Summer Vacation

Last weekend 10 of my Marquette girlfriends got to share a little vacation to Lake Geneva. We typically get a chance to get away and reconnect every fall, at my friend Jenn's parents' Door County home. But a new tradition started last year with spending the weekend at a B&B in Lake Geneva. It was a great weekend for strolling around the downtown, eating "al fresco" (who knows the spelling for that), and sharing some cocktails on our porch that overlooked the lake. At one point during the weekend, we played our standard Q & A game with the newly posed question being - "What about you are you most surprised about, since graduating college?" We got a wide variety of answers - from "Still living in Wisconsin" to "Lacking the energy I used to have". But my friend Maira's response was great, she said "I never would have thought that 11 years after graduation we would be able to get so many of us together (travelling as far as from the West Coast to the East Coast) to spend a weekend together."

Speaking of vacations, it looks like Ethiopia's courts will soon be taking a summer break of their own. Michael and I had previously heard that the Ethiopian courts shut down for a time during the summer months, so the following information does not come as a huge shock to us. However, due to the fact that there recently have been a lot of referrals (we now are # 20) we thought that our news might come mid-June. This now puts us right at the new cut-off date of referrals "pausing" on June 15th. However, we did envision traveling to Ethiopia in the Fall... which could still be the case if we get our referral after the re-opening of the courts in September. I have to admit that I am now a little more compulsive with checking to see how many new referral are coming in each day! But I guess everyone gets more anxious as the near their "due date"!

This is the information we received from CHSFS's newsletter last Sunday:

"As many of you know, the Ethiopian courts close every year. The closure typically lasts from the end of July or early August, until mid September. During this time the judges have vacation and a new schedule is made for the upcoming year.Due to the closure referrals will not be given after June 15th. Anyone who receives a referral before June 15th is expected to get through the court system before closure. We will resume the referral process approximately September 15th."