Merry Christmas 2008

To our wonderful friends and family,

Two thousand eight has been a big year for us and it wouldn’t have been remotely as fun and exciting without you. Thank you. We miss you a ton and are incredibly grateful for your love and support. Here is a quick recap of our year that started in sub-zero temps in Montana, then got warmer, then hotter, until the tropical monsoons of East Timor finally provided just a bit of relief.

January—below zero
We got engaged in below zero temps during a full moon ski near Lolo Pass outside Missoula. We climbed up to the top of a clearing, sat in the snow, and celebrated with alpines and frozen champagne, talking and laughing in the moonlight. Finally we skied back to the car where we realized we’d been out in the sub-zero temps for four hours and never felt cold...

February—the snow is just getting better
Chad flies to Baltimore for an all day interview with CRS, an organization we’d barely heard of.

March—great skiing in the mountains
Chad heads to Memphis to present at the American Society of Applied Anthropology conference. A few days into the conference he gets an email offering him a job with CRS in East Timor. Chad calls Laurie. Laurie tries to look up East Timor in her 1990s era atlas but despite an index that takes up half the book, East Timor or Timor isn’t even listed. We madly research East Timor and try to decide if we want to move to a small tropical island nation in southeast Asia that just became a country in 2002.

April—starting to warm up
We learn that East Timor has had recent unrest including Feb 2008 assassination attempts on the Nobel Peace Prize winning president and the Prime Minister. On google earth we see internally displaced people camps in the capital, a result of violence in 2006 and 2007. Also on google earth we see beaches ringing an island with a mountainous interior of peaks close to10,000 ft. Chad accepts the position. Then he defends his dissertation, the culmination of five years of hard work and we leave with friends for a week of backcountry skiing in Canada.

May—spring time in Missoula
Chad graduates with a PhD and Laurie finishes nine years of work with incredible colleagues and students at the University of Montana Wilderness Institute. Laurie spends ten days floating the Missouri River with a great group of students to complete her year of classroom and field teaching in the Wilderness and Civilization program.

June—getting warmer
Chad is the best man for Adam and Erin’s wedding and we spend most of the month celebrating with them and hosting Chad and Adam’s raucous college friends. Laurie’s womens ultimate team wins the Eugene Solstice tournament. Yeah Special Forces.

July—85 degrees
Chad goes to a week-long training for his new job. We get married on an incredibly beautiful day on the banks of the Missouri River in Montana. We’re surrounded by wonderful friends and family who make us feel really lucky through and through.

August—90 degrees
We have our wedding reception in Caras Park in downtown Missoula with an amazing community of family and friends. And a few Hells Angels. We leave for nine days of backpacking in Glacier National Park. Back in Missoula, we get ready to move to East Timor, which includes painting our house the day before we leave. On August 31 we get on a plane for San Francisco, Seoul, Singapore, Bali, and finally, Dili.

September—95 degrees
We land on a tropical island that looks really different than Montana and listen the global financial crisis unfold via BBC radio.

October—100 degrees
Chad gets acquainted with a non-grad school work routine. Laurie looks for work; experiences unemployment. We practice Tetun (ami hanoin kona ba imi barak). We get scuba certified and proceed to explore the oceans and mountains of our new home.

November—100 plus degrees
We spend election “night” (our mid-day) at the US Embassy with a festive crowd of people from all over the world. Laurie finds a job working on the natural resource component of a water supply project. We have fresh fish for Thanksgiving dinner and spend a long weekend on the beach of Timor’s first and only national park.

December—95 degrees, 95% humidity
The rains finally come and cool things down a *little.* Thunder storms boom and nativity scenes go up every 100 meters complete with bamboo, thatched roofs, hip hop music, and an occasional Christmas tree. We spend a full day walking from the mountains to the ocean dropping over 1000m (about 4000ft) in 25km (about 15 miles). We experience our first Timor flash flood.

Now we’re packing our bags for our Christmas honeymoon in Indonesia. We miss you and are wishing you a wonderful Christmas and New Year.

Love,

Laurie and Chad