And they're gone!

After two weeks of juggling schedules, monitoring television noise, trying to keep the food supplies adequate (both good bread and peanut butter had a tendency to vanish) and solving problems such as the lack of an American-looking bathing suit (only one left in the whole store in the right size but fortunately it was a hit), life has quieted down. David left Wednesday, Alistair yesterday and Roger leaves today for a week's work in Guinea. Quiet is all very well but it's charm is overrated--I miss the excitement already.

David left by train, facing the adventure of getting himself from train station to airport in Boston on his own--shouldn't have been a problem since there is a clearly marked bus and you can always fall back on the taxi service. We drove Alistair to Boston, stayed a night in a hotel, and spent the day before departure at the excellent science museum there. It turns out that Alistair is to science museums as his paternal grandfather is to art museums. (I hunted for the right entry in Jean's blog to explain that statement but can't find a recent one; you'll have to look for yourself.) We arrived at the museum at noon and left at 6:30. We did, during that time, eat some lunch, see a movie about dinosaurs and take a ride on an amphibious vehicle called a "Duck" that does Boston tours. All the rest was spent on things like a lightening exhibit and long periods during which Alistair did challenging computer things. The lightening exhibit was based on a Van der Graaf generator built by--Professor Van der Graaf! That's Boston for you. At the end of the day we managed a brief stop in Harvard Yard, which is shown.

David and Alistair got on well; David was critical of Alistair's affection for white bread and Alistair thought David could do better at computer games but overall it was a good match. They are shown eating seafood--at least David was, Alistair ate a hamburger--and getting ready to go out in a kayak with a friend of ours. Both, interestingly enough, chose the same American delicacies to take home: a batch of Dunkin Donuts and a big tub of real peanut butter from the local health foods store, made of nothing but peanuts. I called London this morning where Alistair and his mother were having donuts; it's nice to think that David and his mother, Lena, may be doing the same in Stockholm.

So now it's on the the next phase, some of which is shown. These are our first potatoes ever--the little white fingerlings are much better than the red ones. We have so many beans they are beginning to be a chore to eat. Corn comes next.