Running Around Europe: The fall 2026 version

My apologies for the long silence between posts. It’s been a busy couple of months.

Alex has started freshman year of high school, and all of us are climbing the learning curve of what an International Baccalaureate school looks like for grades 9-12. For example, assignments and tests are graded from 0 to 8, but (surprise!) the highest grade you can get for the semester is a 7. We’re still not sure who the 8 is for. Possibly no one. Possibly it’s purely aspirational.

There have been three cross country meets so far. Alex was injured for the first one, so Mike and I didn’t get to go to Luxembourg (we were pretty bummed since it’s one of our favorites), but Alex went anyway to cheer on the rest of the team.

The next two meets were in Brussels and Bonn. It never stops amazing Mike and me that we get to travel to such interesting places just to watch a 20-minute running race. That’s roughly 20 minutes of driving per minute of actual running, and we wouldn’t have it any other way. (It's a bit better than track that has 3 hours of driving per minute of race time! See: next spring.)

At the finish line in Brussels

One thing keeping Mike somewhat sane is his new sports car. Of course, he has to drive all the way to Germany to really feel the wind in his hair. The Dutch keep expanding their average-speed cameras, so driving here is about as thrilling for him as a very scenic waiting room.

In other news, I’ve started a new project. I’m working with The Gaza Children Village (a group that provides schooling for 10,000 orphans in Gaza) to find work for the many highly educated but extremely underemployed women in Gaza. If you’re interested in my twice-a-month newsletter, you can sign up using the subscribe button here. I head to Malawi in a couple of weeks to visit a group of women that are navigating women’s empowerment in patriarchal societies (through a group called Women Together), much like what we will experience with our initiative in Palestine.

Meanwhile, life in the Netherlands is good. It was an exceptionally hot summer, and fall has been lovely. We’ve remarked more than once that it feels a lot like a California fall, with temperatures in the high 60s. We had a few cold days last week, but nothing too dramatic. We’re bracing ourselves, though; we know the Dutch winter is just waiting for us to get comfortable.

Much love to everyone.