Time is passing quickly and things are happening fast and we find ourselves spending many many hours driving buses or waiting to drive buses and watching the scenery out the window but we have found some time to have some good adventures.
Quick run down:
* My dad came to visit and we had four straight days of ATVing, Dinner Theatre, hiking, riding on buses into the park, making fun of tourists, more hiking, watching my dad beat every guy in our housing at ping pong (and de-throning danny), more making fun of tourists, a little more hiking, walking on beaver dams, listening to dad yell cat calls at the caribou we spotted, etc. It was good times. Now we are awaiting the arrival of Danny's parents in a few weeks.
* We have just passed the longest day of the year where the sun did not, in fact, set at all
* 2 months have officially passed of real bus driving and marriage and neither of us have hit anything or each other (knock on wood)
* For Steven: I ate at..... wait for it ..... the northern most Dennys IN THE WORLD! It took forever for them to take our order, food was sub-par, and it smelled like old bacon and smoke, keepin it real up here in Alaska!
* Danny has honed his Ansel Adams skills and taken some awesome pics of the wildlife/nature we have seen
* I smashed my camera on one of our hikes
* Danny is currently winning the race to more tips because he is really good at telling bad jokes
* We packed up our neat-o new packs and hiked a couple miles out, set up camp, slept in our tent, spent the next day climing a peak watching caribou and an eagle swoop around over our heads, and felt quite hardcore
On an entirely different note, about a month ago I started reading the novel, Reading Lolita in the Tehran, by Azar Nafisi and it has not only reminded me how much I love literature and how important it is but it raised my interest and awareness to life in Iran during the revolution of the late 70's early 80's. Interestingly enough all of the current happenings in Iran are a direct consequence of the change of regime that happened then and this author that was so insightful to me was on CNN a few nights ago talking about the current situation in Iran. She was articulate and gracious as she tried to explain to an audience of people so habituated to individualism, self proported creativity and openness how quickly a society can choose to give up choice , often in the name of God. I don't claim to understand or get exactly whats going on but my heart has been going out to the people there, especially the women protesting for the freedom of basic human rights. If you get a chance, give this book a look. I've been trying to remember to be grateful for the choices I have, to live where is choose, dress in a way that is comfortable to me, read, watch, and say what I please, marry or not marry whomever I want, etc. You've heard it all before and it is so far away but this is where my thoughts have been as of late.
