2010 – in brief

Below is the year’s Christmas/New Year’s letter that Mike & I sent out to family and friends this week. (Yes, I really did use bullet points in our Christmas letter – I haven’t had an over-abundance of time and brain power lately. Also I was making a good faith effort at brevity).

I hope you’re having a great start to the new year! I’ll be back tomorrow or the next day with tales of new year celebrations here in Laos.

Lisa & Mike – 2010 in brief

• We celebrated our first wedding anniversary with a romantic getaway in Santa Barbara and spent the entire weekend discussing whether or not we should move to Laos.
• We spent more than 60% of the first half of the year apart. Lisa traveled to the UK, Indonesia and Cambodia for work. Mike jetted between Laos, Malawi, Washington DC, then back to Laos to take up his job with World Vision in April, while Lisa finished up work in California.
• Lisa farewelled good friends and colleagues after almost seven years in California as Director of Training and Education Services for the Headington Institute.
• We packed up our apartment during the first week of June and then spent three weeks in Alaska and Vancouver en-route to Laos, including a week cruising the Inside Passage with both sets of parents.
• We arrived in Luang Prabang together on June 28^th. Mike returned to work. Lisa launched her new blog and started draft 2 (or 203, it’s hard to tell) of her second book.

Want more detail? Below are links to 10 of this year’s highlights on the blog.

1. Dark Shadows in Marital Mirrors (An essay about deciding to move to Laos)
2. House Hunting and the Powers That Be (The joys of house hunting in Laos)
3. Theory to Practice (A low moment during cross cultural adjustment)
4. The existence of poo (Something impossible not to acknowledge in Asia)
5. Friendly companions from Siberia (A really fun piece on looking for our puppy)
6. What price a child’s life? (Just one of the tough questions this work raises)
7. When Helping is Hard: That sort of decision (Part 1) (On work dilemmas)
8. World’s Worst Elephant Mahout (Lisa decides not to quit her day job)
9. A tale of two right legs (Two of our biggest challenges – lymphedema & staph)
10. Great moments (Some of the best moments and photos from our first 6 months)

Happy New Year! We hope 2011 will be full of joy for you and yours.

Love,

Mike & Lisa

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