Dearest Friends and Family...

Well let's see now,,,, i guess it's been quite some time since last I wrote (last October?) after we had returned to Turkey from our Summer-Fall cruise of the lovely Greek Dodecanese Islands. My, that seems like a thousand years ago. We spent about a month in Marmaris, Turkey before flying back to Alexandria, VA to spend 4 months with family, friends, NEW family and doctors. We were happy to leave ChaliVentures last November, and now, were just as happy to be getting back to her. [i.e., CHANGE IS GOOD!!] I've certainly enjoyed the luxuries of living in a 2bdrm condo -- which seems ENORMOUS compared to the boat --, taking advantage of flush toilets, dishwashers, garbage disposals, washer-dryer right in the apartment, and of course, unlimited heating, water, telephone and cooking fuel (electricity). All those things that we all take for granted when living here in the USA....which are NOT part of our on-board existence "living the dream." Tell me again how envious you are......???????

4 months sounds like a long time, but now that we're at the end of our stay here, it seems to have gone by in a flash! I think planning and doing things just takes a lot longer now that we're retired. Within a week of our arrival last November, it was Thanksgiving. That always takes me at least 3 days to prepare. Our two youngest children (and boyfriend) plus little sister Jenny and Chuck's brother Bruce joined us around the table. And daughter Christina, Dean and our grandaughter Claire came over in the evening. Thanksgiving is our family's favorite holiday, so we try to get back from our Cruising Adventures to celebrate that one together. No one much cares about the "Spending Holiday" aka Christmas, but nevertheless it requires planning and.... well....spending. And I didn't even manage to send out electronic greetings this year, much less real live paper cards! Then, just a couple of weeks later we three (zoey, too!) flew out to Boulder, Colorado to visit our son Jon, Hatty and our 2 grandchildren for 10 days. Who would have thought that Colorado would have been warmer than Alexandria, Virginia? Chuck (and i) got to see some old college friends while there, too. Next on the agenda was my trip to see my big sister, Dori and family who lives in Knoxville, TN. I was lucky to find one of those cheap weekender last minute flights on United to go see her, but between a freak snowstorm THERE, then the series of snowstorms HERE.... well, it took me 10 days and about 10 cancellation/ rebookings to get there! But it was well worth it. As I type, my sister's husband is recovering from a partial (like 80%, that is!) laryngectomy. his cancer had returned. gulp. they found 1 of the 2 doctors in the USA (at Vanderbilt in Nashville, TN) who performs a partial. (he learned it in France.) So they feel very lucky. So far, so good. About 10 days after my return from Tennessee, Chuck, Zoey and I loaded up the car and drove to New York, where our first stop was to visit cruising buddies Juergen and Brigitte whom we had met in the Azores back in 2005 when we crossed the Atlantic. The next event was a very personally satisfying and enjoyable one for me. As some of you know, I've been doing genealogical research for the last 2 years into my mother's Russian roots, and 18 months ago I had my breakthrough by finally learning my great grandmother's maiden name. Armed with that info and few other scant, vague details, I found records in ancestry.com for her and her 7 siblings who all immigrated to New York from Russia in the 1890's. And.... the really exciting part is that i found living cousins who descended from these 7 siblings. SO! we had the "First 21st Century gathering of Marcus cousins-Northeast Chapter," and I'm happy to report that there was at least 1 representative from each of the 6 out of 8 branches that had descendants. Just the gathering was a triumph. No one had known each other prior to "being found." but the fact that we all LIKED each other and wanted to meet again was more than we could have hoped for. *sigh* We continued our drive north of the city to New Paltz, NY to spend a few days with our daughter Alex, who is in the MFA program at SUNY-New Paltz. In fact, her Master's Thesis Art Show is in May, and I'm really going to try to get back for that one! We had planned to go visit our other cruising buddies, Jim and Cathy out on Long Island, but scheduled obligations were getting in the way, so we sacrificed seeing our good buddies and drove back to Virginia. I think it was probably a good thing, too, since they got wacked by another wicked snowstorm the next day! For the time we WERE in Virginia, we had great times dining with friends and kids, going to 12 doctors appts, tons of tests, 2 colonoscopies, 10 physical therapy sessions, and I'm happy to report that we both have clean bills of health for another year. yippeee.

And now, we're almost all packed to leave for Turkey again this coming Wednesday. I sure hope all the RAIN in Marmaris is beginning to ease off. We stayed back in Virginia a little longer this year because of the heavy rains in Marmaris last year. Just our luck that we had more snow and cold temps here than in recorded history!!! We are READY for some springlike weather. ChaliVentures is stored on land getting a new bottom put on her due to blisters resulting from osmosis. (don't ask. ) We hope that she'll be ready to launch in a couple of weeks.... although all the contractors are behind due to the severe rain.

Once our buddies Sandy and Martin get back to Marmaris, we hope to take a road trip to the "not-to-be-missed-destination" of Cappadocia, Turkey, which is a 2 day drive from Marmaris. THEN...... we'll set sail probably by the end of April and will leave our beloved Turkey and start heading west again. This time we'll take the southern Mediterranean route and see some places we didn't visit when we headed east. For sure: Santorini and other southern aegean greek islands; Crete; Malta (if the authorities let us land with Zoey and her EU Pet Passport); and Tunisia. And from there.... we're really not sure. We may go back to Sicily and/or Sardinia and winter somewhere around there. We hope to rendez vous with cruising friends, Ian and Maggie, whom we haven't seen since March 2006 when we were all in Gibraltar! That will at least be something to look forward to, since sadly, we won't be cruising with Sandy and Martin this year.

As always, if you think you're going to be in any of these places this year, please drop us a line.

Alison Spinney
Back in Alexandria, VA for the winter