December 1995

Dear everyone,

Another year, more grey hairs, a few more pounds, a sagging chin (or two) here and there, and our 50th birthdays looming in sight to remind us that we're more than half way finished on life's short journey.  But who can complain when we still have our health, our jobs, and we're living in Prague?  Not us!  Especially since we have been blessed with so much fun and adventure in the past 12 months.  The best part is that we have been able to visit and been visited by so many of our friends from our Samoa days.  We are so grateful to have kept up contacts with this fine group of people.

As can be seen by the theme of our Christmas card, our big adventure this year was a cruise to Alaska during the summer, ostensibly to celebrate our 25th anniversary, but two years late for that.  Be that as it may, we signed up for one of the Love Boats, reserved a junior suite with a splendid veranda, then sat back and watched some of the most gorgeous scenery in the world float by.  We saw plenty of wildlife too, including a few pods of killer whales and bald eagles diving for fish, did a bit of white water rafting, and then went salmon fishing in Skagway as well.  The salmon fishing was my idea; Sharon was indifferent to it, but, naturally, I caught only one fish too small to keep while she caught a humongous King salmon almost the size of her torso.  We decided to have the fish smoked, so we whipped out our Visa card and had the animal flown to Juneau for processing.  Besides the great expense that we had already accrued in catching the fish and sending it on its flight, Juneau was where our real troubles began.  Someone on the Juneau end of the operation gave our credit card number to a thief who managed to run up bills exceeding $1,000.  We found out about this scam from the Juneau police who caught up with the culprit.  Before the escapade was over, Sharon found herself testifying over the phone from Prague to Alaska at a grand jury hearing!  It took months for our credit card company to straighten out this fiasco.  Far from being a "gift from God" as the Alaskan Native Americans called it, our fish turned out to be the salmon from Hell.  And we still haven't tasted any of that fish!

We've had plenty of traveling this year in Europe as well, with skiing trips to Austria and several areas in the Czech Republic, a visit to Stockholm, adventures in Munich, hiking in the German Alps near Garmisch-Partenkirchen, and a visit to Moscow where we learned more about the failures of communism and how much we really appreciate Prague.  One of the best trips we took was in October of this year that combined a visit to Hintersee in the German Alps with touring the lake country of Austria, including a stop in Hallstatt, as pretty a town as one could ever imagine.  Each time that we go to either Germany or Austria, we are always in search of any run down neighborhoods that might exist, but so far we have not found any except in what used to be East Germany.  The Germans have certainly come a long way since WWII.

Not all of our year was fun.  We did get our Mercedes stolen while parked near our high school campus.  We got to the police about 30 minutes after the theft, but they were very discouraging.  By the time we got through with the paperwork, they assured us that we would never see our car again.  They were right.  We rented a car for a while, a 1991 Skoda, which is the local vehicle, and, after getting stuck in a near blizzard on a mountain on a ski trip and having to walk uphill for 30 minutes while carrying our ski gear and doubting our ability to survive, we vowed that our next car would have 4 wheel drive.  So, we purchased a new Subaru station wagon, mostly with the money from the Mercedes insurance, and now we are as happy as clams and just raring to have a go at the hills in Austria in a few weeks.

Our jobs have remained satisfying.  Sharon, after two years as high school librarian and junior high art teacher, is now a 4th grade teacher at my campus and enjoying it as much as she did in Ouagadougou.  Our school continues to grow, and in June, we graduated our first 12th grade class, the ceremony taking place in a 1,000 year old monastery.  Sure beats the old gym graduations that I remember.  As I write this, the construction of a totally new school is underway, and we expect to move in sometime in January 1997.  We certainly hope to be around to use the new school for many years to come.

And that's the way it is for another year in Prague at the end of 1995.