Timor fali

We can't really believe it, but we have made it back to Timor after less than 2 weeks away. There were 9 planes involved in this excursion - 4 to New Orleans and 5 back to Timor - and we feel like we just finished an uber-marathon, and finished in last place.

It was great (the America part, not the flying part). Seeing our families and friends was so good, though for some we only got to say hi before we had to go. It was a real pick-me-up, or pick-us-up, as there are two of us. It was great to joke, laugh, catch up, see how our nieces and cousins are growing so fast and just be together. We can't wait to go back!

We got back here yesterday and are here in Dili to recoop and get a few things before we go back to site. We can't wait to get back and settled and, as Bek keeps reminding me, seeing Kuku, our crazy little dog.

We got a new digital camera in the States and boy did we use it. Here, see for yourself.

This is the handsome groom and his beautiful bride (though this was at the rehearsal dinner and they weren't married at the time the picture was taken) and they look so good because of the beautiful tais we put on their shoulders. Yes, that's what you call The Third Goal of the Peace Corps - teaching America about the host country. We also made a slide show of our Timor pictures complete with the music they love here and showed it to anyone who had 15 minutes to spare.

And the beautiful bride, before she was actually the beautiful bride but was the beautiful bride-to-be, showed us around New Orleans. See, she really cares about her city and state and made sure we all got a chance to see the state New Orleans is still in. It's awful to see. Many areas were not directly destroyed by Hurricane Katrina but even there they are indirectly destroyed - many people moved away and have not come back, leaving no one to work in the restaurants and stores. Now Hiring signs are literally everywhere and where they aren't, it's because the business is still closed.

I'm sure you've seen all the destruction on tv, but you may not know that it still looks really bad. But there's progress and lots of hope. This truck in the picture above is proof that the New Orleans spirit is still alive.

We left New Orleans on Bekah's birthday and as an unexpected surprise we got to see what you see above - The Grand Canyon! We couldn't believe it. What a sight. Bek snapped this oh so clear picture.

And I snapped this one. Inside the LA airport, before we even took the trans-Pacific flight, we were zonked. And here you can see Bek zonked on a plastic Arizona State (thanks, Dan) bag stuffed with a Venezuelan custom made hammock with Bek's name on it (thanks, Abuelita) and some books about Timor (thanks, amazon.com).

Bek figured out the timer function on the new camera and we posed for this picture in Darwin, Australia, the flying-out point for Dili. I'm putting it here so I can put it in our profile thingy.