Christmas Letter 2012
Greetings to friends
and family! I wrote only an
email letter last year as we were traveling most of December and all of
January, so this will be the first actual letter that many of you have received
since Kent and I joined our lives together in April 2011. Here is the link to
last year’s letter:
Our journey to Turkey, Pakistan, and India one year ago was
filled with wonder. We We rented a little flat in beautiful, historic Istanbul,
and also spent five days visiting the ancient ruins of Ephesus, Pergamon,
Pamukkale, and other sites in southwestern Turkey. In Karachi, we attended three days of wedding celebrations
for Linnea’s daughter Psyche Philips and her husband Saad Hasan. We stayed at the historic old British Sind
Club, and were generously welcomed and looked after by the entire extended
families of Asrar and Naushaba Hasan.
Karachi was a chaotics mix of old and new, rich and poor. Camels and donkey carts shared the
streets with sleek cars and wildly decorated buses with passengers clinging to roofs
and sides. We saw entire families
on loaded motorcycles – fathers, mothers (with silk scarves flying), babies,
children, and bundles of goods weaving in and out of crazy traffic.
We celebrated Kent’s birthday and the new year in Delhi,
India, where we experienced the first of many hair-raising rides on
chook-chooks (auto rickshaws), noisy open three-wheeled vehicles on motorcycle
bases with manic betel-nut fueled drivers. We took an overnight train to Varanasi where devout Hindus
travel to die and be cremated in open fires on the banks of the beautiful,
sacred Ganges. Overnight by train
again to Khajuraho, site of the temples known for their erotic carvings, and by
taxi (in dense fog) to Orccha where we stayed in a maharajah’s palace turned
into a hotel. We enjoyed Agra and
the Taj Mahal, wildlife watching at Bharaptur and Ranthambore (a Siberian crane
and a tiger!), and the small village of Bundi, one of the few places where we
were alone as we explored ruined palaces and an overgrown fort inhabited solely
by monkeys. After 2 nights in
romantic Udaipur, we flew to the southern tip of India where Linnea waded (along
with crowds of Indians) in the water where 3 oceans meet. A few days in lovely Cochin, and then
in Mumbai (which pleased us more than Delhi, or perhaps we were used to the
chaos and throbbing energy of India by then) concluded our month in India. We returned home after an overnight in a
very chilly Istanbul where snow fell through the darkness onto the illuminated
Blue Mosque. An indelible
memory.
We spent the next four months getting the house and grounds
ready for Saad and Psyche’s U.S. wedding on May 27. It was an amazing and joyous occasion, with Saad’s father
and sisters and an uncle, most of the Philips children and grandchildren, plus an
international array of young friends of Saad and Psyche. Wedding video (5
minutes) here: http://vimeo.com/44022373
and the video created by Saad’s sisters here:
Psyche left for a research project in Botswana within a week
of the wedding, sending back wonderful reports: http://www.iwannabotswana.blogspot.com/2012_06_01_archive.html
Linnea and Kent made two trips to Michigan, one for Linnea’s
50 year class reunion, visiting friends and family en route,
including Kent’s sons Andy in Minneapolis and Jake and his family in Lamberton,
MN. We enjoyed opera in Santa Fe in August, and then the last
trip of the year, a 210-mile, nineteen-day walk on the Chemin de Saint Jacques
de Compostelle (Camino de Santiago de Compostela) from Geneva, Switzerland, to
Le Puy-en-Velay, France, where Linnea had begun her solo walk to Santiago in
2010. For Linnea this was a
pilgrimage of gratitude for her new life with Kent. For Kent it was a chance to walk through part of France, and
for both of us it was a rewarding experience and an opportunity to get in
shape. Blog account at http://www.caminobleu.blogspot.com
We had some sad losses this year: my friend Angela Clarke to cancer in June, and Saad’s mother
Naushaba in November.
Kent has done major remodeling of two bathrooms, and
countless smaller projects. There
is never an end to maintenance, but we did have everything looking beautiful
for the wedding, including stacking the biggest woodpile I’ve ever seen, and
making countless trips to the dump with Kent’s trailer. We celebrated our first
wedding anniversary with a trip to the dump! We do have a lot of fun together! Kent has also turned our former dump of a garage (which has
possibly never seen a car) into a beautiful workshop. We putter at home, Linnea with emails, trip research, and
lately (again) genealogy, Kent with building and maintenance, Linnea with
online word games, Kent with Sudoku.
We try to hike regularly.
We (especially Kent!) also spend way too much time watching Turner
Classic Movies.
We are grateful for each other, for this unanticipated
happiness in our twilight years, and we wish for all of you peace, love,
gratitude and happiness during this holiday season and the coming year.
Linnea Hendrickson and Kent Kedl
Albuquerque, New Mexico
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