For more news of what we've been up to in 2003, visit
the Stevens Family Homepage and Vance's personal page
 |
Wishing you and yours
the best of
Seasons Greetings
2003
and Peace this New Year 2004 |
From Vance, Glenn, Bobbi, and
Dusty Stevens
 |
Only one son home for Christmas this
year
Mom gets to play Santa Claus on more time to Dusty, who
journeyed home for yet another Christmas morning around the traditional family
tree, Dec. 25, 2003
Christmas cards are getting
better:
Here are a few we've come across this year ...
|
Family doings this past year:
- Last New Years Eve Dusty, Bobbi, and Vance were in Vientienne, Laos.
Vance continued through North Laos into Yunnan province in China and then
dropped over the border into Vietnam, spending a few days in Sapa around the
lovely mountain people there before continuing on to Hanoi and Siem Reap, for
bicycling around the ruins of Ankor Wat.
- Vance was in Baltimore in March for the annual TESOL conference,
where he watched with grave concern events unfolding in Iraq and
recorded reactions in his blog.
He continued to San Francisco to spend a few days with Glenn and then proceeded
to Houston for a visit with his mom and dad in Houston and sister in Austin. He
went on to Switzerland for a feverish day of skiing in Scuol as a guest of
Tommy Back and family, but had to curtail the visit due to deteriorating health
and was hospitalized on return to Abu Dhabi with pneumonia. He soon recovered
and the doctor insisted it wasn't SARS (the paperwork would have been worse
than the disease).
- Summer was upset when Vance somewhat unexpectedly lost his job and
had to find another. The story ended happily with
new employment at Petroleum Institute in Abu
Dhabi which allowed us to continue living in
the
same flat we had occupied for years as wards of Amideast. Bobbi was able
to keep her job
teaching
kindergarden at American Community School, and with our family stability
restored she visited Glenn in San Francisco in July and was in Houston in
August where she crossed paths briefly (one night) with Vance, who had flown
there on completion of teaching a
summer course at his new job. Vance then went with Dusty from Houston to
Irvine to check out Dusty's new college.
There we touched base with the Stevens clan deriving from my step-brother
Darrell in Chico. We stayed with Cathleen in Lake San Marcos, and met Shaun and
Melissa in Carlsbad and Tammy and John in Long Beach, and found them welcoming
and supportive of Dusty. We got in a day of surfing at Carlsbad, one of many
such laid-back towns on the Pacific coast. Dusty seemed to think he would like
his new home. Vance didn't get to see Glenn on this trip because Glenn's trip
to Bolivia and Peru
coincided almost exactly with the time of Dad's visit.
- Dusty returned to Houston to await the start of school and he's (so
far) a straight-A student at the University of
California at Irvine. At this writing he's sitting next to me in our
computer room in our house in Abu Dhabi, where he's visiting at Christmas.
- One reason that Vance was so keen to remain in Abu Dhabi is that he
has become the resident PADI Scuba Instructor at the
Abu Dhabi Health and Fitness Club. The club
is owned by one of the sheikhs of Abu Dhabi and the dive facility is endowed
with one of his highness's smaller boats. Vance has had a steady stream of
students and is able to summon the boat on weekends for dive training and fun
diving around Abu Dhabi. Accordingly, we've all done a lot of diving this year,
as you can see from our
Logbook
for 2003, and the highlight of the year was an encounter with a whale shark
which someone actually got on film, or silicon, whatever, and which you can see
on our page from
June
13, 2003.
- In October, Vance traveled to Taiwan to give a
presentation at a conference
in Taipei. He met my good Taiwanese Webheads friends there: Aiden, Venny,
and Ying
Lan.
- We're especially proud of Glenn, who graduated from San Francisco
State University in December 2003. Glenn has been living in the Haight and
playing guitar and various other instruments in a band in San Francisco called
J Neo Marvin and the Content
Providers. He is looking for work in the Bay Area but failing that he may
join us in Abu Dhabi to get a CELTA certificate for teaching English as a
Second Language, and maybe get a PADI divemaster certificate in the course of
helping his dad with scuba instruction. You can keep up with Glenn at his
homepage: http://www.glennstevens.biz/
 |
For comments, suggestions, or further information on this page,
contact Vance Stevens, page author and
webmaster. |
Last updated: December 25, 2003