farewell dinner de antemano

here we all are, el equipo eleanor, or the nimrodettes as some care to call us ;) that's eleanor, one of the coolest ladies i know, in the back with sherri, whose laugh i will miss most of all... in front is bita, who despises vegan brownies and canned fruit, and jo, who despite leading a parallel life to mine in central america, i had never met before coming to haifa... and me, grinning ear to ear cuz i finally managed to get all of us in one photo (it was quite a feat-- the batteries were dying and the waiter took the shot without really warning us... good thing we're all smiley people all the time anyway!)

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so we had sherri and my farewell dinner last night, even though we have about a month left til we leave, because between bita and jo's upcoming vacations, this is the last week all four nimrodettes will be in town... so eleanor took us out to eat at a tresfancy restaurant where, in my adventurous spirit, i had "mallard with cinnamon sauce", which the waiter described as a cross between a duck and a goose. hmm. it didn't taste like fowl, but the sauce was good :D

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i don't want to think about how much i'll miss them when i go... or how much i haven't learned form eleanor yet (sage that she is)... sigh.

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twas a really really nice night ! when i came home, though, i learned ghana had lost, even though brazil hadn't even played that well... grr... and that patrik had had a strange awkward unfair runin with a taxi driver, which left him in a foul mood... but even so, there were flowers waiting for me when i got home. though i think, in all fairness, maybe i should have brought him some!

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tonight is another departure seminar thingy by the office of personnel.. i guess leaving haifa is traumatizing to most? so far the only stressful part of leaving is not knowing where we'll be going... but only two more weeks til we know...

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p.s. click on the pic to enlarge-- happy smiling faces must be seen in their fullness! ;)

much more focused today

ohm.
was a bit disoriented this morning after a very vivid dream of having to drive a huge red bus with my mother and two people here from the world centre in the front seat with me, but no other passengers... in my dream i had forgotten how to drive, and the bus was going so fast and i just had to try and steer, but then we came to a toll booth and i somehow had to remember how to brake... deardeardear. stayed sleepy and disoriented til lunchtime, but after lunch got a bunch of energy and finally managed to get some work done. (yay for me!)

this sleepy/unfocused thing tho... have got to do something about it. maybe i need more iron.

(p.s. my favorite part of the picture-- the sleeping bear snuggling the globe :D )

...highly distracted...

it's about 5:00 in the afternoon on sunday and i am highly distracted. have been all day. maybe i'm just tired? i've had just two small inky tings to work on today, and haven't gotten myself to do them. at all. have the documents open my computer, and i keep staring at them (or rather, minimizing the window and surfing the internet and then realizing i should be working, start staring at the screen, and then start the whole process over again...)
did manage to eat a bowlful of yummy cherries, though. :) quite a (satisfying!) accomplishment!
yum.

gana ghana (i hope!)

so since ticolandia is leaving world cup germany after the first round, and cameroon somehow didn't quite make it (due to politics and prejudice, not to lack of talent, according to patrik... hmm... orgulloso? un poco!) i have come to support another small, odds-are-against-it country, thanks to the very enthusiastic crowd of ghanians at the world centre :)

ghana plays the u.s. tonight, and i have no remorse for supporting a country whose passport i do not posses over a country whose passport i do! there are about ten ghanians serving here, all who dress up in green, red and yellow to watch their country play, and you can hear them cheer three blocks away :D feels like home!

patrik and i will watch the game in the quite-crowded living room of a friend with cable, along with all the other ghanians and wanna-be ghanians, in ghana's chance to make it to the second round... it lost one game and won another, so has to win tonight (or a very lucky draw depending on how the other teams in its group play tonight)... fingers crossed {x}

visavis(a)

yesterday was the second big step in patrik's visa process for the states... the first being a crazy stressful trip to tel aviv for petition for an application for a visa (ooh, yes, you have to apply to even apply... so much paperwork!!!! and money... erg.) anyway, yesterday we went to herziliya (about an hour away) for his medical exam, which can only be done at one of two doctors in all of israel approved by the embassy... getting there we didn't realize we had to transfer to another train halfway there (i'm sure the announcements coming through the speakers said as much, but speaking only three words of hebrew, we didn't quite get the message)... luckily some guy came by to check our tickets and told us we had to get off the train and go "under the ground" the the other platform to catch another train... once we got to herziliya, we gave the taxi driver the address of the doctor's office, and he spent the next 20 minutes asking all the other taxi drivers and even the central office where the street was... ends up 9 ben shalom street is this tiny little culdesac in the suburbs, so he finally figured out how to get there... at the doctor's office, patrik had blood drawn for an hiv test, a vaccination, and then we were told to walk to the x-ray place (through the neighborhood and through a construction site to a very shady looking building), where they x-rayed his chest to check for TB, and then went back to the same doctor's office for the "complete physical exam"... which consisted of the doctor asking patrik "do you have any medical problems?" "no" "good". took his blood pressure and our 350 bucks, and patrik was given a clean bill of health. hmm. seems like a money-making conspiracy between the doctor and the embassy to me, but whatever it takes to get the visa... next adventure is the actual visa interview on 11 july... send happy victory thoughts!!!!

missing the grrrs...

this here is the grrs (pluralized for extra plumptiousness), cuteness catified.

trying to figure out where to go from here, and what we'll do when we get there. not much time left, just about six weeks til we board a plane to... la? abq? douala? san jose? it's out of our hands at this point, which means there's no worrying to be done, just trying to enjoy every bit of haifa and bahji while we can... we got all nostalgicos last night, realizing how much we'd miss being here. patrik especially, he's been here twice as long as me... but at the same time, we're so excited about what's to come (even the uncertainty of it all!) :D

anyway, missing the grrs and all the ones i love to hug who are an ocean away...

randomness yet again :)

blog has returned from holiday, slightly refreshed :)

just to clarify, blog being on holiday was simply a reflection of my laziness to post anything, not of any holiday-taking by me and patrik! ;)

here are some random shots from the last few... days?

weeks?

months?

oh dear.

(mostly in chronological order... teehee!)

three generations

when mamita and mormor were here for the wedding, mormor was so proud to say to everyone we met "look! three generations!"... and funnily enough, we weren't the only ones :D my sweet office-mate sherri also had her mom and grandma visiting, so we took a three generations shot at the bahji visitor's centre on the 1st day of ridvan ~*~

9th day of Ridvan

with carole and matthew just a few days before na'im was born... going to see them tonight after staying away for more than a week cuz of a nasty cold that had me home sick forever...

marriage class

patrik and i are in a weekly class with other young newly-weds that discusses marriage from a baha'i perspective... we went out to dinner one night with all of them... here's arjang (persian from australia) and tazien (persian from india) sitting across from eachother, francis (philippines) and nica (persian from canada) on the left followed by shadman (persian from australia) and radostina (bulgaria)... on the right are us and leila (persian/new zealander) and shaun (u.s.)... great fun :D

el equipo eleanor

sherri, joanna and i all assist the same secretary-aide... when we're not laughing and joking around... jejeje... missing from the photos is bita, who's here for a few months to help out while replacements for sherri and me are found... these were taken at the declaration of the Bab celebration, my last holy day here in haifa (*sigh*)

also that night, managed to get a shot with yas, and shastri, quien se colo a la foto to add some ethnic flair... jejeje

faranak, gilberto and sofia were just here on pilgrimage, which was so much fun (i mean, spiritual...) and coming soon are the stern-sapads from albuquerque and then andrew and anamargarita!!! more fun to be had! hopefully faranak will post some photos on her blog (she took lots, i took none, as usual!) we did lots of stuff... zoo, beach, movies... like i said, a very spiritual time :)