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some family stories Due to some poor communication amongst various family members, there was some confusion on what to get my dad for Father's Day. Earlier in the week I had been told via email that my mom was going to buy a DVD player for him. So once I learned that that was going to happen, buying some movies on DVD seemed like a natural extension on that idea. However, when I got there I soon learned that she never bought one for him, but said to give him the movies anyway and she would get him one later in the week. Then after my present was opened with a small amount of confusion, my dad opened one from my sister Hope. Inside her present was a DVD player and that cleared up some of the confusion. She however didn't know that my mom was thinking of getting him one and didn't know why I had gotten him DVD movies since I hadn't talked to her. Obviously in the end it all worked out fine. Instead of having two DVD players, one from my mom and one from my sister, there was only one and my dad even had some new movies to watch on it. I ended up spending the entire day with my family showing my photos and hearing the latest stories from them. Unfortunately there were only a few stories from my sister about being in Nicaragua, because my niece likes to be the center of attention and wanted to talk rather than listen to anyone else. From what I did hear she didn't enjoy being there. ... People at work have been asking some odd questions about my trip. More than one person has asked if I ever had any kind of trouble in Europe. To put it another way, they wanted to know if being an American caused any problems for me and I have to say no. Almost everyone that I met was friendly or at least made an attempt to help me when I asked a question. Not once did I feel threatened while I was there and I can think of only one instance where politics raised it head. When I was in Sweden there was some Middle East faction protesting and or demonstrating in front of the Swedish parliament, but that had nothing to do with me. Besides the political angle, there were the usual jokes about whether or not I brought extra pairs of jeans with me when I went to what were communist countries at one time. The answer was no and I can honestly say that those countries are doing their best to be as Western as possible. I don't really mind the questions since I didn't know anyone else who had ever been to the Baltic states.
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