Family around, always great!

Joel and I are experiencing a great thing here in Panama... loads more guests than what we had in Hong Kong. Guess it's because Panama is closer to our side of the world, therefore people can easily "pop in".

Anna arrived last Thursday for a three week holiday and then together we will all go to Bristol to enjoy Alice's post-grad graduation.

Than on Friday, my dear Kerr cousins arrived for a 10 day stay. They will be enjoying both sides of Panama, the Pacific and the Atlantic. Again I'll repeat what I said when my parents were over... it's wonderful to be able to have dear visitors around and not share them with their everyday life... sorry for being so selfish, but after such a long time away from my biological family, I am enjoying the "immersions" on family stories.

A canine note on Alice's graduation. Her thesis defense was back in February, which meant she was ready for graduation in July. Taking into consideration that we are talking about an university in the UK, a summer graduation is ideal, much better weather with beautiful garden parties offered by the University. However, back in late May, when she had to let the University know what was choice for a graduation date, July or February, we were stuck in Angola, with no concrete date in the horizon for a home, no helpers in sight and no hotel for dogs. So, because of our Darling Carlota, we had to kindly ask Alice if it would be ok to postpone her graduation for February, when we thought our situation in Angola would have finally been resolved and we would already have a home, a helper... oh life... so much has changed since then! We are not in Angola and Carlota is no longer around.

Something similar happened when Alice was ready to defend her thesis. We had told her that we would like to be in the UK for it, so we asked her to let us know as soon as she had a probable date, in order to organize our absence from Hong Kong.

When Alice called us with two dates in mind - one at the end of January and the other early February, I had to ask her if there would be any chance what is so ever that she could delay it to the end of Feb , because of guess who??? Darling Carlota, of course!! Joel and I would be in Angola early Jan and upon our arrival back, Alpha our helper, was due to leave on her annual leave. Sending Carlota to a hotel was far away from my first choice, so... Alice, very Darling, understood it all and went to her supervisor, explained something that I never had the guts of asking what it was. The supervisor spoke to the outside professor who was coming from London to be part of the board, who then spoke to I don't know who and together they scheduled it to take place in late February. I went back to HK from Angola a week earlier, Alpha went for her vacation earlier and Joel and I left to the UK on the very hour the helper walked back into the flat!!!

I tell you, Carlota was surely part of the Braga Family and we miss her terribly!!