Ami's shining collaboration

My friend and artist Ray Dunlap made the piece of wood on the back. We tried a couple of different things before this one made the cut. It's finally in place! Click on the picture to make it huge.

MSF volunteering

The photographer was from Germany and goes to Kenya every year and takes pictures of the slums near Nairobi with his digital version of the legendary Leica camera that Robert Capa (Spanish Civil War.. etc.) and all those guys used. It costs 6 thousand dollars. Most of the pictures were from the AIDS clinics run by Doctors Without Borders there. The gallery layout was designed by an artsy fellow who gave me a card that read 'independent curator.' Tokyo language is a little different so all the men sound a bit feminine or childish and the women sound educated. He was a very nice guy and it turns out he and Yukari have some friends in common from the art world in Kyoto. It was an event designed to attract people to a fashion goods building that has all those stores like on Rodeo Drive, handbags that cost 10 thousand dollars. It's in that part of Tokyo. Me and the other volunteer interpretor went downstairs to get a soft drink, and she was shocked when her little mango juice was going to cost 10 dollars. She and I followed the photographer around and translated everything he said for a dry run, but when it came down to the time when the viewers gathered for the lecture, the young member of MSF Japan, I think she was a nurse who actually went to Kenya, decided she wanted to do it herself so I ended up sitting around a lot. I got a lot of pictures I will laminate and use in the classroom.

Crossing my energetic fingers!

I got the carnitine and energy juice packets in the mail. I took them and now I'm a bright-eyed funky monkey spry chicken, chronic fatigue out the window!!!!! Boy oh boy, I hope it continues like this!!!!!!
By the way, before this it was seeming like I was on slope into FUBAR land: tired, sleepless, and a lazy sod possum.