Greetings & News

Howdy folks. I’ve been working for a bit more than an hour at this point and have only managed to post two photos, sadly the two I least needed/wanted to post — but the way I try to work is I put the up first the ones I want to show up last on the current posting — since they go chronologically, if I’ve got 30 photos (which I do) to post, I put the least important ones up first, and save the best for last…so that they are the most recent post when I’m done.

But, by way of “slice of Paul’s life,” here’s what’s happening. I have to post these from the one office computer that has internet access. This means I store the photos on my own computer, and then put them on a stick and bring them to this computer. Four times now, I have moved back and forth between the computers with my stick: either copying and pasting, or opening and saving as, each of the photos I want: I’ve got some pics of a group dinner at our house with most of the expat team; I’ve got pics of me at a lovely park here in town; I’ve got some lovely street-scene pics of here in Nanning. Each time, they seem to save fine on the stick and I can even open them…but when I get them over to this computer, poof, they’ve become corrupted.

Since I got here at 9:00AM and it’s Sunday, I was alone and it was quiet at first. But now other folks have shown up, and frankly at least one of them is rather lingering by the computer…and between that and the frustration, I’m going to give up for now, and go home to have some breakfast and read. I spent much of yesterday doing various bits of work to catch up for the fact I was out sick 1-1/2 days this week; and life is made more interesting — and exciting/rewarding — by the fact that we’re sending a big truck full of supplies (sanitation, shelter, medicine) for flood relief in an area of southeastern Guangxi where there have been massive floods, with apparently millions of people displaced from their destroyed homes.

It seems quite possible we’ll do not only this three-day relief and exploratory mission, but there’s a chance we might launch a longer term (three month?) general relief effort, with a new team of expats that would come in, and some new national staff as well. So this could make my life even more interesting and busy in the coming months. For now, I was supposed to be on a flight to Beijing today, for advance planning of our move there; but since most of the office is clearing out for the relief trip, I’m staying behind to coordinate things, and to complete the transfer of some accounting work from my desk (coordination) into the hands of the AIDS project itself. Aftger they all get back, on Tuesday night, I’ll head off to Beijing — Wednesday morning. A few days of checking out the options there, then I’ll head off for my week of planned vacation, after which I’ll finally spend some more time with our Baoji project — the one of which I posted some pictures earlier in the blog. Sadly, I’ve not been up there since then, and I’m supposed to go every five or six weeks.

Things are definitely busy! Anyway: there are some great photos I hope to post before I leave for vacation, but if I fail, then I shall try again in August. At which point I should also have some pictures of Gansu and Ningxia, Buddhist cave art, Daoist sacred mountains, and Tibetan monasteries. I’ve heard this week from two friends who tell me they’ve been regularly keeping up with me through the blog, and this warms my heart — that’s precisely why I maintain this. (Thanks, Connie and Mike!) A challenge to life with MSF is that one is so far away, and — as I’ve now reported — communication can be challenging. But I’m committed to this blog for as long as there are friends and family (and, hey — I welcome new friends, especially ones who are cute and single… :-)) out there reading, I’ll keep posting. Sorry so few pics this time.

More later, and much love. I hope my friends are about to have a lovely Sunday back in the US. And special thoughts are going out to my friends in London, none of whom are likely to read this since I know you all have busy lives. But I’m thinking of you — Peter, Tracy/Jon/Jacob, Pete L. and Tim…

Love,