Denver

Tom Hagood and I cruised into hostile Colorado weather conditions last Friday, but neither rain nor hail prevented us from meeting the rest of the Dirks, McClure and expanding Lindenmeyer clans. Tom was a bit overwhelmed with the hailstorm and then meeting my Aunt Dianne and Uncle Mike including my cousins Todd, Tom, Patrick and Amy. Their friends and Todd's fiancee, now wife, had many more family and friend's as well.

It is very grounding to be back in Colorado. Tom, like all others that converged in Boulder for my cousin's nuptials, left all too abruptly. It feels very empty back here, particularly after the excitement of driving to new places on the way back home. This vacuum will allow me to expulge my thoughts and prepare for Vanuatu.

Thanks especially to Tom Hagood and his mom Mary Porter for putting me up and putting up with me in Birmingham. Tara, as always promises and delivers goofy and fun adventures. I look forward to writing to your class from Vanuatu. Thanks to the friendly faces from St. Petersburg that I'll miss very much at FWRI, Hyde Tae Kwon Do, and the coffee gang.

I can't imagine my grammar will improve much over the next two years as I'll be learning Bislama, an English/French mix of familiar words spelled phonetically and transposed onto Austronesian grammar systems. This may be the best written entry of any others to follow. But, as Mary Porter pointed out, learning different languages helps you to learn the next a little bit more easily.

My older sister, Anne Dirks, has demanded very simple web journal and e-mail rules from me. First, I have to write more regularly than once a month. Second, if a natural or human disaster occurs(ie. Cyclone, typhoon, volcanic eruption, OR social revolution), I must respond as quickly as I'm able after reporting the news so that everyone knows that I'm safe. Those are the guidelines for this web journal, but they are completely subject to the amount of internet access available on the island. Five percent of the population of Vanuatu has internet access, and over fifty percent have access in the U.S.

I do have confessions from the road trip home. The first day on the road, I began to annoy myself with the amount of whistling and singing one can cram into nine and a half hours alone. I accidently left some clothes at Mary Porter's house in Birmingham. I woke up half of an apartment building just to say hello to Tom's friend Kana while she was doing legal work Memorial Day Eve. Tom and I took a wrong turn in Nashville and ended up in Louisville, not St. Louis. Andrew, I apologize that we finally made it there when you were already gone. And finally, I made the entire trip without a driver's license. I'd mistakenly left it in USF waterfront office when I checked out kayaks the day before I was to leave St. Petersburg. Thanks to Sladjana for quickly mailing it back to me.

Happy Misadventures to Everyone.