Life abroad: As Robert sees it

I know this is a little late, but Happy Thanksgiving! For those of you who don’t know, Thanksgiving is a holiday where your family meets to eat an overly large serving of turkey and potatoes and then exercise it off by shopping the rest of the weekend.

On very short notice, Rasa and I decided to go back to California to spend the holiday with my Dad and the 30 family members somehow related to him. It was fun, except for the hangover on Saturday. I wanted so badly to get some pictures of people lined up at 5am to be the first person into Wal-Mart but I didn’t feel like waking up. I did get a great picture of traffic though, really makes me not miss living in LA. Even though Rasa and I spend 2 hours commuting to our work site everyday, it just seems more fun with chickens on the bus. It was nice to see family though, we especially enjoyed the cooking and presentation my brother and his wife managed to pull off so graciously. Thank you, we appreciated your food and hospitality more than you could imagine. Going around the table everyone had to say what they were thankful for. For us it was a washing machine, a dryer, that crazy thing that cleans your dirty dishes, hot water, actually tap water we could drink, and of course an iron. I hope all of you had a great weekend, enjoy the pictures.

As I said, once a turkey wrangler, always a wrangler

You got to love it to live it, every single day

What a tribe

The place settings

The toast

The beginning of my hangover

Halfway to my hangover, we all decide to ride the beach cruiser

Did you ever have a family member who just never threw anything away?

Good morning surprise complete with bed head hair

My Dad and I trying out our early Christmas presents

The last day of activities for the visiting Rotarians was an installation of water filters. This was the highlight of the trip because it involved going into peoples homes and meeting the whole family. It made it even more fun that the Rotarians brought boxes of #2 pencils to give away. This is always a great excuse to force the shyest of children to talk with you. We lined all 500 something kids up and asked each of them a question before giving them a pencil. At first they would run in terror at the thought of getting their pictures taken, or more that they made a game of running away, but after the pencils came out they were all to happy to cooperate. Other than the gift line, the Rotarians were invited into peoples homes as honored guests, even being offered fresh coconut juice as a gift of thanks for the filters. And coming from a family with 14 members, a simple gift of fruit is an extremely generous offer.

These two made a game of running from the camera

I managed to sneak a picture of him while he wasn’t looking

This was my friend cindy, she was the first to let me take pictures of her, but it did take a lollypop

Grandma with her 7 children and 24 grandchildren

This one I cornered in a tree and had to climb up after to get a picture

A good shot of the typical adobe/mud house and park bench

This one was the cutest of them all

The little one in the previous picture helped me take this photo

Robert Kent Jr- robjkentjr@gmail.com
Wat/San/Health Consultant
www.RobRasa.com/hisblog/
Voice Mail: +1 (631) 458-1119