Since Spring Break

Later on the same day that I published my last post, Jamie and I received some terrible news - that Jamie's cousin was killed. It is the first time some one so close to me unexpectedly died. It feels weird talking about such a personal thing in such a public way, but I think it's important for people who know us to know about. When we were visiting Georgia, it was really hard to talk about it and I'm sorry that I wasn't able to share more with everyone who we saw during the trip. Being terribly upset every day of your vacation sucks, so I tried to think and talk about it as little as I could. But I know some of you want to know details, so here are some links for you to follow to get the story:

First of all, here is a good way to get to know Kate - her blog where she kept up with family and friends while working as a Peace Corp volunteer in Benin, a French speaking country on the coast of Africa: http://beinginbenin.blogspot.com/ She was a wonderful writer. You should scroll down to the entry titled "Noises" first.

Here is the news story that Fox Atlanta did. It is a very sweet story. You can see the video also. Emilie took the footage of Kate teaching when she visited her last year. (for any non-techies, just click on the purple "Here" at the beginning of the paragraph).

Here is a wonderful blog story about Kate with excerpts from her blog and lots of lovely comments, some from her friends and family and other people who knew her. Plus it has a beautiful photo of her.

Here is a shorter blog that has lots of comments from people who knew Kate.

Here is the blog post on the official Peace Corp blog.

These posts don't cover the details of the event. We know that Kate died quietly in her sleep. She was sleeping on the porch of her house. There is an individual in custody.

I think I am ready to talk about it now. If anyone wants to know anything else or talk about it more, please call me. Thanks for letting me be silent about it for so long.

(By the way, the time is wrong for this post. It is 5 pm. I am not blogging at work. I am enjoying a cup of coffee at Cafe Deim and their web connection has been extremely wonky the whole time.)