Bill and Wendy's ickcillint adventures

I need to clarify some thing with all of you. My blog is meant to inform and hopefully entertain, but it is not meant as a vehicle to instil guilt or provoke others to take responsibility for us. Since my last blog, we have been overwhelmed by people's responses: Joan and Jim offered us the Beaver house on their property; Kevin and Marguerite have offered us their condo at Sun Peaks. My sister has offered us to stay upstairs with them, Diane, has found us a basement suite to rent, Chris and Mary have offered us an opportunity to house sit for them while they are in Australia. Marlene and Bruce have offered us a room at their place, so has Ron. Possibly others have offered us lodging as well. My sister, Linda has cried about our plight and my dad shakes his head. Lisa yelled at us to stop the Sri Lanka process and look elsewhere for volunteer work. We so value our friends and family for their support. Thank you, thank you. But, just to set the record straight; we do have contro...

  We have been unlinked from Jaffna, in the north of Sri Lanka. CUSO-VSO has advised us that the possibility of getting into Jaffna is presently too difficult and they are trying a new route of entry for us. CUSO is now trying to place us into the Central Province, specifically, into a city named Kandy. Kandy is in the central mountain region and is a thriving and beautiful city. We have a new departure date of October 19 th for arrival in Sri Lanka for October 26 th (we still plan to visit Lisa in Korea, enroute). My job as a clinical social worker will not vary a great deal.   Political tensions are developing between the Canadian government and the Sri Lankan government due to the arrival off our coast at Esquimalt of the MV Sun Sea, a boat full of 500 Tamil refugees seeking asylum in Canada. In light of these tensions, I am most dubious about our chances of ever getting into Sri Lanka. On Monday, August 16 th, with that despair driving me, I called our Ottawa advisor...

We came back, prematurely, from our bicycle trip. My beloved friend, Bettyanne Albinson, who has been struggling with cancer for nearly ten years, finally succumbed last Saturday. Bill and I were breaking fast on Friday, July 30 in Keremeos at the tail end of our cycle wine tour when we received a call from her daughter, Sharlene, that she was not expected to live beyond the day. So, we cycled into Penticton, bought a bus ticket home, sent our bikes on to Nelson with the tour guide of Wright Wheels Bike Adventure Tours http://www.biketoursbc.ca/(my brother in law), and as the bus didn’t leave until 5pm, we hit a couple more wineries to kill time. After hopping the bus, we arrived back in Kamloops at about 11 pm and went directly to the Hospice House. There, we were able to say goodbye to her. She was responsive and knew us. She died the next afternoon. The funeral took place yesterday at the Kamloops Funeral Home. The place was packed and I was the eulogist. The family did a lovely...