Oh, Paul and Wendy Manganiello – I’ve never heard anyone say anything bad about either of them,” says Peter Mason, a retired doctor who lives in Lebanon. Though perfectly capable of wisecracks, Peter has no reason to bring out verbal daggers for Paul and Wendy. “They’re two of the nicest people in the whole world.” More to the point, he continues, “They’re both totally committed to social justice. More than any other couple I know, they walk the talk. There’s not a hypocritical bone in his or her… in either of their…” His encomium falls apart over grammar, but his meaning is clear. Paul, a gynecological specialist, was a co-founder with Peter Mason of the Good Neighbor Health Clinic in White River. “I call him the godfather of Good Neighbor,” says Peter. “He’s passionate about the homeless, the uninsured. And Wendy [a surgical nurse] exhibits just the most caring, compassion, and confidence. She has done some wonderful things with patients with devastating illness.”

As Wendy starts to talk about choosing to be a nurse, Paul interjects, “So you could marry a doctor! That’s what your mother wanted.” She laughs and waves his teasing interruption away saying, “Don’t put that in.” More reflectively, she recalls that even in high school she was drawn to nursing because it’s “a service calling.” Her specialty is ostomy care, helping patients with (for example) colitis or Crohn’s disease, or paraplegics. She enjoys both the connections she’s formed with patients she sees regularly and the improved lives she’s helped them experience.

Paul and Wendy both grew up in New Jersey. They met in Philadelphia where she was a nursing student on duty in the ward where he, a medical student at Jefferson Medical College, was recovering from surgery for a leg injury. Though Paul is more apt to leap into the conversation than Wendy, he rejects the notion of being interviewed without her. “I couldn’t have done anything without her,” he maintains, and indeed their lives, through 41 years of marriage, are closely braided.

In the early ’70s, when Paul and Wendy met, the bond between a mouthy Italian Catholic and a restrained, self-described “WASPy Lutheran” was a stretch, says Wendy, smiling at the recollection. “It doesn’t seem so difficult now, but… He pushed me out of my comfort zone. He’s so involved with his work that I’ve become more independent. The hardest thing at the beginning was the religious difference.” “It’s been a growth process for both of us,” concurs Paul.

Wendy and Paul married in 1975, and two years later headed to Georgia for Paul’s fellowship in Reproductive Endocrinology. In 1979, he was recruited to Dartmouth-Hitchcock to develop an infertility program. Before then, people seeking such help went to Boston. “The woman’s age is a major factor in successful conception,” says Paul, “but even with someone under 35, in good health, it can be a year till she conceives.” It didn’t take long for the infertility clinic to become busy, even though much of the treatment was not covered by insurance. It was a time of experimentation and expanding frontiers; the world’s first birth from in vitro fertilization was in July, 1978. “Imagine being the first women to try these techniques,” says Paul – hormone treatments, surgical procedures. “It boggles the mind that women would do so much to have a child. Women are absolutely amazing.”

Parenting two children strengthened the way Paul and Wendy worked as a team. “We’d strategize by phone,” says Wendy, describing how they developed a united front. Paul notes, “It was important for us to keep things in balance: family, job, community. We tried to do [community projects] as much as possible with the kids.” When Paul and Wendy and their first child, Marc, had arrived in the Upper Valley, they felt a bit adrift, not knowing anyone. They found community in Hanover’s Our Savior Lutheran Church (OSLC). “There was a woman in church who made me realize the issue of homelessness in the Upper Valley,” says Paul. Local churches were taking turns opening their doors to those who needed a place to spend the night, with volunteers from the congregations rotating as supervisors. In conversations with general practitioner Peter Mason, Paul grew more aware of the number of uninsured people in the Upper Valley. Working with others in the medical, church, and social service communities, Peter and Paul created the Good Neighbor clinic.

Initially, Good Neighbor provided care in the St. Paul’s parsonage on Tafts Flats in White River. “When Governor Dean came for the ribbon-cutting,” recalls Paul, “he said ‘I’m determined, I have the goal of shutting you down,’ and we said we welcomed that goal.” Twenty-five years later the region – like the nation – is still a long way from closing its charitable clinics.

While he’s happy with the community he has found in the Upper Valley and at OSLC, Paul is dismayed by punitive misreading of the Gospels. “I feel some Christians have hijacked my religion,” he says. “I go to church and I listen and read, and I wonder where did they get those ideas? Religion can be a positive force, but it can also be negative, brutal. Our faith encourages us to give unconditional love to our neighbors. At times that’s hard, but that’s what it means to be a ‘practicing Christian’ – you’re not quite there yet”

Paul is an advocate of reforming health care away from the usual fee-for-service system. He also shares the growing view that informed patients participating in health care decisions would in fact help lower costs, while also feeling greater satisfaction with their treatments. The measure of success should be an improved outcome, not how many tests or treatments were used. “Only 10 or 20 percent of ‘health’ is what the medical community provides,” he declares. “The rest are the social and behavioral determinates individuals bring to the clinical encounter. We can always do better.”

In Eric (Rick) Hasse’s art, you might sense longing, grief, wonder, whimsy. Most assuredly, you will see beauty. Now on exhibit at Dartmouth Hitchcock Medical Center’s Williamson Translational Research Building, 14 digital scans take you on a journey through the world of an artist whose physical movement is limited, but whose mind runs wild.

Hasse, who was diagnosed with Parkinson’s Disease in 1994 at age 35, began creating scans of found objects – from clematis flowers to aluminum foil – when his mind overflowed with “images out of his subconscious,” his wife Jane Sherwin explained.

On the day I saw Hasse at his exhibit, Sherwin did the talking, as he was in the grips of a physically bad day and had difficulty speaking. Hasse occasionally gave the “thumbs-up” sign to signal a positive response when I asked questions.

In school at Dartmouth College, Hasse studied English, finishing his degree in three years. He was drawn to poetry, but ultimately found the art too dense, Sherwin explained. Hasse studied Carl Jung as well. He has been a banker and an entrepreneur, sold real estate, served on the Norwich Fire Department and the town’s finance committee, and enjoyed fly fishing.

At the onset of his Parkinson’s diagnosis, Sherwin said, “he started to think about what was really important.” Creativity had always been part of his family of origin, and Hasse turned to it. “He started not frittering away time on economic pursuits,” Sherwin said. He revisited favorite artists, such as Matisse, Chagall, and Motherwell, for inspiration.

Ordinary household objects and flowers from the couple’s perennial garden at their Norwich home serve as instruments to express Hasse’s thoughts.

“He’s always looking,” Sherwin said. “It could be something as unromantic as a pot or a pen,” she said of what Hasse will place on their home scanner. “I can see Saran wrap and want to put it in the garbage, and he sees it as a treasure.” Using the scanner’s software, Hasse can manipulate the images.

This is called “Libra Ascending: The Assumption of Karol Wojtyła.” Wojtyla is Pope John Paul II. Hasse created it after his deep brain stimulation neurosurgery.

Through his art – printed up to five feet tall and three feet wide as giclée (inkjet print) on canvas – Hasse “breaks stuff out of his subconscious. There’s a great sea of potential and you keep fishing things out,” his wife said.

Some pieces’ titles include the word “caprichos,” such as the “The B-roke Organist – from the Musicians Caprichos,” which features the pipe-like images of an organ. Sherwin described caprichos as “an attribution to another artist. It’s like a conversation with an artist who’s gone before; it’s a way to say, ‘I see what you were doing, this is my response.’”

Music itself plays a role in Hasse’s work, she said.

“A lot of them have a musicality: there’s a compositional structure, a rhythmical repetition, and a dancing form. He’s always had a great appreciation for dance.”

It was 10 years into the onset of Hasse’s diagnosis – around the age of 45 – that the disease had confined him totally. He was completely dependent on Sherwin, unable to feed or dress himself, his hands shaking wildly. In 2005, Hasse underwent deep brain stimulation neurosurgery, which stabilized his shaking and reduced his symptoms considerably.

Hasse has recently been receiving botox injections to help him keep one of his eyes open and begun a probiotic dietary regimen. He regularly sees a neurosurgeon at DHMC, with hopes of reversing his stage-four Parkinson’s.

Sherwin said Hasse was carrying wood in for the fire this past winter, and riding his bike the year before. Speaking has been challenging.

“Without spech, Parkinson’s can be a very lonely vigil,” she explained. “But his art is going off in new locations that he brings back to us.” The “locations” are not just the abstract worlds created in some of his images, but actual landscapes. “Squall Line Under a Flashing Mackerel Sky – from the Point O’Breakers Coda Caprichos,” is so clearly a landscape image – with a brownish-green sea meeting a black and gray horizon. The feeling is unsettled, troubled, foreboding.

“Landscaping can be otherworldly,” Sherwin said. “You can tell what it is, but you’re not quite sure they’re places we’ve ever been.”

In other images, you can just make out the objects Hasse scanned – a flower, a crystal, perhaps fur from Oliver, their cat – collaged with other objects to form an image that makes one pause to understand.

Sherwin pointed out, though, that there is no right or wrong interpretation of the art. The couple has enjoyed observing the reactions of hospital staff and the public as they pass by the canvases.

“He really likes to see what people think,” Sherwin said. “It’s not like he’s trying to teach you something. It’s his creativity, but it’s yours, too.”

The current exhibit was made possible in part by a grant from the Jack and Dorothy Byrne Foundation – which helped cover the cost of mounting 14 new panels – and through a stroke of luck, when Marianne Barthel found a couple of Hasse’s art pieces in storage at DHMC. Barthel, the hospital’s art director, felt the images deserved exhibition, Sherwin explained, and hung them. Around the same time, Hasse and Sherwin called the hospital seeking the art they knew was in storage. “We were going to collect them, and she had them hanging,” Sherwin said. “Rick picked out new images to print” for the exhibit. In addition to the exhibition, about 25 more of Hasse’s images are on exhibit as a slideshow in the library, the images changing every five to seven minutes.

To see more of Hasse’s work and learn more about the artist, go to www.newmedia.gallery.

Rill Exhibit in the David Goudy Science Park

The Montshire Museum of Science has been encouraging children to experiment and play hands-on with interactive exhibits since the mid-1970s. While the museum has flourished – currently seeing well over 100,000 visitors each year – the administration has made sure access to the museum is affordable for all families.

In January 2014, the Warm Welcome program was launched. With an EBT card, a Medicaid card, or a letter from a school, children and families can qualify for reduced admission. A family museum membership for four people is $100, but with Warm Welcome, qualifying families can receive membership for $15. Daily admission rates for those participating in Warm Welcome are reduced to $2 per person – normally $14-$16 for adults and $11-$13 for children.

The museum started Warm Welcome to reach a “broad cross-section” of the community, said Jennifer Rickards, the Montshire’s Associate Director and Director of Development and Visitor Services. “For many years, we distributed free admission passes to dozens of human service agencies, and we still do, but we knew that we were missing a large population of people who were not receiving social services but still couldn’t afford a Montshire visit,” explained Rickards.

Museum staff met with with local nonprofits, families, other museums, and state agencies to figure out the best way to offer access to all people, regardless of their financial status. “We have established eligibility criteria that enable us to serve families whose household income is up to 200% of the federal poverty limit,” Rickards said. “People show an EBT card, a Medicaid card with an adult’s name on it, or a letter from a school saying that the family qualifies for the free or reduced-price school meals program.”

In addition to reduced admission and membership, Warm Welcome provides scholarships to children for the museum’s summer camp, a reduced wintertime admission for underfunded schools, free passes through approximately 110 Vermont and New Hampshire state agencies, and free use of meeting rooms for non-profits.

To support Warm Welcome, the Montshire receives funding from a number of sources, including donor-level memberships, gifts and grants, the Montshire Access Fund (a fund within the museum’s endowment), auction donations, the Keller Family Fund for Special Needs, and the Jack and Dorothy Byrne Foundation.

Rickards said that in 2015, 13 percent of about 160,000 visitors used reduced admission and currently 25 percent of members have joined through Warm Welcome. “It’s clear that we’re responding to a need in our community,” she said.

Rickards shared a comment from a family participating in the Warm Welcome program:

“Being able to visit truly made us feel a part of a culture we have wanted to participate in, but have been largely excluded from, as the result of our socioeconomic status. We thank you for opening the opportunity to share, learn, and play with our family without feeling singled out as the ‘poor people’.”

Another family, Rickards shared, said they appreciated the “discreet” and “respectful” nature of the Warm Welcome program.

“Our primary goal is to make the world a better place by encouraging people to be intellectually curious, to ask good questions, and to explore the world around us,” she said.

“We do that through engagement in hands-on science learning. Children’s brains are physically shaped by experiences in their 0-3 years, and people of all ages benefit from lifelong learning.”

Kate Levy in fashion show in Rwanda

Several Norwich students have had the experience to travel abroad and spend some time in schools in other parts of the world. We have the pleasure and honor to hear some of their experiences below. Mack and Kate Levy were in Rwanda for ten weeks with their family and were able to attend a local school there. Chiara Rothwell-Ferraris participated in the Rotary International Youth Exchange program which gives high school students the opportunity to live and study abroad for 9-12 months. She chose Indonesia. Chiara stayed with a host family while going to school, living, and learning the culture of Bandung, the third largest city of Indonesia. Mae Butler spent 7 weeks leading a community development project in Vaquilla, Coclé, Panama to teach sustainability in a rural community.

Going to school in Rwanda

Mack and Kate Levy

Day Before School Starts:

Kate said it best last night: “I’m looking forward to tomorrow so we can stop making assumptions about school and get on to the real thing!”

Mack Levy surrounded by new friends at school in Rwanda

School began with a 2-hour entrance examination and grading period with an official acceptance upon reviewing the results. An hour in a room picking through end-of-year inventory for the closest sizes in school uniforms (one formal one, two gym-style ones that are worn most of the time) and the right classroom supplies. And then the selection of two after-school clubs – both of us chose football (soccer) and traditional Rwandan dance. Mack said “this is the only place in the world we can learn this!”

As we walked to Green Hills School on the first day, we practiced saying “Mwaramutse” (good morning) to everyone we passed. The return greeting is “Neza” which means “to you too.” When we arrived, both of us shook hands with our teachers and within seconds, our new classmates were showing us to our desks and asking us to point out Vermont on the world map.

At the end of the first day, Mack reported that everyone was very nice and had already made many friends, including someone who asked him to go to his birthday party. One girl who sat next to Mack helped him in Kinyarwanda and explained to him the traits of teachers and students. In return, Mack helped her with math. At recess they played soccer and tag. The kids here are really good at soccer, but not as much at tag. The style of teaching here is copying the teacher’s writing from the board into our book.

Kate was excited at the end of the first day as well. “I am with Teacher Beatrice in 4A. You never call anyone by Mrs, Ms, Miss or Mr, you always call them Teacher and then their first name. I made lots of friends! One of the girls, named Diella, invited me to her birthday party. School starts at 7:30 every day and ends at 3:30 most days, except for Wednesday when it ends at 12:45. I have a different teacher for each subject but I don’t go to their classroom, they come to mine. Except for PE. We either go to the giant gym or we go to an outdoor basketball court.”

Unique Experiences

A few weeks later, Mack and Kate were fully immersed in school life at Green Hills. Kate took part in a school-sanctioned “fashion show” where everyone dressed up traditionally from their home country or really any country they wanted to represent in a traditional outfit. Teacher Beatrice wanted Kate to dress up as an American. Kate said, “I didn’t realize that Teacher Beatrice and the other students think American style is basically Texan, so they wanted me to dress up like a cowgirl. I agreed and Teacher Beatrice wanted me to wear cowboy boots and hat and say “yeehaw,” but since no one in Vermont says that, I didn’t have to. All of the African countries had beautiful traditional dresses, which made my jeans and plaid shirt look casual, but when I came out, everyone cheered loudly! Other countries represented in the show were Rwanda, South Africa, and South Sudan.”

Mack was amazed by the community spirit in his afterschool sports. He reported, “Mondays I do basketball after school. There are only 1 or 2 balls for 30-40 kids between fifth and sixth grade who are all out on the court at one time. At one end of the court there’s usually a game, and at the other end it’s shooting around. Everyone passes to each other no matter what grade you’re in. It’s so fun to be out there with so many people and playing all together.”

We asked Kate and Mack about what they have studied in Rwanda that they wish they could do at Marion Cross. Mack replied, “study more international topics. Our grade has done a unit on the United Nations. We also studied the Rwandan Genocide. I think studying more non-USA topics would be good at MCS.”

And when asked about what they are looking forward to upon their return to Marion Cross – “EVERYTHING!” Our friends, our teachers, having teachers with a growth mindset that are there to help you, Rep, recess, eating in our classroom instead of a cafeteria, not standing out so much and having everyone come up to us all the time.”

Community Development in Panama

Mae Butler

People of Vaquilla, Panama

Last summer, I spent 7 weeks leading a community development project in Vaquilla, Coclé, Panama. Vaquilla is a town of less than a thousand people. It sits on a hill between four mountains, about an hour and a half from the nearest city. It sings in color: green forests, blue skies, red dirt, and black rain. If, by chance, you were to brave the turbulent bus ride from Vaquilla to Penonomé (provincial capital of Coclé), you would find a striking but dirty, industrial city.

Vaquilla makes Norwich look like Manhattan. The largest building is a single-storied school, followed closely by the church. Monday through Friday the students trek into the town along the single dirt road, running through one end of town and out the other. Those that have visited Penonomé know where it comes from, but few know where it leads. They flow from homes perched high in bordering mountains. On Sunday, the Vaquieños flock in, the bulk of them arriving to church around 8:30. I think, if you asked, they would tell you that the service starts at 8:00, but time in Latin American works differently, and no one seems to mind. There is no rush, after all.

I was posted in Vaquilla by a program called Amigos de las Americas. My Texan partner Ella and I were sent there to facilitate a community-based-initiative-project (CBIP) and teach sustainability in workshops 5 days a week.

Mae Butler, surrounded by new family and friends in Panama

I know: volunteerism. I can’t count the number of articles I’ve read in the last year exposing its alleged terrors. Most of them paint a narrative of privileged kids taking expensive trips to deliver supplies that last for a month, maybe two, to impoverished “villages” across the globe. It’s called need-based aid. I’m not saying it isn’t a valuable experience for the participants, but materials and funds themselves don’t create lasting change for the recipients. So it’s true: A lot of “aid,” especially in the developing world, is superficial. When I tell people that I spent last summer leading a development project in rural Panama, I get the sense that they assume the worst, but that’s okay. Unfortunately, the number of failures in global aid calls attention away from the successes.

For the record, Amigos works differently. Amigos’ goal is community development, which is resource-based aid. Instead of providing short-lived relief from an issue, resource-based aid depends on sustainable infrastructure and civic empowerment.

In my case, it was up to the Vaquieños to choose their own project. It took two weeks of town meetings and door-to-door introductions for Vaquieños to brainstorm, debate, and decide upon an organic greenhouse. I’d love to say the rest of the summer was smooth-sailing, but that would be a lie. There was a lot of social tension in Vaquilla, and it was a challenge to draw the community together. No matter whom Ella and I invited into the project, someone felt excluded. There were concerns of embezzlement of project funds, and material-donors backed out more than once. I spent a lot of time mediating angry adults, and that doesn’t even account for the gender-confusion the Panamanian men experienced when I picked up a shovel. But, the Vaquieños were extraordinary people.

While change isn’t at the forefront of Latin American culture, acceptance is. With the help of the teachers from the school, we created a work schedule, and by the time I left in August, the project was well underway.

In October, my host mom sent me a photo of the finished greenhouse. There it was: Roderick Robles, a close friend, knelt beside a culantro plant. The caption wrote, cosechamos (we’re harvesting). His smile actually beamed in the picture, but it was nothing compared to mine.

The day I left Vaquilla, I didn’t know what I would miss. I mounted the bus that promised to bring me to Penonomé. Sr. Milton – the agriculture teacher, who was invested in the greenhouse for its academic merits – stopped me. He told me that he was proud – of me, of his students, of the community, and of the change we made together. He thanked me for learning to love people rich “not in money, but in affection.” He caught me off guard, but I corrected him.

The people of Vaquilla had opened their homes, faiths and families to me. At first, I didn’t fit into the space they created for me. I didn’t know how to explain myself to them – my atheist beliefs, divorced parents, or college ambitions. But with time, I learned how to be a part of a community unlike anything I had ever known. They helped me realize my own responsibilities as a global citizen, and showed me my place in our tiny globe.

I looked back to Sr. Milton, and told him how I felt. The Vaquieños owed me nothing. Six thousand miles away from my house, they had made me a home.

First Day of School in Indonesia

Chiara Rothwell-Ferraris

School in Bandung, Indonesia

I had already been awake for hours anticipating my first day of school when the alarm clock finally went off at five o’clock in the morning. I could already sense the dry heat of the day through my window and the lush palm fronds beckoned me in the morning breeze. The low chants of the prayers were calling all to worship their god, a sound so unfamiliar to me. I sat up onto the edge of my bed and stayed there for a minute wondering what lay before me on this day. My maid had laid out a crisply ironed blue uniform with my name sewn in above the breast pocket the night before.

After taking a quick shower and trying to wash away all my nervous thoughts, I secured my long skirt with the belt buckle that showed the name of my new school. After one look in the mirror and with a deep breath I opened my door to the stairs.

I went down to find freshly sliced fruits waiting for me on the table – dark purple dragonfruit, and bright orange mango.

Before sending me out the door, Ibu Heksa, my host mother, buttoned up the top button of my shirt and said, “Don’t be nervous, Chiara. Everybody will love you.” Pak Ucup, my driver, was outside smoking his cigarette, waiting to bring his new foreigner friend to school. “Cantik (beautiful),” he said when he saw me in my new uniform.

Chiara made new friends along the way

I encountered a dream I wasn’t part of on the way to school. There were motorcycles, smoke, and people everywhere. I sat in the back of the car and looked out at all the people buzzing around on their various modes of transportation.

Families of three rode on motorcycles, cutting in front of one another, weaving in and out, with many close calls. Among the smoke and heat, thousands of people made their way to work and school. I remember being so nervous – my eyes welling with tears – and missing the familiar feeling of home. I didn’t want to leave the comfort of my driver and that car when we got to the parking lot of the school but I knew it was time to face my fear of the unknown.

Little did I know I was about to meet the people who would become my best friends and family for my time in Indonesia.

Neuman family selfie in Karlovy Vary, CZ, Mar 2015

Amy Neuman’s home phone number has an 802 area code and a 649 prefix, but it rings in the city of Prague in the Czech Republic. Amy and her husband, Scott Neuman, along with their three children, moved to Prague from Norwich in February of 2013 when Scott was transferred by IBM. The Neumans had never really considered the idea of moving their family so far away, but the opportunity came up and they took the leap.

Thoughtful and introspective, Amy is the co-founder and former Executive Director of the Norwich non-profit InspiringKids whose mission is:

To educate and empower every student to become philanthropists by donating their collective time, treasure and talent to make a difference in their communities while engaging in activities that support the learning objectives and priorities of educators.

By connecting with and improving their communities, kids recognize the impact of their actions, take responsibility for improving their world, and proactively effect change over their lifetime.

The Neumans, both 45, have known each other since they were 8 years old and attended the same elementary school outside of New York City. They became sweethearts during their senior year of high school. Both went on to Cornell University, and then, at 23, 18 months after graduation, were married.

Their children – Annie, now 17, Henry 15, Emma 12 – acclimated to living in a foreign city quickly. They attend a pre-K through 12th grade international school where their schoolmates hail from 60 different countries. The school has a rule that they don’t accept any more than 20% of their student body of any one nationality.

“Many of the families at their school are career expats; they are Ukrainian, Korean, Russian, Australian… they come from virtually everywhere. It’s a relatively small school,”Amy explains, which made the transition easier. “Coming from a place the size of Marion Cross worked well.”

Emma Neuman and Greta Holland by the Lennon wall

As intrepid as the family has become, Amy doesn’t pretend it was easy at first. “Prague can be gray and bleak, depressing,” she admits. “I think that there were a total of 10 hours of sunlight for the first six weeks we were living here. Plus, lots of people smoke. That has taken some getting used to!”

“When we first got to our apartment, the kids and I got locked in the elevator and an alarm went off,” she continues. “Scott had to travel for work the day after we landed and our stuff from the States would not be delivered for weeks. The morning after we arrived we had to register with the police (required of all new residents). From the police station, Scott left for Bratislava and we took a cab back to the apartment. I can remember thinking, ‘What have we done?’ Our flat was essentially empty, our phones and internet were not set up and Scott was gone with no way to communicate with us. Thankfully we found the pizza place not too far away and ate there every day that first week. So at least nobody went hungry!”

They’ve also made friends who have helped. “Our experience with the Czech people has been very good. There is a cab driver named Tomas,” Amy says, who will come pick them up anytime they call. “He loves practicing his English.”

And then there is Renata Brenisinova, the woman who tutors Amy and one of her daughters in Czech. She, too, has become a friend. “The language is so hard,” Amy confesses. “Annie and I take lessons, so it’s better than it was. That said, it still feels like gymnastics in my mouth. A few years back, while standing in the airport in Venice, Annie was looking at all of the signs in Italian and said, ‘So this is where all of the vowels from the Czech Republic ended up.’ Luckily people in Prague for the most part speak some English.”

The language isn’t the only thing that is challenging about being in Prague. Some of those challenges are the things you would run up against living in any city. For example, the Neumans don’t have a car, which means they have to walk everywhere, or take a cab or tram.

Emma painting in the apartment

“In the Upper Valley, you know you can jump in your giant car – you know, the one that fits all the kids and their stuff and has dents all over it – and go to the Co-op and load up on what you need for a week. Here we only buy what we can carry. Grocery stores are a 10- to-30-minute walk or tram ride away. We go to a local butcher shop and I try to speak Czech. They laugh at me because I am butchering their language. But we can usually make ourselves understood.”

Then there are trips to the orthodontist or the hospital for the occasional injury. “The hospital complex is so different from the beautiful city center. They are cement block, soviet-era buildings where everything is tiled in an institutional mint green and the lighting is not terrific – the kinds of places that make DHMC with its big windows and airy spaces and art on the walls and live piano music seem like a dream.

“Plus,” she continues, “the medical personnel typically don’t speak English and their whole approach to medicine, never mind a bedside manner, is quite different.” She tells the tale of Emma’s injury during a Thanksgiving Day basketball practice at school. “It wasn’t broken. But the school nurse said, ‘Get an x-ray.’ We were given papers that we couldn’t understand, sent down long corridors and to various offices to pick up more papers we couldn’t read. Finally, we get to the exam room and the doctor grabs Emma’s leg with no warning and pushes super hard until she yells. Then he gives us a piece of paper and sends us down another hallway.”

Despite the off-hand way she describes the trips to various doctors, Amy is anything but cavalier about what her kids are experiencing abroad. You can tell after talking with her for just a few minutes that she is as centered as she is funny and game.

“At home [in Norwich] the kids had things almost every weekend. We would always be driving someone somewhere, to a practice or a game. Here the kids have practice 3 times a week, but none on weekends. We live a solid half-hour away from their school, so there isn’t a lot of going back and forth. When they’re home, they are home.

“We didn’t really anticipate that we would have all this togetherness, but it has been really, really fun. The kids have been somewhat of a captive audience. We play lots of games in the evenings – once a week at least. This is one of my favorite things.”

“The best thing about being here,” Amy continues, “is that I feel I have been given this gift of time with the kids. If we were at home in Norwich, Annie would be driving now. She’d be off on her own. That’s just the natural order of things. Here I’ve gotten to spend a lot of time with her. I feel like that’s something that might not have happened had we been home.”

It’s been educational too, and, true to the tenets of InspiringKids, the Neumans have made sure their children have had a well-rounded experience.

“We volunteer at a soup kitchen at the St. Thomas church every Saturday morning. All of us get up and take the tram together across the river. We have been doing that for 3 years now and we’ve gotten to know the people pretty well.

“The kids will have conversations with the regulars every week – they are comfortable with us and love to talk. We’ve gotten to know their stories and struggles. We’ve become friendly with a refugee from Pakistan who landed here in Prague a year or so ago and now volunteers at the soup kitchen as well.

“Then there is Roma, a homeless gentleman who has a palsy and uses crutches. This man’s English is very good and Annie, Henry and Emma will sit down on the bench with him and just talk. He’ll make suggestions to the kids about things they should see and he’ll tell them how to get there. He’ll follow up the next weekend to find out if we’ve gone.”

“Our experiences at St. Thomas definitely expose us to the incredible struggles that many people experience everyday. Living here has also made us more aware of the incredible sacrifices that people have made throughout history,” Amy reflects. Indeed, history is in evidence all around them.

“A good example is the Saints Cyril and Methodius Cathedral, just six blocks from our apartment. We kind of stumbled across it about six months. We learned about these Czech and Slovak paratroopers who, in 1942, sacrificed everything to defeat the Nazis. They had assassinated Reinhard Heydrich, one of the head Nazi generals, and fled there to hide. The Nazis came after them. Rather than be captured, these guys committed suicide. You can still see where they hid and there are still bullet holes in the outside walls. My kids could see with their own eyes what it must have been like, what real sacrifice is all about.

Sorting sea glass in Croatia

“We also went to Mauthausen-Gusen concentration camp right outside Linz, in Austria, where the families of those Czech and Slovak soldiers,” along with some 13,000 others, “were sent as reprisal. Seeing one place and then the other, and knowing about the connection, made WWII history so real for all of us.”

Traveling is one of the things the Neumans do a lot of. They’ve been to the beach in Croatia where the locals couldn’t understand the concept of collecting sea glass. “There’s so much of it there because no one picks it up. They said to us, ‘Why are you cleaning our beaches?’”

“We have a big map in on the wall in the kitchen with colored pins showing the places we’ve been. Everybody gets a color. Red is for the places where the whole family goes. White is my color,” Amy says with what sounds like chagrin. “I have the fewest pins because we travel so much as a family.”

But the Neuman kids have been all over the place on their own too, on school junkets. Because of the way the Central and Eastern European Schools Association (CEESA) is set up, they compete in sporting events, have choir concerts and other activities in places like Moscow, Budapest, and Bucharest. They will go for a 4 or 5-day tournament at one of the member schools. Annie was recently in Moscow playing softball.

“It’s less competitive here overall than it is in Vermont. Emma came home from a trip one day and said, ‘Mom! I have three new friends from Warsaw!’ It’s more social, more about meeting people and making friends. In fact, the most coveted award is the sportsmanship award – a very different emphasis,” she adds appreciatively.

While they don’t let news of terrorist attacks stop their activities, Amy and Scott do factor them into some of the decisions they make about traveling.

“We went to London for Easter, two weeks after the bombing in Brussels. I tried to work things out so we were above ground as we traveled around the city,” she admits.

“There is also a lot of chatter here about the refugee crisis. Many Czechs are skeptical about taking in any refugees. There have been anti-refugee rallies in Wenceslas Square, which is five blocks from our apartment.”

And they’ve hosted a lot of travelers, too. Friends, friends of friends, and family members have taken turns staying in their guest room. “We’ve loved that,” Amy says.

In the end though, Norwich is still HOME. All of the Neumans are attached to it and committed to coming back. Before they went away, Scott was one of those guys you see in the winter doggedly maintaining the ice rink in front of Marion Cross.

“We have magnets from everywhere we’ve traveled to stuck on the hood above our stove here. Right in the middle is one from Vermont with a covered bridge on it.

“That’s our place. That’s what the kids refer to anytime they are talking about ‘home.’”

And they do get back regularly. They’ve kept their house in Norwich. It, along with their two dogs and a cat, are looked after by a friend who is staying there for the duration. Plus, Amy’s parents live in Hanover. The Neumans come home each year for Christmas and for a time during the summer, although the Neuman kids are all off on various excursions for part of this summer.

Aside from occasionally consulting at her children’s school, Amy has not been working and spends less time rushing around than she did at home in Norwich. “I’ve had the opportunity to be in my own kitchen. I read more and rest more, spend more time with my kids. And I spend a lot of time learning about this incredible place.

“Living in Norwich is like living in a fairytale. When I describe life in the Upper Valley to my friends here in Prague, it sounds ridiculous. From the Gingerbread Festival, Halloween at the Norwich Inn, Dan and Whit’s, all of the resident Olympians and even the ‘broccoli heist’ at Killdeer Farm a few years back. It is all so unreal. Living in Prague is like living in a historical fiction novel. There is a heaviness to the city – so much history and culture, so much ornate architecture and a kind of anonymity – all of which I have come to love. I am so grateful that our family landed in Norwich almost twelve years ago, and I am grateful that we have also had this incredible adventure abroad.”

She says again, “I feel like I have stolen time.”