Kalen & Melissa
We had a great visit with Kalen & Melissa F and the time flew by. They're a fabulous couple and here's some background on them. I roomed with Kalen and his brother Paul up in Davis, and Kalen went overseas with the same organization I did--ESI--(along with Jesse S) back in 1999/2000. Kalen went and taught in the Ukraine, Jesse in St Petersburg and I went to Budapest. Since that time, Kalen's picked up a master degree in philosophy at the University of Virginia, where he met his wonderful wife Melissa (who got her PhD in psychology at Univ of Virginia after undergrad at Harvard--nice job) and Kalen is just about finished with his law degree from the Univ of Texas.
A few other cool things about this great couple: Kalen (getting carried away with his education) has spent the past year in Edinburgh, Scotland, getting his masters in International Law and Melissa got a great job there teaching undergrads at the University as well. Kalen aspires to work again with the International Justice Mission, busting pedophiles and pimps who practice modern day slavery upon poor women. He and Melissa spent a summer doing this already in Thailand and hope to get back into it in the years ahead. In the meantime, Kalen will be looking for legal work in the Corvallis, Oregon area this Fall and so if anyone has any connections or leads please let me know and I'll pass it on!
This past week was filled with great conversations about all kinds of topics (including how easy and inexpensive it is to get quality dental work done in Bangkok) and we also had fun getting some culture in us on Tues and Wednesday nights. We saw the very funny Complete Works of Shakespeare at the new Budapest National Theater (which has funky modern architecture I liked a lot: the whole building looks like a big ship with a bow crashing through "waves" in front of it--which is the fountain). We then saw a Hungarian opera at the Opera House on Wed night and got some decent seats for $4 each!
Kalen and Melissa have a baby due this summer so we're going to try to squeeze in a visit (first to Ireland via cheap RyanAir tickets) beforehand. Here are some pictures.
