The Day...
I met up with my parents again last night for dinner (we went to The Black Tomato, which was incredibly good). Sitting at the table next to us, totally par hasard, was Sarah (one of the guides) with her mother, grandmother, and sister.
This morning I bought Shake Hands With the Devil, by Roméo Dallaire, after meeting up with Adeline for breakfast before she leaves for Taiwan. I went to his office and got a sticker that he had signed placed into the front cover of my book. My parents stopped in for a quick visit while I was working today, before they head back to BC tomorrow morning.
There were a few cool groups that came through today while I was working out front. First there was an Israeli-Palestinian Peace Camp that came through. The campers were from Israel and Palestine, and some had never talked to people from the other side of the divide. It`s all privately funded; a lot of it by the former Israeli ambassador. Actually, the wife of the former ambassador came on the tour. It was fascinating to hear from the leaders a bit about the camp, some of the stories, and what they were doing. We also had a group of Iraqi scientists, as well as the Iraqi Minister of the Environment come for a tour this afternoon.
I had a lady in the Memorial Chamber this evening who`s uncle fought in WWII -from southern Italy through to the liberation of Holland. She told me a few stories, and I found one really fascinating. It was of the troops marching single-file though a vinyard in Italy. Her uncle was quitely talking to the soldier behind him, when he noticed that he wasn`t responding. After a few seconds, he turned around and the man had been shot dead -as well as the other soldiers in the row behind him. The sniper was using a silencer, and her uncle would`ve been his next target. When they located the sniper hiding in a tree, they found out that he was a 10-year old boy who had been trained by the Italians...