2017: Turning Dreams Into Reality

Our 2017 end-of-the-year blog is also available in Portuguese. Click on any picture to see a larger version. Previous editions are found here.

2017 greeted us with a midnight heavy downpour at a resort in Punta Cana. It was a great time to relax and connect with my Brazilian family in a relaxed resort setting. There I learned about two of my Mom's long held dreams: to publish her first cookbook and to go to Germany to visit the place where her ancesters came from.

My Mom is a great cook and we share a passion and curiosity about food, cooking, and gathering friends around a meal. Over her lifetime she has amassed a collection of recipe twists that made them her own. A friend had propose to help her edit it into a book. But it would be costly to get it printed. Some were telling her that most people now get their recipes from the web and that perhaps it would not be worth to print a book. I encouraged her throughout the year on our phone chats and she had the book "Delicias, Aromas e Vida" ("Delectables, Aromas and Life") printed in November and it was launched with great success in Porto Alegre early in December.

My mothers' family in Brazil traces its origins to a couple that left Peterswald, a small village in the region of Trier in Germany, in 1828 to settle in Rio Grande do Sul, in the South of Brazil. Thus to help transform her other dream in reality I started researching and planning a family trip to Germany for July. A random web search for people with the last name Rambo in the village led to a great connection. Elizabeth and Walther gave us as amazing reception in Peterswald, and to Zell, an important wine-producing town on the Mosel river. They arranged for a relaxed private visit to the very Church where Matthias Rambo was baptized in the late 1700s and where he got married with Sussane before setting out on their journey to Brazil. Then we spent the rest of the day been treated to a great lunch and a private visit to a top winery.

We had a great tour of Germany. Before meeting my Mom and Scott in Frankfurt, Daniel and I visited my friends Matthias, Anja, and Svea in Winnekendonk, close to Kevelear and not far from Dortmund. They arranged for a private tour of the Dortmund stadium - Marcus Reus from Dortmund is Daniel's favourite footballer - a visit Xanten, a Roman settlement, a village traditional party, a catholic motorcycle procession. And Daniel got a great to play with a nice young lady in Winnekendonk.

With the whole party we went to visit Trier, Munich, Prague, Dresden, and Berlin. It was a typical European tour with lots of churches, ruins, old towns, great food. Some highlights include the Neuschwanstein Castle, the Waldwirtschaff Beergarten outside Munich, drinking Chimarrão in a nice park in Prague, the Green Vault in Dresden, and the great connection that we had with Sarah and Albretch in Berlin. Sarah is Elisabeth's daugther and she had connected us with them. We had a great connection with them that made our visit to Berlin very special. Daniel said that one of the highlights of the trip was our visit to the small session of the Berlin wall that was preserved because it helped him understand the history of Berlin in a way that no youtube video of the fall of the wall could have. Our visit to the Jewish museum was also very moving.

In April and May my professional travels took me to L'Aquilla in Italy, with a stop in Rome, and to Campinas in Brazil, with a quick visit to my Mom in Porto Alegre. Staying in the historical old town of L'Aquilla was a great lesson on the attachment of people to their land and their resilience as they recover from the 2009 earthquake.

We continued with our series called "Cooking Together in Nelson's Kitchen" with some fun gatherings around preparing food, drinking and having great fellowship. In August Daniel got to spend time again with Gaga and Grandpa in their home in Oklahoma, "the best place in the world", before they joined us in Edmonton for our Summer Party.

Earlier in the Summer I was in Porto for an academic visit and then in Barcelona for a conference and before the Summer was over I travelled to Santiago the Compostela for another one. In Santiago, I just happened onto a major procession for Santa Maria del Peregrino with bagpipes and musical bands. It looked like the whole town was in there. On the same day there was a major celebration for world peace in the Praza do Obradoiro, next to the Cathedral. The entire praza was decorated with colorful flower rugs.

In September Daniel started in a new school, its called The Edmonton Academy. It is a private not-for-profit school that specializes with kids that learn in a different way. They are set up to work with students that are capable of learning, but that strugle in a standard classroom setup. Their classrooms have 6-7 students per teacher and each student is set up to work on their own individual strategies. The entire school has only 86 students from grade 3 to grade 12. Daniel loves his new school for many reasons, but specially because it is way less crowded and "everybody is like me." In October they went into a hiking trip through the mountains, and Scott was one of the parent volunteers. They had lots of fun.

As usual, my Fall term was very busy with teaching. We had time to host Emily's family, Daniel's sister in October. We had visited them, along with the bigger sister Mak and Daniel's nephew Leo in June. I only went to a traditional quick trip to Toronto in November.

Scott has cut down on his hours at the store and has been an active volunteer with the Windsor Park Community League. Late in the Summer we prepared barbecued chicken legs for a large community league event. I had many requests for the recipe. Thus, I created a prototype website called From Nelson's Kitchen for recipes. I only managed to put a few recipes there so far. I plan to keep adding to it.

This year we are spending Christmas in Oklahoma with Scott's family and having a relaxed time here.

Happy holidays and a great 2018.