Hildts, Hilderdudes, and Houghs

Meh.

A long, long time ago, Yours Truly lived in Africa.  Technically I was over there serving in the U.S. Peace Corps, but more accurately I was over there avoiding adulthood for a few more years, traveling on the government's dime, and otherwise still acting like I was in college.

Read a shit-load of books, got a whole slew of diseases one doesn't see outside of Oregon Trail, was made a chief, and sweated more than any human being is designed to do.

Anyway, I made lots of friends while I was over there living like a Victorian Englishman in India.  In the decade since returning to American soil, I've stayed in touch with basically everyone, as is the norm with Returned Peace Corps Volunteers (after all, in Ghana we lived social networking before that became a thing.)  Over the years, there have been a handful of large-scale RPCV reunions all across the country, notably an '08 reunion in Chicago and a '13 reunion in Washington D.C. - both of which I was unable to attend due to my work schedule or the fact I was bringing miniature human beings into the world.

Though I did get to teleconference  in via Skype to the D.C. one:

(Note the handsome man on the laptop.)

Well, this past week we had ourselves a mini-reunion down here in America's Wang.  Mike and Tara Hildt (who both served in the volunteer group a year ahead of me, and consequently became engaged during their term of service in Ghana) were bringing their offspring down to Orlando for the whole Disney park thing.  As such, they ended up staying their first night in town at our house, where our kids (who are the same age) mingled, we drank the usual RPCV amount of beer, caught up on gossip and prevented Watson from sodomizing their young son.

Yes, seriously.

Hildt and Yours Truly at Bywell's Tavern in Accra, Ghana, ca. 2004

Anyway, towards the end of their Orlando vacation, they invited us over to their hotel - the dreaded Coronado Springs Resort Kris and I stayed at for our five-year anniversary, which you may or may not remember - to swim at the pool and hang out one last time before they returned to Massachusetts.  

And as you all know, we're hardly the sort of people to turn down a resort pool.

Behold:

Abby, a fake Mayan pyramid, and some fat guy making a retard face.

The Hildt's daughter, who happens to be Alayna's age, already knows how to swim.  Alayna has a hard time floating.  This angers me.

Lauren (holding the boy at top) swung out to hang out with us. She was also in the Peace Corps (same year as me), and also worked with Guinea Worm during her term of service.  You may remember my somewhat foggy account of her nuptials a few years back.

Abby loves dog-paddling.

Lauren's son isn't buying what Abby's selling.

This is not authentic.  Or even close to being historically accurate.

Play area adjacent to the pool.

An attempt at an offspring group photo (nice job, Lauren's kid.)

Orlando Mini-Reunion '14

Alayna and Quetzalcoatl

Funned out with swimming.

Processed food!

Post-swim shenanigans

As usual, Disney paid a lot of attention to their decor in this resort.  I'm assuming its supposed to be 'Mesoamerican' or something, hence the Quetzalcoatl statues and pyramids.  Still, I was bummed there wasn't any human sacrifices on hand.  I wouldn't definitely taken pics of that.

These are the first children to play Checkers since the 1950s.

Somehow Mike and I got stuck with kid-watching detail.  Not sure how that happened.

Delegating checker duties.

Not sure what exactly Abby's doing with my backpack here. . .

Scheming.

The kids didn't take to Checkers. . . so they just said 'screw it' and built a tower instead.

This was bound to happen.  Kids can't engineer for shit.

En route back to the Hildt's hotel room. . .

Chasing lizards.

Chaos back in the room.

After saying our farewells, we began the mile-long trek out of the resort (like idiots, we parked on the opposite side of the lake from their hotel room.)

This ended up happening about three minutes into our walk.

Front lobby on the way out to the parking lot.

See the attendant on the right?  I had him in SEVENTH GRADE.  He's a high school graduate and going into the army in a few weeks.  I'm so frickin' old it's ridiculous.  Still, he said I was the best teacher he ever had, so I guess I have that going for me.

Out.

- Brian

Peace Corps Shebang 2009

A couple months of planning, but we finally made it happen. We headed out towards Tampa on Friday (Alayna's first weekend away); and settled in for a crazy weekend with Brett, Bonnie, Lauren and Susannah. We hadn't seen any of them since our wedding, with the exception of a couple hours with Lauren about a year ago. It was like a breath of fresh air.

The weekend suited us all just right. Elaborate details for simple plans. Our first day we planned to sit on the beach and just enjoy the sun and one anothers company. Well, after a little drive and parking to check out a 'private island,' we waited about an hour in line to buy tickets for a ferry.

Once we got to the "secluded" area and tried setting up camp, the wind was so crazy that both of the packed umbrellas kept blowing over and we were once again forced to choke up some dough to rent an umbrella that was already well set up. It was a nice time after that, but it did take a few hours until we all felt the relaxation the beach was supposed to provide. (Mind you, Cannonball was fine the entire time with sand entering every crack possible) The night ended with grilling and eating dinner around 10.

- kristina

one thing that never fails in a peace corps reunion of any size is the inability for all rpcvs present to complicate rather simple matters beyond all rational thought. this may be due to our old habits of facilitating and administering highly complex orginizational settings in a foriegn land, bridging cross-cultural barriers and trying not to get ourselves killed, but, without fail, we cannot make simple plans when hanging out with one another anymore.

everybody wants to run the show.

don't get me wrong here , either - i expected this kind of mess well before i even reunited with these rascals, and i think nothing less of them because of it. i truly believe that this sort of dilemma is bound to happen when you force a bunch of 'leaders' to hang out with one another. i guess that's what drew us all into the peace corps into the first place...

you don't see many 'sheeple' signing up for foriegn diplomacy work.

anyway, going back to our tale, the second day saw a bunch of near-thirty'ers hung over from the previous night's white russians and martinis, but nevertheless resilient in their epic quest for beachery and jet skiing. i, myself, had no desire to jet ski, but was down for the beach... so, once again, our group set off for the coast where brett, susannah, lauren, and joe went jet skiing, while bonnie, kristina and i had what i'm considering to be the worst lunch i've ever had (in terms of service). i won't bore any of you with the details, but the food was disgusting and i got pooped on. literally.

waiting around for the others to return was boring, but having a few drinks along the pier boardwalk wasn't. i didn't mind that too much at all. alas, as evening was sitting in, people's minds and stomachs were ready for sushi and so the whole caravan of extravagant planners high-tailed it back to headquarters, where susannah's expert sushi-making prowess was put to the test. she didn't disappoint.

the next morning, we all slept in and, consequently, missed church on Easter sunday. the cannonball did get to watch her parents decorate eggs and make a mess in someone else's kitchen, which was fun enough i suppose. following that thrown-together easter mess (we had forgotten her basket and everything else associated with the holiday at our place back in orlando before we had set off for tampa), we said our farewells and departed back towards central florida and normalcy.

if there is a moral to this tale, kids, it is probably this: keep it simple.

...that, or else don't trust susannah on a jet ski.

not gonja and damn proud of it,

- chief maliguna

sankpala, northern region