Traveling summer of 2007

I have been remiss in not writing for so long on my blog. I will need to update this soon; and inform the blogosphere how amazing my trip to the Baltic Sea was over the last week.

Pieter and I were invited to attend a spectacular trip/cruise along the Baltic Sea visiting ports such as Estonia, St. Petersburg, Helsinki and Stockholm. Apart from the amazing places, rich imagery and stunning sites, we were privileged to meet some amazing new friends during dinner each night on the boat.

From Saturday when it started through the following Friday night, we took part in long deep conversations into the late hours making new friends, attending incredible tours together and discovering how Estonians, Russians and Swedish folk live. We also found out that Saunas (prounounced Sa-ow-nas) are very important to the Finns...

This trip was in fact a work sponsored trip; and although my initial expectation was that I would enjoy the sites and love the travel, (for example: I went hiking, rowing and site seeing in 1 day...followed by a cocktail party and then dinner)I was amazed at how warm and open the folks were on the trip. Every one was really nice, without exception, all 250 of them and their spouses/partners. Our conversations during the day, dinners and through the tours took many turns, spanning from discovering new books, understanding reality, life/work balance, the oneness of religion (despite the many backgrounds of each couple we met, we found invariable common threads in each one), raising children, multicultural marriages and how diversity and true consultation can leads to a better answer than than without. We also shared the story of how we met about 10 times at least (but that will be for another posting). Mostly it was great conversation, lots of laughter and reflection on the important things in life. Not to mention there was a coffee bar on board open 24/7...For anyone who knows me, that just makes a perfect vacation.

Good bye for now. Tonight I have to sleep early (just having finished getting over the jet lag) so we can get up bright and early for our Green Acre Bahai School visit...additional travel posts will be forthcoming.

Peace.