March 2024
M T W T F S S
« Aug    
 123
45678910
11121314151617
18192021222324
25262728293031

Archives

Categories

Isn’t Time To Start Writing On This Blog?! Will The North Country Have A WHITE CHRISTMAS?

Submitted by Mimi (French Saigon Kids)

Now that Bob is back, isn’t it time for all to start writing on this blog again, and not let all the work be done by Ken 🙂

What about giving news of your part of the country, projects, travel, whatever…

Here, in Montreal, the big thing is that there is no snow yet and none forecast. And Canadians can bear temperatures of -30 C for a whole month without even noticing it, but a Christmas whitout snow, THAT is a catastrophy!

And we have begun to receive our first Syrian refugees. You may know that we had a change of government. Mr “Squeer” has been replaced by an idealistic young men who has swore to return Canada to what it was: open and generous. So we will be receiving 25 thousand refugees in the coming months.

Mind you Canadians are generous but not stupid. Most of the refugees will come from HCR camps in Jordan and Lebanon where they have been rotting for months or even years, they have been screened and re-screend by the UN, then screened and hand picked by the Canadian immigration services, and so far the several hundreds that have arrived are all Christians!

I imagine the rest of them won’t all be Christians and it is possible that there might be some rotten apples in the lot. The risk is there, but so far, the two “terrorist” attacks we had in Canada were perpetrated by two genuine white christian Canadian lunatics with guns, so it is hard to say were the real danger lies.

And, you should have seen the incredible look in the eyes of these poor people when they finally did set foot here, beaming… but still not believing they had really escaped from hell! At scenes like these, one realizes how lucky we are and have been.

So, that is the news from the North. Merry Xmas to all, and a happy, healthy, busy year 2016.

Mimi

10 comments to Isn’t Time To Start Writing On This Blog?! Will The North Country Have A WHITE CHRISTMAS?

  • brooks toland kasson

    happy solstice to all! return of the light on the 21st.

    here in austin, it will be warm enough to wear flip flops tomorrow. i may just take a solstice swim in barton springs, which has a year-round temp of 68-70 degrees.
    a bit nippy, but not bad if you swim fast for the first quarter mile.

    much joy and deeply satisfying times to all,
    brooks

  • Montreal is a fabulous city, Mimi. I visited in October for the first time, during the elections, and was happy to be there to see Justin Trudeau elected. I like what he says and does, and I particularly like his statements about Canada’s role and responsibility to accept Syrian refugees.
    Here in Durham, NC, we have yet to see winter weather hit. We’ve had a few frosts, but weather has been almost balmy much of autumn. We’re supposed to have a warm, rather than a white, Christmas.
    After celebrating the holidays with my mother, sister Susan, brother-in-law Howard, and niece Jessica, I will return to Phnom Penh on January 15. This time I will go without a job and have declared myself a snowbird. No Florida for me! I’m off to Cambodia instead. I’ll be there until April, when I will return to Durham.
    During that time away, I plan to decide whether to move to Cambodia for several years or to live right here in Durham. If I decide to Become an expat again, I will return to the US until August, when my apartment lease runs out, and then I will pack everything up and put it into storage –again! I just took everything out a year ago after six years of being an expat in Saudi Arabia and Cambodia.
    I’ll keep you posted.
    My sister Lynn (a year behind me in school) and her husband Bob passed through for a night last week, driving from Houston to the Poconos. We all got together for a brief, happy reunion at Mom’s apartment in Chapel Hill.
    Merry Christmas to all of you! I hope that 2016 will be a good year for you and your family.

    • Mimi

      Cathy, You should have told me you were coming to Montreal. I would have been happy to show you the place. Next time, I hope. Have a good trip, and a good stay in Cambodia!
      To all the others who wrote, I see that you mostly live in warm states. Lucky you, winter here is (normally!) so long. As I said, with the help of El Nino, this one is a little different and we had our first snow only this morning. But we are expecting a big storm of more than 30 cm for wednesday.
      Well,nothing is perfect, not even Canada!:)
      Happy New Year to all!

      Mimi

  • Laurie Methven

    Cathie – that is so exciting about Cambodia. One the few countries in SE Asia I’ve never lived or visited (lived in Vietnam, Thailand, Laos & visited Malaysia, Singapore,etc.). May I ask that takes you to Cambodia? I would also like to get to Burma as well.

    • Hi Laurie,
      Here’s a bit about my experiences in Cambodia. After spending much money and time attempting to meet Vietnam’s requirements to be a volunteer in late 2013 and early 2014, I gave up on Vietnam. I was scheduled to volunteer with Hue Help, which suffered a devastating loss of volunteer help until the Vietnamese government came to their senses and made requirements more reasonable.
      I went to Cambodia instead., where I volunteered at an orphanage. The work and conditions were miserable, and after two weeks I wanted to quit. But I’m not a quitter and decided to stick it out. After six weeks, I threw in the towel.
      The evening I left the orphanage, I talked to several acquaintances, and within 24 hours, was offered two paying jobs! After asking questions, reading about the work, and sleeping on it, I thought for two days and accepted the better offer on the third day. I worked for an NGO, writing a 12th-grade textbook for Cambodia’s Ministry of Education. I finished the project in August 2015 and returned to the US.
      Now I will return to Cambodia to re-connect with friends I have made and
      to have the simple life that I want — no car, delicious restaurant food at prices I can readily afford, living Ina hotel or small apartment, etc. if the NGO has a project for me, that would be great. Otherwise, I will experience retirement and will travel to Laos and Myanmar, where I have not yet been.
      I really love Cambodia, its culture, and itts people. The high level of corruption is maddening, but I am not part of that; I just don’t like to see the extreme poverty caused by the greedy.
      If you come visit, I will show you my favorite parts of Phnom Penh and Kep and Siem Reap.

      Merry Christmas!
      Cathie

  • Kevin L. Wells

    All,

    I can attest to the lack of any indication of winter here in the south. In the north west corner of South Carolina, it is still warm enough for shorts on a sunny day or at least warm enough for a walk to the mailbox without even a sweater.

    We will have a quiet Christmas and holiday season and started that early with exclusively on-line shopping.

    Cheers-Kevin

  • Mimi,
    Weather here is Southport NC (about 30 minutes south of Wilmington) is very very warm during the day but cold at night. We are going to D.C. for Christmas to visit our daughter and friends. Miss the city. Southport is a quaint southern little town but goes to sleep at 5 p.m. . Having lived in Northern Virginia for 35 years I still can’t used to retirement and living here.
    Wishing you and your family a Merry Christmas (I think that is politically correct in our country) and a Happy New Year.
    Carol (was known as Carl at school as I never used the name being a male!)

  • Gene Weinbeck

    I live in the Arkansas Ozarks near a small town named Calico Rock. It’s so warm that we’re actually having tornado warnings today. Windows are open when it’s not raining.

    The biggest news within 100′ is that this is my last day of work at the company I founded 33 years ago (FundRaiser Software). I will still do a little part-time programming when asked, but no more trips to the office.

    Waiting not so patiently for the US to catch up with Canada in progressive leadership and civil behavior.

  • Kenneth R. Yeager

    Santa has completed his mission in Germany and is now about mid-Atlantic, heading for the east coast of the US. Despite the headwinds over the Atlantic, according to reports from the Yeager household, his load is significantly lighter. But word is that he still has lots of gifts in that huge sack. One small problem is that he also stopped in Syria and Iraq before heading to Europe so there is some concern that he might have some problems with TSA in entering US airspace. Still, we hope that common sense will prevail amoungst the guardians of American’s borders and that Christmas can be celebrated by all who recognize this holiday. Merry Christmas to all.

  • A Merry Warm Christmas from the middle Atlantic states to all Saigon Kids.

    I just encountered an interesting late-1964 New York Times article about Americans in Saigon that begins with remarks about our school — The ‘Ordinary Life’ of Americans in Saigon.

    Bruce

Leave a Reply to Kevin L. Wells Cancel reply

You can use these HTML tags

<a href="" title=""> <abbr title=""> <acronym title=""> <b> <blockquote cite=""> <cite> <code> <del datetime=""> <em> <i> <q cite=""> <s> <strike> <strong>

  

  

  

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.