In 1982-83, I was a high school exchange student in Austria. A few months after I returned home, my friend Jim sent me the political poster below that he had found in Graz. He identified the blond guy on the left with the bandaged head as me. It sure looks like me, and it was–and still is–very common to find me with a bumped head, but I had  no recollection of this photo being taken. So, either I attended a political event that I don’t remember or my Austrian doppelgänger did.

Last Friday, we took Katie’s niece and her family to Pfluger Park where her boys played in the creek and on the playground. Here’s my favorite photo (which I took while he was swinging!)

My personal web site had long passed its expiration date since most of the content is now hosted in content-specific places: photos on Flickr, my thoughts in my blog, etc. So, I’ve put it all in WordPress and integrated the blog directly into the personal web site. I’m in the process of (finally) uploading all the old photos that I originally published here into Flickr.

I have no opinion on the foreign exchange student who lost massive amounts of weight while on his exchange program. However, I would like to relate my own exchange weight loss story as a data point:
I was an AFS student (from the US) to Austria in 1982-83. I lived with a family that owned a pastry (Konditorei) and bread (Baeckerei) bakery and two cafes (with the bakery and one cafe in the house), and I managed to lose 40-50 pounds in the 10 months I lived there (from a somewhat overweight 205 lbs to a very fit 160 lbs).
Torture? Starvation? No, I simply went from a typical sedentary, junk-food-filled American lifestyle to an active Austrian lifestyle. In the US, I drove everywhere, and I consumed an entire box of Fig Newtons when I got home from school in the afternoon (while watching Gilligan’s Isle).
In contrast, in Austria I walked and rode the bus everywhere, and had three meals a day plus maybe one piece of cake or other pastry. I can only imagine what it would have been like if the family had served vegan, not fat-filled meat-heavy Austrian, food.

I made it myself at SpreadShirt.

A lovely portrait of Dian on the Lake Travis party boat

This was not posed. We walked into Hannah’s room and found her lying there.

Not my most flattering side

I stopped and took this photo on the way to work this morning. I’m sure the cotton will be harvested any day now. I picked a boll and took it to work. A couple of people were fascinated and said they’d never seen a boll close up. Everyone was inclined to caress it.