My supervisor will return tomorrow from a well-deserved vacation. I will bid her a sincere “welcome back” on Monday morning. Though I was “in charge” for a while, I really missed having her in our busy office. I will have to follow her lead when she is here but that is fine because I love […]

Susan and I were signed up to go on an Embassy sponsored tour of the Great Wall of China today. We have already seen that part of the Great Wall, but there would be a special lunch and a stop at a porcelain factory afterwards. I like those kinds of outings because someone else gets

I vividly remember hearing the town where I lived in Texas was flooding, while I was deployed to Saudi Arabia. Those were the early days of the internet and e-mail, and I received an e-mail from my daughter saying, “LaVernia is being evacuated because of flooding and I can’t contact Mom.” My daughter didn’t respond

We recently spent a week in Manila enjoying the tropical heat, crowded streets, chaotic traffic, and many other familiar sights and sounds of that busy city. It had been six years since our last visit. Even with our joy at being back, we needed a short break. We signed up for a tour of a

One of these days I will stop being surprised by my wife, but not today. We traveled and lived around the world for many years overseas and she didn’t want it to end. She misses seeing new places, tasting new food, and seeing how people live and work. Language barriers didn’t stop her curiosity and