This week we heard from family and friends, all who we had met on our journey, who are enjoying their own travels right now.

First we heard from friends who live in Shanghai, China who we met in Lumbini, Nepal when they were on their honeymoon. They are now walking the French Way, the most popular of the Camino de Santiago de Compostello. It was nice to reminisce with them about the great memories of our walk on the Portuguese Way last year. These are three of their photos, we again wish them Buen Camino!

  

We also heard from our friends who live in Verona, Italy, who are visiting one of their sons and his girlfriend who are working in Toronto, Canada. Loren has not used his Italian in a while and I found his comment to them quite amusing after I translated it in Google, maybe you will too: 

    Andate con gli occhi verso il giro con grande gioia.

Google reports it as “Go with your eyes to the lap with great joy.” What Loren had wanted to say was more like, “Go with your eyes towards the world with great joy.” I imagine our Italian friends also had some chuckles from it. 

And, we heard from my cousins who live in New Hampshire who are enjoying a weekend getaway with their two sons and their families who live in New Jersey. Two of their three youngest grandchildren have just started Kindergarten, while their oldest grandson from New Hampshire has started college in New Jersey this year. He reminds me of my niece who has just started college in New York this year, and I am looking forward to seeing her and the rest of my brother’s family in New York at Thanksgiving. 

 

On a more local level this week, from our bedroom window at the AirBnB where we are staying Loren and I appreciated seeing the full moon risings. Also, I started attending a drop-in group at the nearby Community Center. It is called “Shakespeare Cultural Literacy.”  I felt it was high time to learn more about the Shakespearean characters and phrases that are so much a part of our culture. I learned that he wrote 39 plays, but two of them are presently lost. However, this week the group was viewing Episode 2 of Ken Burns’ series West. It definitely was worthwhile to see, but now I am more looking forward to learning a bit about Shakespeare’s play, Pericles this next week. 

On our date night, Loren and I went to see a local production of the musical Once Upon a Mattress. The main character conjured up a living image of Judy Garland with her enthusiasm, smile, and voice. The plot had me laughing at several points, and at the end it brought tears to my eyes. Again these are my measures of a great performance. 

 

Speaking of theater, that is Loren’s word for this week’s events in the Senate Judiciary Committee process. It had me wondering whatever had happened to a High School classmate who was a pitcher for our school baseball team, and, after college had joined the FBI as a Special Agent for a few years. He has an impressive resume online now, since leaving the FBI. 

Tomorrow I am honored to introduce a visiting Bikram Yogi instructor friend at her request to the Unitarian Church near where she is staying in Oakland, which is 20 minutes from where Loren and I are staying. Her collection of bumper stickers attests to her devotion to the yoga!

And, the sermon writeup could not be more appealing:

     “Life is a journey of twist and turns, ups and downs that cannot be totally planned.
      What do we do when the unexpected, the painful and the mostly uninvited aspects
      of life, join us on our journeys?”