Thanksgiving

Mission Trip Haiti: Business as Usual, Almost — Part 2

Everyone was shocked; I hadn’t even once considered that the epicenter could be Port-au-Prince.

My first reaction was untempered, “Let’s go! People need our help!” However, Bruce kindly and patiently explained our position: a group of white people, with no experience in disaster recovery, who can’t speak French or Creole, and don’t have place to stay, food to eat, or water to drink. Of course, Bruce was right; we would have been more of burden than anything. I guess that’s the kind of insight one gets after working in Haiti for twenty-five years.

Life continued, more or less, as normal. Bruce was working overtime trying to coordinate relief efforts with his organization, CrossWorld, and we did what we could for the people of Port-au-Prince from where we were by praying. The only real impact to us was that our days were a bit shorter since Bruce had so much going on.

DSC_5281
18.0 mm || 1/250 || f/3.5 || ISO200 || NIKON D70
, Nord-Ouest, Haïti


DSC_5290
70.0 mm || 1/320 || f/4.5 || ISO200 || NIKON D70
, Nord-Ouest, Haïti


DSC_5291
38.0 mm || 1/400 || f/4.2 || ISO200 || NIKON D70
, Nord-Ouest, Haïti


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Happy and Giving Thanks

Thanksgiving was different this year. We’ve almost always had it at my parents house in Seattle. Even over the last four years I would fly back to have Thanksgiving in Seattle. There have been two times when we haven’t had it at my parents house: 5th grade (1996) when we had it in Idaho and another time we had it at a family friends place.

This year we had it at my Aunt’s house. My whole family was there (4 people), my mom’s sister and her family was there (another 4), my mom’s other sister and her family (6 people), my mom’s brother, my dad’s brothers’ family (4 people), and Grandma.

20 people and 5 dogs. It was pretty packed.

It was nice to be around people. A little over whelming to be around 20 people.

Hilarity ensued when we launched into a massive game of telephone pictionary:
DSC_6062

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Sarah Plants

Ben recently told me that a casual acquaintance of ours, Sarah Plants, had recently passed away due to cancer. I didn’t know her very well, but saw her quite a bit since she played Ultimate Frisbee on the UW team. Doug, her husband, also lived at Your Mom’s House last year with Ben and Quinn, so she was over quite a bit. I last saw her at Thanksgiving and she seemed very happy.

From thedaily.washington.edu:

Plants, 22, died Feb. 7 of a brain tumor linked to Li-Fraumeni Syndrome, the same rare hereditary disorder that claimed the lives of her father and brother. She was diagnosed with the disorder in October.
…
Plants had survived cancer as a toddler. She suffered from adrenal cortical carcinoma, or cancer of the adrenal gland above the kidney, and went through chemotherapy at 16 months old.
…
Plants was 29 credits short of earning a degree in Public Health. When she died, the University gave her an honorary degree. She had planned to go to graduate school to study nursing.

She was captain of the UW Element women’s Ultimate Frisbee team and the coach of an Ultimate team at Whitman Middle School.

Death is a bitch, cancer even more so.

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Busy

Things have been busy around here of late. This next week will be even harder.

AEM Exam tomorrow, Digital Logic Exam on Friday, Information Systems Exam a week from tomorrow.

I also fly out a week from tomorrow.

Fluids Project due on Thursday. Digital Logic take portion of exam due on Friday.

Fluids homework due Wednesday, Friday, and following Monday. Information Systems homework due Monday and Wednesday. Engineering Circuit Analysis homework due tomorrow and a week from tomorrow.

Then Thanksgiving.

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