2012 Recap

As the clock struck 12 on New Years Eve to welcome in the year 2012, we were not, as had long been our tradition, surrounded by good friends and champagne. We were not rounding out an evening of excellent food and too much wine. We weren’t rolling up the dining room carpet and dancing on a floor sticky with spilled drinks. We weren’t even wearing funny hats.

Instead, we were on an airplane – all four of us, plus my mother. We were looking out the windows, as the plane was just making its descent, scheduled to land mere seconds after the turn of the new year. We were landing in Lima after spending Christmas in the States to start what would be our last (partial) year in Peru.

And because it was Lima, where every festival or holiday is celebrated with enthusiasm, our landing aircraft offered us a bird’s-eye view of the hundreds of neighborhood fireworks going off all over the city.

Only our younger son was disappointed – as he would have preferred to spend the evening partying with his Peruvian friends. The rest of us thought it was a lovely display.

And either way, it was a fitting way to mark the start of an unusually eventful year in the Gwinner household – a year that included:

1 trip to the Galapagos Islands (amazing)

1 college graduation

1 high school graduation

Numerous visits from dear friends and family

Several work trips to Europe, Africa, and Asia

1 move out of our large, lovely, Lima apartment

1 long trek to Choquequirao, Machu Picchu, and other amazing parts of the Andean highlands, as our farewell-to-Peru trip

1 college drop off in the States

1 move into our wacky and enormous Nairobi house

1 change of jobs from head of housing finance for the Latin America Caribbean region to head of housing finance for the Sub-Saharan Africa region

1 switch from heading communications about potato and sweetpotato to freelance writing on all sorts of agricultural development and climate change topics

1 unexpected trip back to Lima to recover our dog – abandoned at the last minute by the company that was supposed to move him to Africa

Lots of encounters with wild animals in the bush, on the savanna, and in our yard

An exotic getaway to Zanzibar

Several safaris

Some snorkeling and diving on the southern coast of Kenya

2012 also brought us many goodbyes. We left behind dear new friends in Peru, and had all-too-brief reunions with old friends in DC, NYC, and other parts of the world. We said goodbye to our two sons, and started life as empty-nesters. We said goodbye to our jobs in Lima and many wonderful colleagues.