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Here we are again!
This time last year we were in a Costa
Rican rain forest studying Spanish and wondering what it must be
feeling like in frozen tundra of Canada. Well, here I am
sitting in Brantford, Ontario and it feels COLD…..but great!
This is my first Christmas in Canada in six years and it is
going to be a wonderful one!
Once again, I feel extremely fortunate and
blessed to have had such a splendid year. It was another year
of traveling and spending time with family and friends. Of
course, the most important news of the year was Ana’s acceptance
of my marriage proposal! The big day will be September 22, 2001
in Brantford Ontario.
We spent the first few months of the year
in Costa Rica. We had two sets of visitors while we were
there. First, Ana’s parents came for two weeks in January then
two of Ana’s friends from Toronto (Jennifer and Angela) came in
February. We had lots of fun showing them the sights. Some of
the best places we visited were the beach towns of Manuel
Antonio and Jaco and also the active Arenal Volcano where we sat
in hot springs drinking two for one beers all afternoon!
Okay, now it’s January 29th and
I still haven’t finished this letter! So I guess it is also now
a 2001 Spring Update.
After Costa Rica we moved to Suriname as
part of the Shell project I was working on. We found Suriname
to be one of the best places we have ever been to! The people
are extremely friendly and the geography of the country consists
almost entirely of virgin rainforest. One of the best parts of
our time in Suriname was there was almost no tourists to be
found anywhere. We only saw one other tourist…and she was Ana’s
friend Wendy who came to visit us from Seattle! So we consider
ourselves quite lucky to have had the opportunity to visit such
a fine country. The highlight of the trip for me was camping in
the jungle near a place called Raleighfallen and catching
piranhas in the river! Ana and I made some very special friends
there and we hope to return sometime very soon.
After Suriname we were off to Barbados,
which was the last country of the project for us and we had a
splendid time there! We found the “Bajans” to be fun-loving,
courteous, and a real pleasure to be around. I had expected
Barbados to be the most difficult country of the project, as the
Shell company in Barbados includes approximately 12 other
countries in the area (ie. St Kitts, Antigua, Tortola, Grenada,
etc). But it turned out to be quite manageable and the work
went very well there. It also helped that we found a great
watering hole there called Mojos where we spent many nights
together with our Australian friend Karen consuming vast
quantities of the local lager Banks.
During our time in Barbados we made a very
memorable trip to St. Vincent & The Grenadines. That is where I
got up the courage to propose to Ana and she said YES! I am
happy to say that she was totally surprised and didn’t suspect a
thing! St. Vincent will now be a very special place for us.
As the end of the project was fast
approaching I finally completed the negotiations for my next
contract in the Dominican Republic…but luckily we had a nice
long vacation between projects, long enough to make trips to
Saskatoon, Brantford, Holland, England, Portugal and Denmark for
our friends Martin & Marianne’s wedding!
Ana left Barbados early to spend some time
with her parents and start planning our wedding, before we left
for Europe. I arrived in Canada towards the end of July and
spent a few days with Ana’s parents. Then we were off to
Amsterdam!
We stayed in Amsterdam for only one day and
night but we tried to see as much as possible, including the red
light district which was most interesting. We took a train from
Amsterdam through Germany and into Odense, Denmark where Martin
& Marianne were waiting to meet us! The time with them was just
as great as we expected and we shared a lot of laughs helping
them get ready for their wedding. The ceremony was beautiful
and held in a local church which was built in the 1600’s.
Marianne looked very beautiful and everything went smoothly (I
even remembered to bring the rings!). The reception was a party
of hard singing, hard drinking, hard smoking Danes and we did
our best to keep up with them!
The day after the wedding Martin and I went
down to the travel agency and bought some tickets to Portugal
for all of us. Seems that Ana and I were about to crash the
Danes’ honeymoon! The ensuing week went splendidly as we worked
our way up from Faro in the south of Portugal, along the west
coast to Lisbon, then north to the town of Paco where we
borrowed a house which belongs to a friend of Ana’s parents. We
spent most of our time drinking red wine and barbequing fresh
fish, making sure not to strain ourselves unnecessarily. We
left from Lisbon for a quick weekend stop to catch up with the
boys in London. We had a superb first night out with Johnny,
Toddy, James and Steve in Covent Garden! Unfortunately the
weekend went much too fast and we were soon on our way back to
Canada.
The visit in Canada was a blur but we did
manage to have great visits with a lot of family and friends in
Saskatchewan and Ontario. We also spent a great deal of time
planning everything for our wedding. We managed to finish
almost everything which was a great relief.
By the middle of September we were off to
Santo Domingo, Dominican Republic for my next project with
Shell! Within a couple of weeks we had found a nice apartment
and settled in. The months leading up to Christmas went by very
fast. My friend Earl, who is living in New York, and his
girlfriend Estelle came to visit us for a week in November which
was great as it gave us a chance to make a trip to the north of
the island with them for a weekend holiday. We also had another
weekend away with our friends Sarah and Jane at a resort called
Casa del Mar in the Bayahibe region which was a great laugh.
Ana spent the first months looking for work
and finally found a job as the production manager for a local
web design company. She made a lot of new friends there and
also learned a lot more Spanish. She was very happy to finally
have found a more “normal” job where she was working in an
office environment.
We already know that 2001 is going to be a
very special year for us, as our wedding fast approaches. But
we also hope that it will be a great excuse for family and
friends to come together once again.
Best of luck to everybody in 2001, we’ll
see you soon!
Kris & Ana |
