Love Tour Part Two

Here's a short post that's really just a continuation of last week's subject.  I really do have something wise to say about our trip and you'll just have to give me a little more time.

You know from last week's post that our group videotaped ourselves several times singing an old Beatles song as part of one of Ryan Garcia's 366 Days of Random Acts of Kindness.  It turns out you need a little bit more than just love. Like maybe a modicom of talent or maybe even just rythmn.   I've looked at the videos we shot of our group singing and it's almost too painful to watch.  I will wait to show you any of it until Ryan and his editors work their magic.  And let's hope the next time he plans to have the whole world sing a song he will choose one that's easier to sing.

But love? Love we had in abumdance. And I have a few more words for you to finish off last week's post. Then I can get down to telling you what I learned at Dauchau and in Switzerland.

Group shot outside our villa in Tuscany

I love to travel with nurses.  And we had three with us.  Not that I was planning a heart attack.  I've just found nurses to be exceptionally caring and practical; and just plain old fun to be around.  When they travel with a group they know they will be called upon to help out so they usually pack medications they don’t even use themselves. Packing for a two week trip is such a bare bones affair that taking even an asprin you don’t need is a luxury. Philanthropy comes with its own price tag.

When I go to Guatemala with Linda Terpstra she brings everything from a heavy duty prescription drug for dysentery to eye drops for one of the pastors we see every year. The powdered Gatorade alone takes almost a suitcase of its own.

So it came as no surprise when one of our new friends on the tour caught a bad cold and one of the nurses took time from her own schedule to go with her to the pharmacy to help decode foreign medications.  Then she  checked back with her at every stop to make sure she had everything she needed. (A European pharmacy might be an exciting side-trip with its own joys to someone with that special mindset.  I did such an amazing job of eating myself sick that I ended up with the French version of Alka Seltzer and it was as delicious as you would expect French Alka Seltzer to be.)

One couple from our group were native Fillipinos who live in California.  Nora recently retired from teaching biology and Jose had been an electrical engineer.  But they were just the cutest couple out of us all. The story of how they met was one of those real love stories.  Three times I watched Jose pick someone out of a crowd (twice on the subway, once on the street) and just begin talking to them in his native dialect.  When they answered back that they were also Fillipino they would have a little hello-how-are-you conversation right there on the spot.  I asked Jose how he knew they were from the Phillipines he just said they looked like it.  So much for the evils of racial profiling.

The group had a family feel to it.  Just as our daughter had joined us on the trip, we had one family who brought their grown son and daughter.  We also had a couple of sisterswho had come together and then two brothers and their wives. We were blessed to hang around these family connections and let a little of their love for each other rub off on us.
 

Maybe you need more than love to sing as a group but for travel, love in any condition is more than enough to make the adventure so much better. 

Oh!, and PS: I didn't have to pay full price for a new iPhone.  I paid for an "early upgrade" and was up and running almost immediately.  I had re-synched the phone to my laptop just before we left so I didn't lose a single song.  God is good.