit of shopping and sightseeing around the city. We had the most wonderful rickshaw driver named Babu – pictured here – who took us around the whole day and protected us from other trickster rickshaw drivers. (For those of you who have never seen a rickshaw – here’s a picture.) In India, rickshaw drivers are notorious for not taking tourists to their requested destination and instead tricking them into going into expensive stores. The drivers receive a cut even if we simply walk in and walk out of the store so there’s quite a big incentive to play this game. It can be very frustrating sometimes – we heard fellow travelers say they sat in their rickshaw for up to a half an hour refusing to visit the store their driver was insisting they must go into. So we were very grateful for Babu who seemed to be a genuine kind-hearted man. When he found out that I was 31 with no children, he told me he would take me to a temple where there was a God to whom I could pray for children. He did take me to the temple at the end of the day and even bought me a prayer candle and walked me through the procedure. I prayed for a girl. (Not that we’re trying to have children right now – just to keep that straight!) At the end of the day (after he drove us around for nine hours) we rewarded Babu with a little over $35 which for India is about five times what we should have paid him. He was so happy he kissed the money and looked up at the sky and kept wishing us a good and peaceful life. That moment was, for me, the highlight of the trip. What I find so hard about traveling like this is that it’s so hard to really connect with people given the language barriers and the fact that time is so short. It’s nice to know that I will be remembered by someone at least for a little while after we leave, not just because that person received a bit of money but because we really enjoyed each other’s company (I hope).

That’s all for now… till next time!

Puerto Rico, Brazil and Neptune Day...

2007-02-24T18:18:00.000-05:00

So much has happened in the last few weeks I’m not sure where to begin or how to summarize it all. After three days exploring Puerto Rico we had our first long stretch at sea (seven days) before reaching Salvador, Brazil on the second day of Carnaval. I guess I’ll start with Puerto Rico…

Our highlight in PR happened upon arrival when the governor of Puerto Rico came aboard to welcome us. He was quite an amusing guy and there was a certain amount of fanfare over his presence. The most interesting part of his visit has to do with what we learned after he left: that the main reason he came aboard was to meet with Archbishop Tutu in order to ask the Archbishop to write a letter to President Bush asking for the release of two Puerto Ricans who have been imprisoned for thirty plus years over their advocacy of Puerto Rican independence back in the 70s. The archbishop was apparently happy to write the letter. Now we can wait to hear what the response will be…

As for life on the ship, there is never a dull moment, especially for Simon who has quite a busy schedule with eight o’clock classes every morning and frequent 23-hour days. (Since we are traveling east, we advance our clocks forward every few days to get us adjusted to the time zone of the upcoming port – and each time this is announced over the intercom groans can be heard throughout the ship). As for me, I’m finding the days slipping by all too quickly. I’ve been attending several classes, going to the gym nearly every day at sea, doing some yoga and Pilates, working on my dissertation, and having great conversations with the wonderful people on the ship (not in that order, exactly).

One thing that kept me occupied in the first few days between Puerto Rico and Brazil was organizing a surprise party for Simon’s 31^st birthday. Somehow all 75 people who attended this party managed to keep mum about it despite the close quarters we live in and when Simon walked into the faculty lounge the night before his birthday the whole adult shipboard community was there to yell “surprise”! The doctor on board even got into the ship’s kitchen (which, he discovered, has an escalator!) to make Simon an exploding volcano cake, having hunted around Old San Juan for some dry ice a few days earlier. It was a great party and the first of the semester.

(A funny story on the party planning: Initially I was planning the party just for Simon but soon found out that the husbands of two other women on the ship were having birthdays as well so it turned into a party for the three of them. So we placed an order for cakes to be served in the faculty/staff lounge and one of the other women said she would look into whether we could have the ship divide the total bill in three and put it on our accounts separately. Later on that day I was in class when this women came in, and leaning over two of the lifelong learners (non-students – usually in their sixties and onwards), said to me: “I checked with Solomon (the hotel director) and the threeway thing is going to work out fine.” Needless to say, the look on the faces of the two life-long learners was pretty amusing!)

In Brazil Simon and I did Carnaval for just one evening before flying out to the Amazon to spend some time with our good friend Eve who has been living in the Amazon for over a year, working with indigenous people to protect their access to the forest in which they live. We flew to a city called Belem in the northern part of Brazil and from there took a fishing boat to an island about an hour away from the city that just got electricity two years ago and where the only choices for public transportation are either a donkey-cart or a tractor-pulled farm cart. We chose the farm cart, which took us to a Pousada (a rest house) where we were the only foreigners that had been there in months from the sounds of things. Thankfully Eve speaks perfect Portuguese because we don’t speak a lick of Portuguese and the people there did not speak a lick of English.

The best part about this Pousada was their pet monkey that ran around during the day stealing food off of people’s plates, sticking his hands into the sugar bowls and licking his little fingers clean. We took some great photos of him in his cage which we’ll post as soon as we get to South Africa (we can’t post them until then because of bandwidth limitations on the ship). It was difficult to get photos of him at any other time because he ran around at top speed each time he had his freedom, climbing over people as they ate and leaping from table to table, usually trying to get away from the screaming kids who spent their time chasing after him.

On one of the days there we took a walk through the rainforest and encountered two boys (pictured to the right) whose father still does rubber tapping. Rubber tapping has pretty much died out in Brazil now that rubber is produced synthetically. But we passed by a tree that still had the rubber tapping markings on it (shallow V-shaped cuts around the trunk of the tree) right by where the two little boys were playing in the river.

And finally (back on the ship now), today was Neptune Day – the day we celebrate the crossing of the equator (although we crossed it before arriving in Brazil). This is a long standing tradition. Whenever a sailor crosses the equator for the first time, they must go through a special ceremony. This was the first time crossing the equator for probably 90% of the people aboard, so a very big event. At 8:30, King Neptune (the Ship’s Captain), Queen Minerva (the Executive Dean – a man) and the Royal Guard (the crew) marched around all the decks banging on drums, pots and pans, waking everyone up as it was time to start the festivities.

Before going through the ceremony, we are known as “worthless pollywogs” and after the ceremony; we are all promoted to “trusty shellbacks”. The ceremony goes as follows: first, the royal announcer introduces the king and queen, they take a seat, and then the royal announcer reads the “vows to the sea”, if you agree, then you may begin the induction. Next, you get fish guts poured on your head. Then you jump into the pool to “cleanse the soul and spirit, this pleases King Neptune”. (The key is to be among the first twenty people or so to do this since the pool quickly gets as disgusting as the bucket of fish guts – which truly stinks.) Next, you kiss the fish, promising to “respect the sea and all that is in it.” Then you kiss King Neptune’s ring, since he is king of the sea. And lastly, you get your head shaved, to represent a new beginning, and a new you. Simon had actually auctioned the chance to shave his head for charity and so found himself at the mercy of another professor and his wife who decided that simply shaving his head would be much too boring so they proceeded to sculpt his hair, resulting in the following sexy do:

I couldn’t work up the courage to shave my head (although I did think about it for a few whole seconds). Maybe next time I’ll be a bit braver.

More after South Africa… all our best to everyone!

Pictured to the right are most of the people who participated in the ceremony all the way to the shaved heads...

We made it!

2007-02-02T19:21:00.000-05:00

After many months of anticipation, we’re finally aboard the MV Explorer, at the start of our semester at sea. We are currently still in the Bahamas where we met the ship, waiting for Desmond Tutu to arrive (tomorrow, February 3) and for the seven hundred students to arrive the next day. We sail to our first stop (San Juan, Puerto Rico) on the evening the students arrive.

The ship this semester apparently has the most students it has ever had. And with Desmond Tutu and his wife sailing with us for the entire time – it is bound to be a lively voyage. So far, only faculty, staff and crew are on the boat and already the atmosphere is buzzing… everyone seems as excited as we are to be here, which is nice.

Simon and I have never been on a cruise ship before so we’re not sure how it compares to others but it certainly feels plush. (The fact that we don’t have to cook or clean for 100+ days is luxury enough for us! On top of that they make our beds and turn down our sheets at night – it’s all a bit much! Not that we’re complaining….) Our room is a little on the cozy side but at least we were able to pull together the twin beds we found separated upon arrival… and it’s really all the space we need since we’ll most likely be spending little time in our room.

We haven't taken any interesting photos so far to share with you because Nassau is not the island paradise one might expect of such a location… but I’m sure we’ll have lots to share with you all very soon. (If you’re interested in seeing pictures of the interior of the ship you can get a virtual tour of the boat using this link. Our room, pictured in this posting, is on deck 5.)

I’ll end this update here since I need to get cracking on dissertation and other work! (I’ll be writing most of the blog updates, by the way, since Simon has quite a bit of work to do teaching three new courses with 35 students each. (His class listings were apparently quite popular among the students.))

Our best wishes to all of you. Keep in touch!

Semester at Sea - Intro

2007-01-09T15:15:00.000-05:00

Hi all,

Our latest news -- Simon has taken a job as a faculty member on a program called "Semester at Sea" for the Spring semester. The program, which is affiliated with the University of Virginia, bills itself as a "floating university". Between the end of January and the middle of May we'll be in the company of around 670 undergraduate students from North America, along with around 25 or so other faculty, some adult passengers, and a number of staff, to live and travel on a cruise ship (see right) for 100 days.

We'll join the ship in Nassau, in the Bahamas, on January 30. From there, we'll visit 13 different ports in 10 countries during a round-the-world sailing. Days at sea will be teaching days (Simon has three courses to teach). And then in each of the ports the program offers a number of different side trips. We’re planning to join a few of those (and Simon has to lead a half dozen). There’ll also be time for us to do a few things by ourselves, and with others we meet on the ship.

Some of the things we're most looking forward to include:

meeting and spending time with Archbishop Desmond Tutu, who is acting as a Distinguished Lecturer in Residence for the entire length of the program;
a planned trip into the Amazon to meet with our friend Eve Bratman during our stay in Brazil;
catching up with our friends Holger and Andrea, along with their little ones Zoë and Noah, in Cape Town, South Africa;
some research interviews that Anne-Claire has planned in India and Thailand, on the issue of post-tsunami reconstruction; and
an overland trip Anne-Claire is organizing in Southeast Asia with her brother Guillaume.

We'll post semi-regular updates here while we're away, along with links to pictures. We'll also have good e-mail access while on the ship, so please keep in touch. We're looking forward to sharing the experience with you.

AC and Simon

Home Again -- Photo Links

2006-07-30T22:02:00.000-04:00

Hi all -- we're back safe and sound in Washington DC after our month honeymooning in South Africa and Zambia. We had a great time, and met a number of great people. (For news from our time in southern Africa see some of our earlier posts in the archives).

Here are some photos from the South African leg of the trip, and here are a few taken in Zambia. The South Africa photos start with some shots of Durban from the deck of Holger and Andrea's apartment. (Holger and Andrea are the friends we stayed with over there). You'll also see some photos of the two of them, plus plenty of shots of their little ones, Zoe and Noah. And then one or two shots of the beautiful Durban beachfront.

Our first week in South Africa was spent volunteering with an organization named ICare that works with street children in Durban. The next few shots show kids working in an ICare-run schooling and substance abuse rehabilitation program, and the remainder show us playing soccer with some folks at the Umhlanga orphanage.

After our week with ICare, we spent the weekend with Holger and Andrea at the Didima reserve in the Drakensburg mountains. The scenery was dramatic -- almost as spectacular as the All Blacks' win over the Australians that weekend. There are then some photos of us hard at work on a Habitat for Humanity build, and finally some blurry animal pictures from our final weekend in South Africa at the Ithala game reserve (Anne-Claire had the camera).

The Zambia photos are exclusively of and around Victoria falls, near the Zambian town of Livingstone. (We routinely forgot to take the camera out with us during our walkabouts in Zambia's capital city, Lusaka.) The pictures give a hint of the grandeur and overwhelming scale of the falls. However, they hardly do the place justice. It's without question one of the most spectacular natural vistas on the planet. After a day walking around the falls, we took an evening cruise on the Zambezi river (above the falls). The final few photos are of the river, the cruise boat, Anne-Claire's fourth or fifth vodka and orange, and some of the wildlife we saw during the evening. If you get close to the screen and squint you should be able to make out a rhino in the final shot.

Hope that you enjoy the pics. Thanks once again to everyone for kind messages of support.

All our best,
Anne-Claire and Simon

News from Africa

2006-07-20T18:00:00.000-04:00

How time has flown! Our two weeks in South Africa are now well behind us and we’ve been enjoying Zambia for a littler over a week. Next Friday, we will be returning to DC. In the meantime, we wanted to share a little news about what we’ve experienced so far. (Apologies that this is our first update – good internet connections have been a little hard to come by).

Our first week was spent with I Care, a Durban-based organization focused on helping street children. During this time, we visited a few shelters and spent an afternoon serving lunch and playing soccer at a boys’ shelter in one of the “townships” outside of Durban. We also helped out around the I Care office where needed and did a few interviews for a local paper and radio station to help promote the work of the nonprofit organizations we chose to volunteer our time with.

Our second week was spent with Habitat for Humanity as crew leaders for their annual “Youth Build” – a week long event during which six new houses were constructed. The houses we built are destined for people currently living in informal housing (i.e. shacks) in nearby townships and are part of a larger 350-home development initiated by former president Jimmy Carter. In 2000 President Carter came to this same site to inaugurate the project and participate in the building of the first home.

As crew leaders, the two of us were each responsible for a house and Anne-Claire was lucky enough to work with the future homeowner (pictured here) of the house she was working on. Her name is Muntuk; she is 33 years old, a mother of two children and a manager in a textile factory. Although as you can see in the picture she is a rather tiny woman, she did the work of two men during the time we were there – Anne-Claire could not keep up. To see more photos of some of the homes we were working on and some of the people we met, click here.

Overall we raised nearly $6,000 to donate to charity. As most of you know, we planned to split this between the two organizations we chose to work with. However, an opportunity came up that we felt we could not pass. We felt that this opportunity would be the best – most needed, most effective, and most lasting – use of the money that you all contributed. So, after careful investigation, meetings with relevant parties, etc, we decided to devote a majority of the money raised to a third organization – a tertiary vocational training school in one of the “townships” outside Durban – to create a permanent endowment to fund a scholarship program for students of nature conservation.

While we will need to wait a couple of years before the endowment reaches maturity and begins to offer meaningful awards to students, this scholarship is the first of its kind at the school, called the Mangosuthu Technikon, and will help, we hope, to attract more investments like this. Once the scholarship begins to be awarded on an annual basis, Simon and I will receive a letter from the recipient each year to learn about who they are and what they plan to do with their degree. We are very much looking forward to these letters in the future.

During the two weekends we spent in South Africa, our dear friends Holger and Andrea with whom we were staying in Durban took us to see a bit of the countryside near Durban. The first weekend was spent in the Drakensburg Mountains in a beautiful chalet in the valley below Cathedral’s Peak. In the second week, we saw zebras, giraffes, baboons, impala and other antelope, wildebeests, ostriches, monkeys, and lots and lots of warthogs at the Ithala wildlife reserve near Lesotho.

This past weekend was spent in the southern part of Zambia in Livingstone where the famous Victoria Falls are. It was an incredible sight to see. Simon is now in his second week of interviews for his dissertation research (on, for those who don’t know, genetically modified foods and Zambia’s decision not to allow GMOs in the country) and we’re enjoying getting to know a few Zambians through this research.

If we’re good, we’ll be posting another update after we return. Until then, thank you again for your generous support and encouragement. Thank you again for being there either in thought or in person on June 10. We’ll post all photos from the trip so far, including some photos from our volunteer activities, on Yahoo photos when we get back to the US.

Love,

Anne-Claire and Simon

Your Generous Donations

2006-06-26T18:02:00.000-04:00

Dear friends -- we leave today for South Africa. Your generous gifts mean that we've been able to wire close to US$6,000 to the organizations we'll be working with in Durban. Thank you all for your support. We'll post updates and photos to this site while we're away. Please check back if you have the time.

Links to Wedding Pictures

2006-06-20T18:04:00.000-04:00

Wedding Photos!
Follow this link for the professional photos from the wedding. The site may prompt you for a password -- the password is anneclaire1. The photographer, Will Kirk from Baltimore, did a wonderful job, and must have snapped a dozen photos of every person who attended. Please contact us if you'd like a particular photo (or several). We can send them to you via email. (But, remember, we're traveling all of July.)

And in case Will's photos aren't enough for you, here are links to wedding-day photos taken by Steph Faul, Carl Rigby, and Peter Howard.

For the brave among you, a NEW TREAT: Peter Howard Busts a Move.

In place of gifts ...

2006-04-22T02:56:00.000-04:00

For our honeymoon, starting on July 1st, we will be spending two weeks working with community organizations in Durban, South Africa. We are, instead of gifts, inviting you to make donations to help us with this work.

Note that in the next few weeks we will post to this website more detailed information about the work we will be doing with I Care and Habitat for Humanity. We will also use this website to share photos and stories of our time in South Africa.

For more details about the organizations we will be working with in South Africa, click here. (Please note that we will be paying for our travel and lodging. This means that all of your donations will go directly to the organizations.)

For information about how to donate, click here.

Thanks once again for your support – we are so excited to make this project happen with your help. We continue to look forward to your questions and interest.

Yours,
Anne-Claire and Simon
Click on our names to send us an email. We'd love to hear fom you!

Making a Donation

2006-04-21T23:42:00.000-04:00

Since both of the groups we are working with are South African charities, it is difficult for you to donate to them directly. So we have set up a bank account to keep all of your donations in one place. We will then transfer your donations to the organizations immediately prior to our joining them in July.

Please note that we will be paying for our travel and lodging. This means that all of your donations will go directly to the organizations.

If you wish to donate, there are two options. The first option is to donate online using your credit card, via a PayPal account we have set up. To donate using PayPal, click on the button below. You do not have to be a PayPal member to use this option. Just follow the on-screen directions for "non-PayPal members."

The second option is to make a donation by check (made out to us), or cash. (Please note that PayPal will keep 2.9% of each donation, so if you want more bang for your buck, option 2 is better).

About the Projects

2006-04-21T23:40:00.000-04:00

During the first week of our honeymoon we will be volunteering with a nonprofit organization named “I Care.” This is a Durban-based organization that focuses on improving the lives of street children and children orphaned by HIV/AIDS. For more information about their work, please see their website.

The second week will be spent with Habitat for Humanity, where we will be part of a team of volunteers constructing a number of houses in an area of Durban called Sherwood. The aim of the construction is to move families out of informal settlements into permanent homes with running water and electricity. Without this project, none of the families would be able to afford a permanent house. Click here for Habitat for Humanity’s website.

In Durban, we’ll be staying with our close friends Holger and Andrea, who have worked closely with I Care for some time. They commend it as a worthy and effective organization. And Habitat for Humanity is a well-known US-based charity, operating in many parts of the world. We are particularly excited to spend a week with them, since Habitat’s program overlaps with the work that Anne-Claire does in Washington DC, with the local nonprofit Manna Inc.

The Car-Pooling Page

2006-02-22T14:44:00.000-05:00

If you are driving to Gibson Island from Baltimore or from DC and have some space in your car for a passenger or two, please post a comment here. To do this, just click on the "Post a Comment" link that appears below. In your comment, please include the following information: where you will be driving from; how many spaces you have in your car; and a contact e-mail address. You might also like to include information about the time you think you'll be leaving the reception.

Alternatively, if you are looking for a ride from Baltimore or DC, please leave your request and contact details as a comment. And check back often for updates.

Best,
AC and Simon