Wrapping up 2005
As 2005 draws to a close, it is time to look back at a busy year.
January's highlight was a fast visit to India for the wedding of our friends Rupa and Taimur. This was Veronica's first time in India, so we made the most of her five days in Delhi. The first few days revolved around wedding events, with some sightseeing and shopping squeezed in between the Athreya family's extraordinary food and hospitality. On Vero's last day we went to Agra, where we saw a grey and rainy, yet still spectacular, Taj Mahal. Veronica then had to jet back to the lab, while Martin went south of Madras for a few more days to visit Dave and Natasha Storey and their daughters. Dave was running tsunami recovery efforts for the Auroville community where he has settled with his family, so Martin joined in on the cleanup for a day, an experience you can read about here.
It was February by the time we were back, and the rest of the month was consumed with our normal cycle of going to the lab, teaching, and dictionary editing. We had bought some used snowboards at tag sales and tried to teach ourselves when a big snowstorm covered a hill at the local golf course. In March we packed the snowboards and our skis into travel bags and trundled off to Colorado for a week. From our base at a cheap motel in Silverthorne, our passes gave us six days on the slopes among five mountains, and we managed to hit Arapahoe, Keystone, Breckenridge, and Vail. When the conditions were good we'd ski the hard stuff, and when we could barely see we would get out the snowboards and hit the bunny slopes. And hit, and hit, and hit - Martin ended up with a broken rib, but we were finally able to make it down an intermediate trail with only the occasional bang-up. We also got to see niece Iliana, who was spending a semester at the High Mountain Institute in Leadville, we met up with friends Janka, Dave, and Rochelle from ultimate frisbee in New Haven, and one day we spent driving through the mountains looking for hot springs.
Martin went to Madison, Wisconsin, for a conference in April, and had a great visit with grad school friend Jen Arzt and her beau Mike, and Donna Perry drove up from Chicago to join the party, while Veronica stayed in New Haven and hosted the year's first raucous barbeque on our balcony. May was mostly work, with some chances to get outside and enjoy the long days.
June - June was busy. For starters, Veronica had laser surgery on her eyes, so now she can see perfectly.
A couple of days after the surgery Martin went off to Tanzania, and a couple of days after that Veronica's mother arrived from Romania. Martin spent the month in rural Malangali filming video for the online Swahili learning center he is developing, working on a big grant proposal, and trying to get our house in shape for the day Veronica can finally get there (2006?). He was able to spend a lot of time with his friends and sometime research assistants Martha Chaula and Laurence Luboka and their families. Connecticut friend John Ho showed up for a couple of weeks, providing the excuse for a trip to a tea estate in the highlands and a one-day safari in Ruaha National Park for some serious game spotting. While John went off to Zanzibar, Martin gave a couple of papers in Swahili at a conference at the University of Dar es Salaam, before the two met at the airport with minutes to spare before the trip home. Meanwhile, Veronica and her mother had a great month together in New Haven, with a short escapade to Boston visiting Kate and Chris White. They danced their tails off at a salsa club, the most fun Vero's mom had had since our wedding in Romania. Vero and her mother also picked oodles of strawberries at a Connecticut farm, and spent many evenings watching the sun set at our local beaches.
We went to visit the family in Vermont in mid-July, and when we got back Veronica's mother mentioned that she was having trouble seeing out of one eye. After an evening at the emergency room it was confirmed that she had suffered a detached retina. The best option was to put her on the next flight home to Romania, where she had surgery two days later, sooner than would have been possible in Connecticut. She has now had three operations, and we are hopeful that a final upcoming surgery will leave her with her vision restored, but the remainder of July was a particularly anxious time.
In August we combined a wedding in Colorado with a visit to Martin's grandmother Rose in San Diego, and rented a car to connect the dots. Go to the bottom of this blog and scroll up for a photo tour of the trip.
Grandma Rose came home from the hospital a few days after we left, but, though she remained mentally sharp as ever, her physical health continued to decline. One night in November she told Martin on the phone, "I'm really starting to deteriorate," and the next evening she died of a heart attack in her home. The family will join her ashes with those of Grandpa Max and Martin's mother in Lake George, New York, sometime this spring.
September was mostly a working month, with a party at our apartment for Veronica's birthday and a nice dinner out to celebrate the first anniversary of our US wedding. Veronica finally got the elusive result that she's been pursuing in her experiment, so she now only needs to reproduce the result under modified conditions and she'll have the material she needs to write up her dissertation.
In October we drove to Washington, D.C., to see the capitol and visit with grad school friend Grace Chern. We walked the Mall, saw monuments and museums, had an evening with our friends Jonathan Young and Nellie Wild, and, courtesy of Senator Dodd's office, had a private tour of the Capitol building and a chance to watch the Senate inaction. The next weekend Martin ran a marathon to raise money for his Swahili project, which is currently slated to go bankrupt at the end of January. October was one of the wettest months on record in New Haven, so the marathon ended up being a solo venture in the gym, with no cheering throngs at the finish line. Still, it was a nice cap to months of training. Other than that, October was pretty tame.
November saw publication of a feature article about the Swahili project in the Hartford Courant, which filtered through various internet fora, especially the geek site Slashdot, and led to some interesting contacts for Martin's project. We also spent a lot of time beginning Veronica's job search, since we expect her to be done at Yale fairly soon. We went snowboarding at Killington during the first weekend of the season - a truly bad idea, because you have all the diehard ski bums packed onto way too few, too easy trails with cruddy snow, but it was fun to at least get back on the mountain. We were with Martin's brother David in Brooklyn for Thanksgiving and had a relaxing couple of days with the New York branch of the family.
The highlight for December, so far, was Veronica's surprise visit home to Romania. We realized she needed to go home to renew her passport asap, and we found a really good fare for the middle of the month. We didn't tell her parents that she was coming. Instead, we told them to be at the airport because she was sending their Christmas presents in a suitcase with a friend with whom they would not have another chance to meet up. The ruse was complicated when Veronica's connecting flight in Amsterdam was cancelled, and she had to invent ever more devious explanations for them to explain why they absolutely needed to be at the airport for her eventual arrival at 1 a.m., and why they couldn't call us at home (the snowstorm had knocked out our incoming telephone service, you see). They were completely shocked when she finally walked out of customs. Vero only had a week at home, and was back in the lab Monday morning.
Now it is Friday, just before Christmas. We are still waiting for her suitcase to arrive, we're about to start cooking for the holiday, and tomorrow we'll head up to Vermont to be with the family for the holidays.
We hope your year has been busy and fun, and that next year is wonderful!
--Veronica and Martin
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| At the Taj Mahal |
It was February by the time we were back, and the rest of the month was consumed with our normal cycle of going to the lab, teaching, and dictionary editing. We had bought some used snowboards at tag sales and tried to teach ourselves when a big snowstorm covered a hill at the local golf course. In March we packed the snowboards and our skis into travel bags and trundled off to Colorado for a week. From our base at a cheap motel in Silverthorne, our passes gave us six days on the slopes among five mountains, and we managed to hit Arapahoe, Keystone, Breckenridge, and Vail. When the conditions were good we'd ski the hard stuff, and when we could barely see we would get out the snowboards and hit the bunny slopes. And hit, and hit, and hit - Martin ended up with a broken rib, but we were finally able to make it down an intermediate trail with only the occasional bang-up. We also got to see niece Iliana, who was spending a semester at the High Mountain Institute in Leadville, we met up with friends Janka, Dave, and Rochelle from ultimate frisbee in New Haven, and one day we spent driving through the mountains looking for hot springs.
Martin went to Madison, Wisconsin, for a conference in April, and had a great visit with grad school friend Jen Arzt and her beau Mike, and Donna Perry drove up from Chicago to join the party, while Veronica stayed in New Haven and hosted the year's first raucous barbeque on our balcony. May was mostly work, with some chances to get outside and enjoy the long days.
June - June was busy. For starters, Veronica had laser surgery on her eyes, so now she can see perfectly.
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| Vero after eye surgery |
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| Laurence picking tea in TZ |
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| Vero and her mom Andreea atop East Rock, New Haven |
We went to visit the family in Vermont in mid-July, and when we got back Veronica's mother mentioned that she was having trouble seeing out of one eye. After an evening at the emergency room it was confirmed that she had suffered a detached retina. The best option was to put her on the next flight home to Romania, where she had surgery two days later, sooner than would have been possible in Connecticut. She has now had three operations, and we are hopeful that a final upcoming surgery will leave her with her vision restored, but the remainder of July was a particularly anxious time.
In August we combined a wedding in Colorado with a visit to Martin's grandmother Rose in San Diego, and rented a car to connect the dots. Go to the bottom of this blog and scroll up for a photo tour of the trip.
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| Rose Sparer at our wedding September 25, 2004 |
September was mostly a working month, with a party at our apartment for Veronica's birthday and a nice dinner out to celebrate the first anniversary of our US wedding. Veronica finally got the elusive result that she's been pursuing in her experiment, so she now only needs to reproduce the result under modified conditions and she'll have the material she needs to write up her dissertation.
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| Supreme Veronica |
November saw publication of a feature article about the Swahili project in the Hartford Courant, which filtered through various internet fora, especially the geek site Slashdot, and led to some interesting contacts for Martin's project. We also spent a lot of time beginning Veronica's job search, since we expect her to be done at Yale fairly soon. We went snowboarding at Killington during the first weekend of the season - a truly bad idea, because you have all the diehard ski bums packed onto way too few, too easy trails with cruddy snow, but it was fun to at least get back on the mountain. We were with Martin's brother David in Brooklyn for Thanksgiving and had a relaxing couple of days with the New York branch of the family.
The highlight for December, so far, was Veronica's surprise visit home to Romania. We realized she needed to go home to renew her passport asap, and we found a really good fare for the middle of the month. We didn't tell her parents that she was coming. Instead, we told them to be at the airport because she was sending their Christmas presents in a suitcase with a friend with whom they would not have another chance to meet up. The ruse was complicated when Veronica's connecting flight in Amsterdam was cancelled, and she had to invent ever more devious explanations for them to explain why they absolutely needed to be at the airport for her eventual arrival at 1 a.m., and why they couldn't call us at home (the snowstorm had knocked out our incoming telephone service, you see). They were completely shocked when she finally walked out of customs. Vero only had a week at home, and was back in the lab Monday morning.
Now it is Friday, just before Christmas. We are still waiting for her suitcase to arrive, we're about to start cooking for the holiday, and tomorrow we'll head up to Vermont to be with the family for the holidays.
We hope your year has been busy and fun, and that next year is wonderful!
--Veronica and Martin
posted by Pen Ultimate at 9:48 AM
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