Summertime, and the living is ... wet

News of our world.

In this prosaic posting I will cover family stuff.

So, our big boy and girl, Zéphyr and Maya-Swann are now in Canada after spending a few weeks in Toulouse with their grandparents. My nephew Steven is sweet enough, year after year, to pick them up, take them here, take them there, deposit them, fetch them and keep them happy. On Tuesday they are off to Camp Manitou to explore their Canadianess!

Before they left we went for a weekend to Vang Vieng. You can read about a previous trip to Vang Vieng at http://mair-hyman.blogspot.com/2010/10/october-break-assholes-october-29th.html.

I am delighted to say that things have changed and the diabolical tubing station just off the Organic Farm has been removed. Calm and sanity have returned to the area and this time we were able to stay there with pleasure.

There are still crazy people running around the world, by the way. Michael Roy is an American who gives one faith that maybe, just maybe, America will become America again. His website is: http://threeruleride.com/

Sarah Melki is a French woman who built a bicycle out of bamboo and left Vientiane to ride back to France. She is presently in Mongolia. You can check her out at: http://bamboosara.wordpress.com/

Zephyr and Maya-Swann both did very well in school this year. This, and Cléa's academics, prove that in the Hyman family being a lousy student skipped several generations. I would like take this occasion to thank their teachers, Pierre Barret who taught Maya-Swann this year, Alain Leroux-Gasnier who taught Zéphyr and Jacques Barret who taught and inspired Zéphyr last year. To all the teachers and educators at the Lycée Hoffet French School in Vientiane – thank you...merci!

The house is almost silent now. With our two big monsters flying around the world on their own, the only (!) noise in the house is that of Saya Ephraïm David who is managing to fill the void with gusto.

Plans for the house are moving along, with Marie-Do and Olivier building a model to help us plan it better. One day I will get off my ass and feed the blog on the house. We should get the Building Permit by the end of this week but are waiting for the monsoon to end before construction.

The weather here is bona fide monsoon. You wake up in the morning to soft sunshine and when you go downtown to take care of some business you get rained on so violently it hurts your hands where they clutch the scooter handles. Thirty minutes later the sun is out and the streets are dry. To us this feels like climate instability, but that's the way it has always been here.