On the Front Lines: Changing Minds Proves More Challenging than Changing Borders & Administrations

As I read through Geraldine Brooks' Nine Parts of Desire: The Hidden World of Islamic Women, I am continuously surprised by the riveting, intimate stories of women whom I imagine are just like me in many ways. And women whom I imagine could be good friends of mine. Women who are strong and beautiful, driven and courageous.  And yet, while some of my greatest struggles are in proving the worthiness of my ideas and concepts, turning these into a profitable business that will provide for my living, these young women are often struggling to prove that they themselves are worthy of simply living as individuals with a brain and will.

This post is in honor of International Women's Day.

Jenny Matthews/Panos

As I continue to seek out transitional environments -- traveling to observe first-hand when I can; reading and interviewing about them when I can't -- I continue to find evidence that laws and constitutions and job titles and borders are not the biggest challenge facing those who seek progress.

Deeply ingrained cultural ideas and traditions are much, much more difficult to challenge.


The following excerpts from Brooks' Nine Parts of Desire reflect her experiences during six years in the Middle East as a foreign correspondent for the Wall Street Journal.  In this story out of northern Africa, we watch women fight and prove their physical equality and strength of character, then return home only to fight again -- this time against oppressive cultural traditions.  Like so many of the transitional regions I've lived in, the story of Eritrea reveals that cultural and ideological walls are much more difficult to break down than walls of brick and mortar.

Welcome to Aalto University

While this isn't quite how I thought the first week at Finland's elite business school would go, I'm shirking off my preconceived notions and going with the flow.  I ended up making some great friends this week with both Finnish and other foreign master's students, and quite a lot of friends in bachelor programs as well, since the two are usually combined into one 5-year program in which some master's courses can be taken before the bachelor is even completed. Also, since the Strategy program is a joint program between the School of Business and the School of Engineering, we have the unique opportunity to take any course offered at either campus (regardless of whether it counts toward our degree), which allows us to network, study alongside, and get to know students in both schools.

I've come to learn that the student union and student guilds are to be taken seriously.

daily walk by the sea

sunset over the harbor

Dumzi Festival - Part IV

It's 6:00 AM.  Sapana and I kick off our shoes and file into the monastery with the monks. As always, I try to inconspicuously refrain from the three prostrations before the Buddha statues which accompany any Buddhist's entry into a monastery.  While the older monks take their seats on the padded wooden benches around the perimeter of the room, Sapana and I take a seat on one of two parallel carpets that have been rolled out in the middle of the room.  The younger boys line up and sit down with us, their prayer book in one hand and metal coffee mug in the other. From my seat in the very back of one line, I watch Ngatar, Tendi, Samten, Dawa, Chimi, Lakpa, Karma, and Pasang get situated, untying and unwrapping the cloth holding together their loose leaf prayer books.

We sit in a line, each person directly behind the person in front of them and so close that our knees touch the back of the one in front of us while our backs are up against the knees of the person behind us. Personal space isn't really a concept here, but that's okay because having grown up together everyone is a brother and even the two older, middle aged monks are called O'Tom Cho and O'Serpa, the "O" meaning "uncle." The handwritten festival schedule posted outside the monastery accurately describes us as the "Pema Choling Monk Family at Thulo Gumela."

It's so cute how excited the boys are; though they practice puja every morning for an hour and a half, they never get to take part in the big monks' puja.  Their participation in the special Dumzi puja is both a privilege and a rite of passage.

My friend Pasang (the older Pasang - 22 years old) must be in charge of the ceremonial rituals because all morning he's been arranging and rearranging things on the altar, lighting and spreading incense, swinging the smokey soul purification pot, and filling the silver offering stands - first with sprinkles of rice and then black tea.

I haven't seen much of him for the past three days. He's been like a hermit, camping upstairs in the tiny 5' x 10' room above the monastery, working tirelessly to create the most intricate of the thorma adornments.  I'd go up periodically to check on him, and there he'd be, always sitting in exactly the same spot, in the same position - legs folded Indian-style, bent over an incredible little butter sculpture.  Colin and Lakpa would be there too, sometimes accompanied by Dorjee or Kagi.  They'd often laugh and joke, but more often worked in silence. Every so often Lakpa would hand his work over to Pasang, who seems to have the final say on the finished work. All of the older monks participate in making thorma, and the craftsmanship is generally good, but Pasang is exceptionally gifted.  I've made him promise to let me take home his floating Buddha sculpture when Dumzi is finished.  Otherwise it would just be disposed of, just as the alter offerings are later eaten by hungry monks and - in the case of the Nyune festival last month - Jenny and I, who were craving chocolate.

Turning my thoughts back to the ceremony taking place before me, I recall the schedule posted outside the monastery.  Puja starts every morning at 6:00 or 7:00 AM, going until our 8:00 breakfast. When the chanting stops I file out of the monastery and into the dining hall with the monks. Breakfast is brought to us immediately by a handful of Sherpa women and kitchen hands who deliver steaming dishes of hot food and mugs of tea, juice, or Coke. The monks eat very quickly and I'm always the last one to finish. They walk right back into the monastery and resume puja until lunch at 12 noon.  After breakfast I stay seated in the dining hall, watching a steady flow of thermoses full of tea being taken into the monastery and Pasang running in and out to fetch new offerings and carry out others.

The chanting stops again and monks eager to stretch their legs pour out of the curtain that hangs over the monastery entrance. They come in for lunch, a beautiful spread including a mountain of boiled rice, potato and cauliflower and chicken curry, lentil soup, a salad of fresh lettuce, tomato, red and green onion, and a sour yogurt drink to finish the meal and cleanse the palate. Eating quickly, we enjoy an hour break after lunch.  Puja resumes at 1:30 PM. "Khaza" - an afternoon snack, also called "second lunch" - is served at 3:00. Yesterday was chow mein; today it's delicious fried chapati - Tibetan round, thick, flat bread made of rice flour - topped with a potato curry. So good! We're truly spoiled this week.

Back to puja at 3:30, and by 6:00 it's finished. Dinner is ready right away: Thukpa! This is a wide, flat traditional Tibetan rice noodle in a clear broth topped with sauteed veggies and dried yak meat. The festival sponsor, Ngawang Dorje, tells me that he had these thukpa noodles specially ordered and made in Kathmandu just for Dumzi. I'm impressed.

After dinner we relax. The monks are exhausted and I am, too. I rejoined puja right after lunch, and five hours of sitting - my legs folded under me, in concentrated meditation and close observation of the sacred rituals unfolding before me - leave me mentally and physically worn out. We drink a thermos of milk tea and then head to our rooms. Our 5:00 AM wake up call will come before we know it!

Uncovering the Mysteries at Pema Choling

I arrived at the monastery almost three weeks ago with many questions about Buddhism. I'd taken a World Religions course focused heavily on eastern faiths and have continued to read about the Buddhist tradition in books such as those by one of my most beloved authors, Huston Smith, but with every question these texts answered they seemed only to provoke two or three more. I was disappointed, to say the least, when upon arriving at Pema Choling I realized that no one here speaks English well enough to discuss with me the teachings of Buddha or the origin of Buddhist traditions. During my first few days, my mind formed questions at a pace so rapid I felt like  the omnipresent pot of water kept over the open fire in our kitchen - bubbling faster and faster as it reaches boiling point, only to be emptied into thermos - a holding tank - and promptly refilled to boil more.  Like those thermoses of tato pani that will be eventually used for tea, my questions must eventually be answered, I thought.  I started to empty my questions into lists that serve as my own holding tanks.  But how I need those questions answered now!  

Why do you wear only red/maroon and yellow/orange - why are these the designated colors of monasticism?  What place do you occupy, as a monk, in Sherpa society?  Do you always chant the same words, in the same order, each time you begin puja?  I felt that I could not assimilate into the community without having these questions answered  or at least knowing which are the important questions - which I am asking as a result of mere cultural differences and which will uncover sensitive sacred meaning.

After four days I suddenly was not satisfied with the monks' progress in English and threw myself wholeheartedly into learning the Nepali language.  I immediately realized that, unfortunately, pure Nepali is not spoken at the monastery and many words they couldn't even tell me when I asked.** The dialect spoken here is a mix of Nepali (the country's official language), Sherpa (the language of this region), and Tibetan (the official and holy language of Buddhism).  I've now learned the Tibetan alphabet and can read and write a bit, and my verbal vocabulary is a mix of all three of these languages (not that I could always tell you which word is from which language, though I do my best), but due to this unforeseen language barrier I've decided to turn back to the books for answers to my many questions.

My efforts have not gone to waste.  I consulted several people about the books I should read, and came up with a list of at least seven.  The first I downloaded onto my Kindle and read in a week.  It's called Seven Years in Tibet, a non-fiction account of German-Austrian Heinrich Harrer's escape from a World War II detainment camp in India - his trek from India over the Himalayas, across the harsh Tibetan plateau and into Lhasa, "the forbidden city."  As the story unraveled so did my list of questions and along with it, the mental tension caused by curiosity restrained. I felt a sense of kinship with Harrer as he raised many of the same questions I had - in almost the same order - and then answered them, one by one, often with an anecdote or example to illustrate the meaning of each tradition or fact of life.***

I'm about to download the Dalai Lama's autobiography, which I know will be equally eye-opening. I've also started reading The Tibetan Book of Living and Dying - a recent variation on and addition to the ancient Tibetan Book of the Dead. The author, Sogyal Rinpoche, is a highly respected figure in Tibetan Buddhism; not only have I learned a lot on the Buddhist perspective on death in the first 25 pages of this enormous tome, but I'm pretty sure I've earned myself some major kudos with the older monks when I whip it out to read by the kitchen fire.

Here are some of the most insightful passages from the beginning of the The Tibetan Book of Living and Dying. These stood out to me as meaningful in both their content and the way it is presented.

All the greatest spiritual traditions of the world, including of course Christianity, have told us clearly that death is not the end. They have all handed down a vision of some sort of life to come, which infuses this life that we are leading now with sacred meaning. But despite their teachings, modern society is largely a spiritual desert where the majority imagine that this life is all that there is. (P.8) 

How sad it is that most of us only begin to appreciate our life when we are on the point of dying. I often think of the words of the great Buddhist master Padmasambhava: "Those who believe they have plenty of time get ready only at the time of death. Then they are ravaged by regret. But isn't it far too late?" What more chilling commentary on the modern world could there be than that most people die unprepared for death, as they have lived, unprepared for life? (P.10)

We can begin, here and now, to find meaning in our lives. We can make of every moment an opportunity to change and to prepare--wholeheartedly, precisely, and with peace of mind--for death and eternity.
In the Buddhist approach, life and death are seen as one whole, where death is the beginning of another chapter of life. (P.11)

*I especially recommend the beautifully illustrated hard copy of Huston Smith's renowned book, "World Religions" (??) as well as his autobiography, "Tales of Wonder."
tato pani = hot water
puja = chanting
**For instance, Pasang and I were going through the colors yesterday (red=raato; blue=nilo; white=sheto, etc.) When we got to green, he scratched his head and thought for no less than an entire minute.  I started laughing, thinking he was teasing me.  Finally he said, "We just say 'green'."
"WHAT!?" I shouted in reply - "you're kidding me; you're totally lying."  Just then 14-year-old Pemba walked by and Pasang asked him; Pemba thought a minute then laughed and walked on - he didn't know either.  It wasn't until evening when I asked everyone in the kitchen that some finally came up with the Nepali word for green - arroyo.
***It turns out that red was the original color denoting monasticism.  Then one time during an initiation ceremony where monk students of Buddhism were given the title of Lama (teacher), there were too few red ceremonial regalia caps and it looked as though the last student would have no cap in the procession.  So that this new lama wouldn't be cap-less, the older lama in charge of giving out the caps grabbed the nearest one he could find.  It happened to be yellow.  The monk gratefully accepted the yellow cap and continued in the ceremony. He never (released) the yellow cap and continued to wear yellow and red his entire life.  Some years later, he became a Rinpoche (a higher title meaning "Precious One" and also indicating that he'd been recognized as the incarnation of a former Buddhist master) and a well-known and reputed reformer of Buddhism, and following his example, monks everyone adopted the combination of red and yellow as the new monastic dress code.

"Each Day More Random Than the Last..."

That's how Jenny first described the monastery to me when we arrived at Pema Choling last week. And I must say, she did not exaggerate.  The funniest part is that the randomness of this place actually inspires pretty random thoughts on my own part. I find myself contemplating things I'd never think of anywhere else.

***

After flying into Lukla at 7 AM, we walked all the way to Pema Choling, stopping for lunch in the village of Ghat, and finally arriving here at 4 PM.  We were ushered into a long dark, cool room lined with built-in wooden benches along the walls and were seated at an end table. Then it seemed that we were basically ignored for a good twenty to thirty minutes, while three older monks worked with clay and paints and a nun stood by with four large thermoses of milk tea, refilling the monks' mugs after almost every sip.  "If they're drinking out of a cup that never gets empty, how would they ever know how much they drank?" I thought.  After a few minutes I decided it didn't really matter. They live three fourths of the way up a giant mountain. I'm sure no matter how much milk tea they drink, they'll burn it off by dinner. 

The smallest thermos (2 liters) was light pink with a Hello Kitty design on it. Random. 

This was my first hint that perhaps the monks don't take themselves as seriously as I expected they would.

All the while I was growing colder and colder as a breeze swept through the open doorway of the long room and turned the sweat on my back ice cold.  I wondered why the old monks sat there chatting among themselves and drinking heaps of hot tea, not offering any to us or even acknowledging our existence. Finally someone brought us mugs and filled them with a cold orange juice drink that tasted like a powdered Gatorade mix.  

That was my first lesson.  Just because I don't perceive an activity or intention doesn't mean it's not being done or intended. Though they seemed to be absorbed in their work and conversation, the monks were considerate to note that we were hot and tired from trekking and - seeing as they were drinking only hot tea - ask that a cold drink be mixed up for us.  I didn't understand anything substantial of their conversation in Sherpa, but as we were led to our rooms, through the kitchen and out the door at the end of the hall opposite the one we entered, I imagined that what the Lopon (teacher) said to me meant, "You have much to learn, young grasshopper." 

***

Later, the monk who served us the orange juice introduced himself as Lopon La Nawang Ladop, the head teacher of the school.  Lopon La is the title given to those who have a Ph.D.  Nawang (which we call him for short) is a title which means "monk" and precedes every monk's name.  And Ladop is the name given him by his teacher.  Nawang is a very learned man in many senses of the word. He serves as both a mother and father figure for his students (aged 7 to 12) who have left their families to come live here. I looked through the book from his university in India - a sort of admissions guide and course catalog - and noted that his 14 years of study there included courses in Philosophy, Literature, Metaphysics, Logic, Tantric Studies (one type of Buddhist scripture), Ritual Prayers, Meditation Practices, and English.  But despite this attempt at a well-rounded education, I don't think Nawang has ever taken a course in Geography or perhaps even set eyes on a world map. For during one of our first conversations he asked, "You're from America, right?  And is America part of Europe?" I graciously explained that the U.S. is on a separate continent but thought to myself: Hmmm...il y a quelque chose qui cloche. Random.

***

The morning before our first day of class Jenny, the volunteer who's been here for six weeks, told me that when we're ready to start, we just need to hit the old oxygen tank hanging from the corner roof of the classroom and all the boys will come running.  I inquired about the oxygen tank, and she told me that it's one of Sir Edmund Hillary's - one that he left here while visiting Pema Choling on his way up to summit Mount Everest in 1950 (He was the first ever to reach the summit).  It's really cool to have this souvenir, I thought, but why was it empty already here at 10,000 feet?  I was bounding around yesterday during a little morning trail run no less than 18 hours after I arrived here - my first time ever at such high altitude - and I've been diagnosed with exercise-induced asthma, something which should make it harder for me than most people to breath thinner air.  An experienced mountaineer using oxygen at this altitude? I'm sure there's a good reason, but again - Random!

***

This morning during chanting one of the boys, Pasang, was asked to light a stick of incense.  He bustled around  lighting candles and such and then pulled a long stick of incense out of a red Pringles can that must have been exactly the right height for keeping incense. I smiled and tried to keep from giggling as the monks went about their somewhat solemn rituals, all the while pulling their sacred materials out of a container which formerly housed American junk food.  Random.

***

I'm sure this won't be the end of the randomness; every day I wake up and something new is happening which I could never preconceive.  I usually don't really understand or even know what's going on until after the fact.  But it makes every day fun and exciting.  And just a little bit random.

Pema Choling

The monastery is incredible.  I wake up to the sound of the monk chanting in the room above mine and splash my face with water on the way to the kitchen to start the day with a cup of hot milk tea. 

Lopon La Nawang Ladop came to Pema Choling a year ago and started the monastic school.  There are now 20 boys between the ages of 7 and 12. They say even the smallest one, Pemba, is seven years old, but I'm certain that he's closer to 5.  In the Sherpa community boys (I don't know about girls) are named after the day of the week on which they were born.  The up side of this is that you really only have to learn about seven names in this new language, but the down side is trying to keep track of who is who.  Among the 20 boys, five are named Pasang (Friday), two are named Pemba (Saturday), and at least one is named Dawa (Tuesday -- you read about the Dawa mix up in my last post).  Some of them, like Chimi, Toshi, Kogi, and Pemerin are not from Sherpa families and so have other Nepali names.

The young monks have a total of four hours of class per day. From 6:30-8 AM they practice chanting.  A big gong rings out and the boys come running from their rooms, red shawls thrown over a shoulder and prayer books in hand. They kick off their shoes hastily and rush through the curtain that is the doorway to the monastery, leaving a pile of forty identical black sandals outside. After bowing before the giant Buddha in his glass museum-style encasement (surely erected to keep out the dust), they file onto low cushy benches lining the interior walls of the room. Each boy has a prayer book consisting of long 4" x 10" sheets of loose leaf paper filled with Tibetan script. The older ones have the entire thing more or less memorized and help the younger ones, some of whom are still learning to read. Nawang leads the chant in his low voice, and I smile as the younger boys enthusiastically pipe in with their higher pitched sing-song voices, mimicking Nawang's every intonation. This morning, out of curiosity, Joanna, Nate and I asked to join them, and a long carpet was rolled out for us to sit on cross-legged in the middle of the room.  I really enjoyed sitting there with the crisp morning mountain air ruffling the curtain behind me, studying the statues, prayer flags and ornate decor in the monastery, and watching the sun come up over snow-capped peaks while sipping a bottomless mug of milk tea, surrounded by a chorus of happy, chanting little boys. 

After about an hour the curtain was pulled back and I heard 10-year-old Pasang call "Net! Sita! Sapana! Breakfast!"
"We're being summoned," Nate said, as I remembered to listen for my Nepali name - Sita - which means "queen". There is no "SH" sound in the Nepali language, so it's practically impossible for most of them to pronounce my name correctly. Some of the other volunteers were having this problem, too. So my language teacher back in Kathmandu gave us all Nepali names. 

Breakfast was a huge pot (I'm talking 10 gallons) of instant noodles - a sort of Top Ramen Curry Chicken Flavor.  So I had chicken broth and milk tea; it certainly wasn't gluten free but I'm lucky not to have had too bad a reaction to the wheat. I think my stomach is so busy trying to figure out the spice situation - i.e. why it's being saturated with curry and such three times a day - that it has better things to worry about than a little gluten contamination.

After breakfast the boys have one hour of class, then an hour break, then one more hour of class before lunch. Meanwhile, the other volunteers and I have mornings off while Nawang teaches. Besides memorizing scripture, the boys learn the Buddhist teachings about morality and how to read and write in the Tibetan language.  Outside of the classroom they speak a mixture of Sherpa and Nepali, but classes are given in Tibetan, which is, naturally, the lingua franca of Tibetan Buddhism. Nawang has a Ph.D. in Philosophy (a 12-year degree) from one of the top monastic universities in India and speaks at least seven languages himself: Nepali, Sherpa, Tibetan, Bhutanese, Hindi, and two different types of what he called Sikhanese - the latter being spoken in a few regions of India.

Lunch is at 12, and then at 1 PM we ring the bell to start English class.  We teach Monday - Thursday from 1-2, except for Tuesday, which is "Rubbish Day." This means that the after-lunch class is only one half hour, and the second half hour is spent picking up any bits of litter around the grounds while reciting a chant that starts with "Rubbish is bad..."  So basically my obligations at the monastery total 3.5 hours per week.  The rest is vacation time in the most breathtaking place on earth.  Not a bad deal. 

It's not a bad deal for the kids, either, because since we live here we hang out with them between their classes and get to "teach" them English in fun ways, just through joking, talking, and playing. Some of them pick it up like little sponges and they're all really eager to learn.  Since today was a Tuesday our first class was only a half hour. Joanna (Sapana) and I taught the lower-level group together, which was 14 boys.  After introductions we reviewed numbers and then learned some new words and sentences revolving around farm animals - things like "The horse eats hay. The cow eats grass. The sheep eats grass."  Then we got to dogs. Joanna and I looked at each other and wondered, what do dogs eat here?  So we asked the kids in Nepali... Baloo ke khanne? (That one week of Nepali language class continues to pay dividends!)
We started cracking up when the kids responded, Baloo daal bhaat khanne! Baloo (the monastery dog) eats daal bhaat!  Daal bhaat seems to be Nepal's national dish - rice with lentils - some form of which you will eat at every meal.  Whereas in America we feed our dogs dog food, the dogs here just get left overs from the kitchen, which is, inevitably, daal bhaat. So the boys were correct - in Nepal dogs eat daal bhaat.  We ended our first English lesson with the sentence, "The dog eats rice."  A little unorthodox, but I guess you have to allow for cultural adaptation. 

We're treated like kings and queens by the little monks.  We're always the first to be served at meal time, and the servings are enormous.  They scurry to clean up afterwards, collecting our dishes and washing them before we can even move to do it ourselves.  Since the cook left five days ago with several of the other monks who went to Namche and then to Lukla for two different festivals, the boys have taken over the kitchen. They cook like pros - everything from Sherpa stew to steamed rice, fried rice, noodle soup, daal bhaat, timos (boiled dough rolls), tea...and that about exhausts the culinary repertoire of the region, I think. While we were leaving the dining room tonight Nate said, "Being here is like staying at a hotel run by little kids."  I couldn't have said it better!

Tiktik, one of the four monastery dogs, is sleeping under my bed now. The alpha male, Baloo (which means bear - like Baloo the Bear in The Jungle Book) accompanied us today all the way down the mountain to a little farming village during our afternoon hike. He seems to know that we belong here now. And I do, too.  It feels homey here.  I love the boys, the community, the peace and quiet, and this feeling of being at the very top of the world.  It's been a day and a half now, but I still find myself in awe every time I look up and out at the towering Himalayan peaks surrounding us and the enormous valley below. 

Dalai Lama Awarded World's Largest Annual Monetary Prize

I've always taken an interest in world religions, but given that I'll soon be living and teaching in a monastery following the Tibetan Buddhist tradition, I've started paying especially close attention to happenings in this part of the world. Today, I read this article from the John Templeton Foundation, a really neat foundation supporting the intersection of science and life's "big questions," and the sponsor of the prestigious Templeton Prize. This year, the prize has been awarded to the Dalai Lama -- "the Tibetan Buddhist spiritual leader whose long-standing engagement with multiple dimensions of science and with people far beyond his own religious traditions has made him an incomparable global voice for universal ethics, nonviolence, and harmony among world religions."

Travel the World Without Ever Leaving Nashville

I've heard people over and over tell me how jealous they are of those who get to travel; they complain that they themselves could never afford such experiences.

Au contraire.  Let me remind you...
We are a nation of immigrants!  All over America you'll find pockets of first- and second-generation immigrants who are holding on to and cherishing the traditions of their forefathers, and would you believe...they are not only willing, they are ecstatic when individuals outside their community take an interest and come to learn about and share in their traditions. If you've never encountered a community of immigrants who have preserved the customs and traditions of their motherland, you might be surprised at how spending time with them will sweep you off your feet, transporting you millions of miles, to anywhere in the world.

You'll try foods you never knew existed; learn songs and dances whose names you might have read in a history book; hear stories that would blow your mind...

I'm incredibly fortunate in that I landed haphazardly in one of America's most international cities.

St. Petersburg Center: A Guided Tour

Last week one of the coordinators from the School of Russian and Asian Studies, named Sergei, led Sarah, Hillary, and I on a walking tour of central St. Petersburg.  It was a warm, clear day and perfect for walking.  It turns out Sergei is a professor at one of the universities in St. Petersburg, and he is a wealth of great information.  Beyond simply knowing an immense amount of information about Russian culture and history, he is able to detach himself from his Russian identity and talk about issues objectively and in a global context.  

"Dom Knigi" ("House of Books"), otherwise known as The Singer House.
It was the first building built in St. Pete by an American company,
(Singer Sewing Company), and at one time it even housed the
U.S. Consulate in St. Petersburg!

Easter in Helsinki

Aunt Päivi and me

I'm a little late getting these photos out, but better late than never!  This year when I woke up at 6am on Easter morning to warm rays from a sun already quite high in the sky, I stayed in bed for a few minutes, thinking about all my Easter memories from years past. It's been quite a while since I dyed eggs with my brothers and sisters, or unwrapped one of the giant Easter baskets my Grambo always makes for us.  Laden with creme-filled chocolate eggs and big chocolate bunnies, jelly beans, tangerines, and little toys, I remember rounding up all the colored eggs we could find and then munching on chocolate to my heart's content.  That was, of course, after eating chocolate-covered donuts for breakfast.  But my parents were great about it and let us take in all the sugar we wanted on Easter.

In 2007 I was living in Belgium and went on Easter vacation with my host family to Montpellier in southern France. My parents came and met us there, and then I left with them on what became an epic European road trip.  The three of us spent Easter Sunday in downtown Florence -- a day I'll never forget!  I wish I had the pictures with me now so I could give you a taste of the festive mayhem that unfolded in the Piazza del Duomo.   Think white bulls decked out in ribbons and flowery wreaths; a giant wooden hutch that spewed smoke, fireworks and white doves when the doors opened; every inch of the piazza covered with people and then even more hanging out of windows and off buildings surrounding the square; brightly colored medieval costumes on jolly, dancing, singing, Italian men; a midget with an accordion who kissed my mom and me when I put a coin in his cup; going back at night to my favorite gelato dealer for what would be my fifth and final serving for the day....now THAT was an Easter to behold.