Big apples, thankful giving, and mustaches

Some pics of some of who and what we've been up to since early November. Sera covered over 1500 miles of the east coast speaking on behalf of COHI, shared precious time with some of her fave folks, and ate a taco or burrito almost everyday. Adam attended a mustache party while remaining committed to his daily mediation on medical education and holding down the fort in Be'er Sheba. The happy couple will be reunited stateside in Austin in just 19 short days. We aren't counting or anything. Stay tuned for more news from the front.....

Halloween passed in full force in Be'er Sheba with a Mustache Contest and Party. The men in Adam's program all shaved their faces clean and then refrained from shaving for three weeks. The contest was held on Halloween when the contestants groomed their facial hair and donned a costume maximizing the affect. Here are some of them looking, well, sketchy.


From DC Sera went to NYC where she stayed with Helen, Sean, and little happy Ezra. Here are mom and baby: bliss seems to be their regular state of existence when both are fed, dry, and snuggled up to one another. We should all be so lucky!

Brad, Brad, The Chocolate Man, was in NYC while Sera was there. They are seen here after being briefed by a local pan-handler about the importance of a certain electronic sign in Union Square. Yes, we then paid the obligatory dollar for this little piece of wisdom.

North about an hour of NYC Sera visited Sarah, Mike, and Reily enjoying an inner sense of calm these days. There seems to be a power in motherhood that inspires a greater sense of purpose, contentedness, and grace in my friends these days. What a gift, and I feel so blessed to have glimpsed this in you sharing in the glow of it for a short while.

Sera spent a bit of time in this Tibetan Buddhist Monetary outside if Ithaca, NY. While she was in attendance hunting season began. While sitting, the sound of gunshots peppered the air. A surreal experience, really, providing a profound glimpse into sound, seasons, and perception.

Sera passed day full of thanks and giving with Joel's family in West Hartford. In attendance: Nancy Rosenbloom, Sera and Jordyn Bonds, Eric and Joel Roston, Karen and Madeline (Eric's family), Karen's parents, and another couple. The weekend was hosted by Bonnie and Jay Roston and it was wonderful!

Here is the dining room, isn't that tree in full force outside the window incredible?

No holiday is complete without boardgames. Here are Joel, Jordyn, Jay, and Nancy playing Monopoly. The game went long into the night, and I don't remember who won. I do know that Nancy surprised everyone with her cut-throat ways and her ability to broker deals. I always say that this little lady is more than she appears!


Adam passed Thanksgiving in Be'er Sheba with a deep-fried Turkey, 75 medical students and their families, and a lot of good cheer. This dinner was hosted by our neighbors, and you can see here many of the exhausted medical students gorging themselves and having a good, good time.


On Sera's way back down south to DC she was in Boston where she spent some time with some incredibly committed COHI supporters who also happen to be some of her fave people. Here she is eating her vegetables like the good girl that she is.

She also glimpsed the lighting of the Christmas tree in Rockefeller Center. She also enjoyed a night with Jojo (recently transplanted from Venezuela), Nancy, and Sweet Honey in the Rock at Carnegie Hall. Soul food, for sure!

The capital steps

Sera arrived in DC for her first step of the east coast speaking tour for COHI. Our families, parts of them anyway, joined her for the awards ceremony and a few days of Pate-Rosenbloom-Bonds fun in this lovely capitol city. Here are some pics for your review. Next stop: NYC!

Sam and Stephen, two of three of our dads.

Sam, Sera, and Connie (Sera's Mom)

Sera's gorgeous siblings, Jordyn and Zack

The family minus Connie and plus Sherwood and Andrew

Connie, Stephen, Miriam (Adam's Mom) and pretty Zack

Sera and her her broken clock award. Don't worry, BUSPH is sending her a new one!


Again, the family minus Connie plus our Arkansas friends Andrew and Sherwood.

NPR, ah, Sera and Adam's holy shrine.

The Pates surprised the family with tickets to The Police that were playing just across the street from BUSPH awards dinner. We totally rocked out, it was soooooooooo cool!

Birthday Boy turns 27!

Its true, Adam is 27 years young! We had a fabulous dress up party last Friday night where everyone came all dolled up. Here are some pictures for your enjoyment. We also put out photos from the wedding for folks who wanted to attend, but couldn't be there. You will also see here the Tibetan Prayer scarves from the wedding made another appearance~ always a hit!

I encourage you to pay special attention to the disproportionate number of mustaches here. The medical students are having a mustache party, and the judging will take place next week. Cast your vote!

Here are some of the evening's lovely ladies. The one on the far left, our neighbor Alice, is 4 months pregnant!



Some of the men and their facial hair....


Adam's brother, Jonas, and his wife Nava came down from Jerusalem for the party. Thanks for coming, you two!
Adam and his trick candles.....

Happy birthday, Adam. May all of your wishes come true!

Tired dogs

I am referring here to our feet, of course. We covered miles and miles of sand in the last few days: up to Bet Shemesh for Shabbat, all around Jerusalem, over to Ramallah, and back to Be'er Sheba. We love Adam's weekends when he isn't drowning in something mundane like Cardiology and we took full advantage of that this weekend. These days won't last forever, or so the third year medical students keep telling us, so we are living them up.

Adam and I's friend, Laura, is in the country visiting from DC. A good friend of hers, Tamar, lives up north near Jerusalem and they kindly offered to host us on their quiet mokshav (a variation of a kibbutz) where we were wined and dined.

There is a real advantage to hanging out with women about to give birth: they are nesting and HAVE to cook until they just cook anymore! Tamar is 71/2 months pregnant, is simply radiant, and channels Martha Stewart. I am talking about homemade pumpkin lasagna and chocolate cupcakes with marshmallow fluff inside. Oh, did I mention the espresso machine with fancy foamed milk? Those of you living in corners of the world where you can pop over to a cafe on any given day and find such luxuries won't understand what it does for a spirit to have such warm, comfortable, fall foods arrive seemingly out of nowhere. We also did some wandering on the Israel National Trail that runs head to toe of Israel, enjoying a pleasant fall day here. Sans any changing leaves or maple syrup but enjoyable just the same.



We also did some wandering around Jerusalem, lots and lots of wandering. Here are some cool pics of what happens to an ancient city when Tommy Hillfiger comes to town. Could be worse, for sure! Its the price we pay to have some fashion available to us that didn't just wander in from some recently dissolved eastern block state.
We went from Jerusalem to Ramallah for a meeting with COHI's Palestinian Coordinator for the coexistence project I am working on here. Its a super modern city full of helpful people, wireless internet, and dudes on the corner selling tea. Here is a shot of the downtown artery leading to-away from the city center. The photo was taken from a comfortable watering hole for resident ex-pats, of which there are many: Stars & Bucks. Nope not kidding. God Bless America and our addictions.




So after an uneventfully pleasant day in the West Bank we motored back to Be'er Sheba, and boy were our feet tired! On a totally different note, I've decided that I need a hobby so I am taking up photography. From now on I will be posting some artful pics on the blog every once in a while. Your constructive critiques are welcome.

Until next time.....may the road rise to meet you!

Wedding pictures are up!

You can now see all the beautiful pictures of the Vermont extravaganza on Flickr...

Follow this link to see them for yourself!

Enjoy!

In Memory of Our Jed

Many of you know that we suddenly lost our dog, Jed, on the evening of September 24th. Thankfully, it all happened very quickly which kept his suffering to a minimum. Jed was a radiant, joyful friend who lived life to its fullest everyday. Welcoming adventure, change, and the unknown with equally enthusiastic wags of his tail and and open heart.

Jed Jayron Dubrovnik Bonds-Rosenbloom. Jed, after our pretend President on The West Wing; Jayron, because he was full of attitude; and Dubrovnik, a city in Eastern Europe famous for its trash streets like the ones of B'Sheba that he loved. Jed joined our happy family less than one year ago after he'd followed home one of the students in Adam's program. A reformed street dog, on his better days, and always a lively, hilarious bundle of fun.

Adam read somewhere, "I hope to be the kind of person my dog believes I am". This is the memory we want to hold of Jed; to mirror the courage, happiness, and love he saw in us everyday.

The night Jed died we had a house full of friends as news traveled of this sad news. We buried him that night in our yard, and shared Jed stories late into the evening surrounded by people who cared about him. These same friends started a fund at the local "Humane Society" in his honor. If you would like to contribute, please let us know.

Here are some of our favorite pictures of Jed. We miss you, Jed, and will hold you close in our hearts, doing our best to live life the way you did: full, to the rim!


Jed and his friend Adam, snuggling, on the front porch of our house in the afternoon sunlight.

Jed's "post-op" headgear and his Godfather, Jon Mendelson, who brought him some of his favorite toys such as his squeaky porcupine. Thanks, Jon.

Adam is convinced that Jed was a fish in a previous life. A pastime ensured to induce a state of ecstasy in him was playing in mud puddles and any body of water big enough to get his face inside. Here is an action shot the first time he swam in something larger than a puddle at the dog park, a real lake. He thought he was in heaven!

Jed was a desert dog, as you can see in this picture. He loved wide open spaces, and if you didn't pay close attention he would slip away and blend in. This is the Jed we will remember; a lover of adventure, of all things new, and of course, of garbage and cats!

Akuna Matata: No worries

Notice that in this picture there is only one set of lonely feet. Adam didn't get to join me on this trip. After traveling to Israel from the US for an action packed 30-hours, I boarded a plane into the heart of Africa for the first time. Destination: Tanzania.

Sitting here in my sunny living room in Be'er Sheba it warms my heart to reflect on my good fortune over the last few months. Who am I kidding, its been a wild, exhausting, incredibly gracious summer for Adam and I. When thinking about the trip to Tanzania, it presents itself in two different parts. So I will do the same for my dedicated readers so as to facilitate a gentle flow or narrative and imagery. Without further delay...

PART ONE: WORK

What brought me to Tanzania just a few weeks after our big wedding party was COHI's Summit for Women and Children's Health. I had the good fortune of joining a team of women's health professionals from the US, Latin America, and the Mid-East for three days of service work followed by an international conference highlighting the work of COHI's partner organization in Tanzania, FLEMAFA. You can visit th COHI website to see more photos and to read about this successful and moving week we shared. Here are a few pics to give you a sense of what we were doing in Kisarawe District, Tanzania where 22 women die each day due to childbirth related illness and complications.

The first day of orientation in Dar, at the Palm Beach Hotel.

From left to right: Faridah Mgunda, Executive Director of FLEMAFA, local TBA, Me, and another local TBA. The TBAs had brought a woman in labor to the health facility where this photos was taken. COHI's field team assisted in the delivery of this health baby boy who was named Ahmed after one of COHI's team members. What a gift!

We found sometime to play while working, and here we are shaking our booties to some AWESOME Tanzanian pop music at Ahmed's birthday party at our guest house in Kisarawe. Our friends decked out Mindy in the local garb, see the head-dress here she is sporting. She is getting down here with Karinje, Faridah's son who just completed his first year of medical school in Tanzania.


Here is a shot of Mindy Levy, home-birth midwife in Israel, leading a discussion of Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) in delivery at the conference hosted by COHI and FLEMAFA in Kisarawe.

We headed to the base of Mt. Kilimanjaro to send the climbers for women's health on their way to successfully reach the summit. This is the group at the bottom of that very, very big hill.

PART TWO: PLAY

I was greeting in Dar by my good friend Bob (we met while we were both living in Vietnam) who's spend the summer in Nairobi. He spent the first few days with the growing COHI group before he headed back to Nairobi to fly to Berlin where he is in school. He we are in Dar on the beach. Lovely city.


Below is the view of Kili as you fly in from the North. I was sitting on the plane next to a 60 year old woman who was planning to sky-dive onto the summit. Can you imagine? All of COHI's climbers made it successfully to the top, you go gurls!

I was way way way too tired to climb the mountain after the wild summer I'd had, so I went on safari with Mindy. Our guide, a Masai named Jacob, taught us so much and kept us safe from the wild animals, and our desire to wander off into the Serengeti to join them. Here are some pics of what we saw.


After returning to Arusha to meet the euphoric and smelly climbers at the bottom of the mountain and celebrating their triumph with them, Mindy and I spend a few days in Zanzibar. Gorgeous and bubbling over with history, we wandered the streets checking out the spices, shops, and spent a day on Slave Island trying to get our head around the tragedy that had transpired on this small island.

This is the view from one of the cells that held slaves as they waited to board the ship that would carry them away from their homes.

Did you know that Freddy Mercury from QUEEN was from Zanzibar? This is the view from the patio at Mercury's, a restaurant he opened there. Great fish tacos!



And here are some pictures of life in Tanzania. It is such a gorgeous, kind place. I encourage you all to visit, and to go see the animals, WOW. COHI may be making the climb an annual event, so keep checking if you'd like to join us in 2008.