Hi Everybody! Sorry we've dropped off the blogging planet. I'm just always too behind to get it done. However, a few days ago I was informed by the blogspot people that they were going to cancel my blog due to inactivity. The ultimate insult! Now Pete has backup! (He's always hounding me to blog our trips!) So anyway, I went back and found a word file that Jessie wrote on our trip to Sweden last summer, so I'll post that one. Also while flying back from Morocco, I wrote in my journal my experiences there and also our experiences during another trip to Germany that the family took. I'll try to get those on quickly, but not necissarily in the correct order. In the meantime I thought I'd post this really pathetic apology so that the blogspot people wouldn't cancel my blog! : ) I'll post the others soon! Love, Denise

The Monkey Train

Peter forgot to add one of the most interesting 30 seconds of our trip to Bari. They call it the Monkey train....Da da da Daa! Sounds crazy right? It was! We were told by friends to bring plenty of peanuts for this event so we came prepared. What we weren't prepared for was the huge long line to get on. Well, line is not quite the right word for it, for there is no such thing in Italy, it was more like a huge mass of aggressive people pushing against each other for 45 minutes. We were finally herded on to, or rather IN to this "train" which was actually several cages linked together on wheels which could drive into the monkey's habitat and stop. Once inside we utilized some little pipes which you could feed peanuts through, allowing the train to safely attract throngs of monkeys without any possibility of a monkey attack. My video begins at this point, and the rest of the video speaks for itself. At some point all the monkeys jump off the train, possibly because they have been tazered, I mean trained to do so. They were very aggressive cute little things, probably due to the fact that they know they have only 30 seconds to shove and push their way to those peanuts. In fact, these lower primates' behavior was much like the behavior of the chaotic, unruly crowd trying to push their way onto the train. Maybe we really did evolve from monkeys!

Notice the little baby monkey hanging onto his mother? Oh, how cute! And there's this monkey next to Nicole that actually gets his whole arm through a little hole in the back. Sorry the video is so spastic, but it reflects the general atmosphere of the ride! I really couldn't tell what I was capturing since the sunlight was so bright, contrasting with the shadow of our completely surrounded train. Watch Pete and I simultaneously trying to help all the kids shove peanuts through the pipes as fast as possible, adding to the general upheaval!

Our trip to Bari, by Peter

Hey we're back, this time we're posting the "Bari safari." We all had about a week off from school so we decided to go to the Bari safari, we got there late at night so we spent the night at a hotel. The next day we went on the safari, a drive through zoo. The first sign of animal life was a big-horned-sheep every one got a big kick out of that!! Then we went to the lions den, there the park rangers showed off by getting out of the car pretending to direct traffic, so still in the cat family we went to see the tigers, we went 2 times around so we could get a better look and got to see a cat fight (except me because I was in the back looking at the other tiger.) Nobody was directing traffic in their pen...They looked really vicious!After that we went through black bear lake. It wasn't to cool (bears are too lazy.) And then the Elephants, they had canals around were they were so they couldn't get out, but we did find out that elephants like tangerines!! Then came the giraffes, every one loved that. If I could do it again I definetly would. So here is proof that we had part of a giraff in our car!!!

This is Lenny, he is a camel. He earns his living by walking around a zoo asking people for food.

We met Lenny at the zoo, he liked us very much.

He liked our food a lot too

Infact he was very upset when we left!

He continued following our car once he figured out that no one else had food as good as ours. So we gave him some more food!!

And we took a fantastic picture together before we left!!

Brussels, Belgium for Valentines Day

Ok, so I had a conference that I had to go to in Brussels on the 12 of February. Because travel out of Naples is difficult for connections, I have to travel the day before and cannot return until the day after. I went to this same conference a year ago and was impressed with the city center how gorgeous it was. So, I went to Denise and told her that I wanted her to go with me and I would take some leave after the conference so that we could spend a little bit of time there.

Now she told me no, she couldn't, the kids are in school, her callings make her irreplacable at church and the living room is dirty, the laundry isn't done and Paul is terrible so no baby sitter would sit for him.

So, I bought a ticket and told her she could either go, or we could throw it away. Once I put it like that, she found a way to clean the living room, get the kids to school, we drugged Paul (just kidding, of course for you no humor kind of people), did the laundry and found our way to the airport the morning of the 11th. What you see in this first picture is Denise in the window of our room, overlooking the tower in the Gran Place of Brussels. We had a gorgeous view only a couple of hundred yards from the city center.

So, after my conference we took a tour of the city. It was COLD!!! At least when you're from Naples, Italy it was cold. Temps were hovering around freezing and it was raining or sleeting a fair amount of the time. Nevertheless, we had a great time and came home on Valentines Day. It was a nice break.

Here is Denise in the Gran Place at night.

And here is Denise touching the guy's statue who was killed for resisting something from someone and now it is good luck to touch the statue. What's up with that???? What good luck did he have??

Here is the little old man out playing his violin in the cold for Denise. It sounded good.

And at the Atomium, made by Belgium when they hosted the worlds fair, some time. It some kind of atom enlarged twenty bizzilion times. To most people it seems big, but Denise and I handled the size quite readily.

Here is Denise in the antique district, which could be a blog in and of itself....but I will spare you the pain of seeing a beautiful Luis the 14th dresser for 27,000 Euro (add 30% for dollars).

And finally, if you dance, you have to pay the fiddler!

And last of all, here I am high-fiving my old buddy and mentor, Don Quixote!

See you all later!

Croatia, Albania and Macedonia

Well, since all of my attempts at peer pressure to get the rest of the family to update the blog have been a dismal failure, I am going to have to start doing this myself! In the meantime, since from the family trip, Venice never got posted and Jessica and mine and Gerald's (our friends from Poland) trip to Auschwitz never got posted, I am going to depend on you readers to help me put pressure on the family to keep us posting. We really have a lot happening that is worth posting.





With that said, I have recently made a couple of trips where I forgot to bring the camera and one where I did remember. So, here is my update.





CROATIA.

I went to Croatia for ten days last October. I quite liked Croatia and look forward to going back.

Well, I went to post some pictures, but can't find them, I will find them this week and put them up. It was fun, I was doing an evaluation of thier forces and had a lot of fun. The food was great and people were quite friendly. We were kind of out in the sticks, but in a quite reasonable, new hotel and the cost of the hotel, plus a big breakfast every morning and a large dinner every night, averaged about 28 euros a day. Nice! Also, they have a number of National Parks, which I was able to go to one which was quite gorgeous. You just have to watch for the minefields, a little nasty reminder of this little spat that they had with Serbia a few years ago!

Albania.

I did a quick trip to Albania here in January. It was nice as I got to travel with our four star in a Gulfstream III. I can only tell you that is the way to travel. Since I was going with the four star, we would just go get on the plane here at the military airfield, fly straight to the airfield there and get off and move it. Much nicer than the full day trip if I were to go commercial.

So, on to Albania. Sorry, no camera, so only the visual image. What a country, very friendly, good food, but way way behind the times. The capital has a million people, up from about half a million, ten years ago. The infrastructure has not caught up. There are dirt roads all over the capital, and some that are not dirt, but are worse because they are an endless series of axle busting potholes.

My guys picked me up from the airport in a Land Rover Defender 110. Good thing, it was the perfect vehicle for driving around the capital! Food there is quite good. It is a primarily muslim country and really pretty cool. When you drive around it is like all of those pictures that I used to see as a kid from National Geographic taken in the old USSR. People walking around herding sheep and goats. Donkeys walking along with bundles of "stuff". Quite quaint over all. They have along way to go, but are friendly and open.

One interesting there is that the influence of italy right across the adriatic is such that as I wandered around, often times no one would speak english, but they would speak Italian, so I was still able to get by. It was fun.

Macedonia.

On the same trip, we left Albania and went to Macedonia for a couple of days. The first day was all official visits, office calls and VIP meals. The second day was pretty fun as Macedonian SOF hosted the four star for a day of skiing. Since I was there with the SOF guys, it was nice that I was able to spend the day skiing also. So, not something that everyone can brag about, but now I have skiied Macedonia!

With that said, Macedonia is a mix of Eastern Othodox and about 20 percent Albanian muslim. Thier infrastructure is quite well established with quite decent infrastructure. I was walking around the city one night and found a little antique shop. I ended up buying a pair of WWII German Mountain Corp Snow shoes that were in very good shape for fifty bucks. Sorry kids, that momento was for Dad! I will hang them on my wall back in Colorado. The food there was good and I think that it would be fun to get out and see the country side there.

After skiing there, we were at an official dinner with the Minister of Defence and their Chief of the General Staff (equivilant of our Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff). The official talk had died down, and our boss asked about a calander on the wall that showed a bunch of SF guys doing cool things. As they were talking, I butted in with a positive comment about their unit. I guess thier Chief of the General Staff, being a former SF unit commander, liked that I said what I did to our boss as after the meal, he grabbed me outside and pulled me aside. He shook my hand and gave me one of his personal coins and then told me that he expected that when I came back, when not if, that I was to contact him for a personal office call! Intersting. I will probably be back over there in the next while and will make sure I do what he told me to do.

In all of these places, I have made good professional aquantainces that are building into friendships, so it is quite rewarding work.

Sorry I didn't get any picture in either place. I realized after I was at the airport that I didn't have my camera. Sorry, I will try to do better in the future.

See ya!

Pete

Trolls!

Merry Christmas and Happy New Year

Dear Family and Friends, 25 Jan 08

It is Christmas Day and another exciting year has come and gone. We hope that all of you have had a very Merry Christmas, and that your lives are centered in Christ and that his comforting influence is with you during this season in which we celebrate his birth.We have had a great year, full of excitement, stress and growth.

The family arrived in Italy last December. We got into a house here in Naples in January and the kids started into Italian school in mid-January. It has been an exceedingly hard road for the kids, going cold turkey into school the way they did, essentially not speaking a word of Italian. There were a lot of hard days. Days when they came home crying, wanting to quit. But between Mom comforting them, tutors helping them, Dad holding the line and a slow but steady increase in their understanding, comprehension and ability to speak Italian, they are all little Italian speakers and day-by-day they get better.

Interestingly enough, in the beginning, they all thought that Dad was a hero because I could hack out enough Italian/Spanish/Portuguese to get by. Now, Dad’s unique form of Italian and his crazy non-american accent (mostly I get mistaken for eastern European) just brings corrections from the kids, where I once received their adoration. In any one sentence, it is not out of the question that I am corrected as many as four times on grammar or pronunciation. Why should I take an Italian class, I walk around with a bunch of full time Italian tutors! We have had some very good trips this year. Scroll down to see a record of some of our fun family times.

We have truly loved our time here in Naples. Naples is a crazy place, dirty, disorganized, inefficient and seemingly filled with grumpy, gruff Neopolatans who speak Italian when they want to, and napolitano (the local dialect, not Italian) when they want to be incomprehensible. Under their rough exteriors, there is a usually a warm and open person who once the ice is broken, is ready to do anything for you.

We are very active in the church here. Mom is the second counselor in the Primary and the District Young Women’s President. I am the only counselor in the Branch Presidency. Since the Branch President doesn’t speak any English, I end up handling most of the English speaking issues in the branch. I now conduct meetings in Italian. The first time was funny. As I was hacking through Italian during the opening of the meeting, the little old Italian ladies started correcting my Italian from out in the congregation! It was a little comical and humbling at the same time. We also have the missionaries over a lot and work with them a lot. They seem to enjoy our family and that is good for them and us also. Well, we will be here through Jan 15, 2011. We would love to have you come and visit us. We are looking forward to the next year with enthusiasm and wish you and yours a Happy New Year!

Pete, Denise, Jessica, Peter, Nicole, Rachel, Paul

Christmas Eve, Dad took the kids down town Naples to give Mom some Christmas prep time.