Sleepless Thoughts

As most of us already knew, it’s remarkable how Craig and Angie and the kids have not only adjusted to life over here. We’ve also now confirmed in person that they wear the people, language, culture, geography, and climate here like an old soft robe. They have embraced the locals, who embrace them back. They chat with people like they’re family. They know where to go and not to go, how to find things, and put all us visitors at ease. The kids seem really happy; they find things to do. I can tell they enjoy their homework, while still whining about it. Angie has both a mother and a teacher’s heart. Craig’s a walking encyclopedia when it comes to the great ethnic diversity here. And there’s no doubt that he’s aware his knowledge has a purpose.


As I’m typing this, the power went off in the neighborhood at 2:30 in the morning for two hours but has now come back on. Good timing. If you’re going to have a power outage, better in the middle of the night, while people are either sleeping or they’re typing their blogs on battery power because they have jet lag and can’t sleep. There’s also a strange animal making noise outside the house that’s slightly annoying—either an exotic bird, a wild weasel, a neighborhood dog, or perhaps some strangely evolved combination of the three.