While he’s not yet quite up to joining The Traveling Richters on our adventures, we are pleased to announce a new Richter – Edward “Teddy” John Richter, born on Tuesday, October 24, 2009, to proud parents Samantha and David Richter in Massachusetts. David is Jake’s younger brother – ten years younger.

It's a Boy!

Teddy was 8.5 pounds at birth, and we’re happy to say that he is healthy, hearty, and hale. And his nearly five-year old sister Charlotte is quite excited to have Teddy in the family as well.

As we were just one state over (up in New Hampshire), we managed to spend to pop down to spend a few hours with Teddy and family today. That family, in addition to Sam, Dave, and Charlotte included Teddy’s uncle Jonathan, aunt Francine, and grandmother Kathleen, all from Samantha’s side of the family. We have the following pictures to share of our brief time with Teddy Richter today:

Jake holding Teddy

Linda holding Teddy and Teddy holding Linda

Linda holding Teddy

The Richter Boys - at least those who can stand unassisted (from left to right: Dave, Jake, Bas)

After our visit to the Richter household we dropped in on my cousin Patrick and his family. Patrick is the proprietor of Winestone in Chestnut Hill, Massachusetts. Based on our experience, Winestone is the best wine shop in the Boston area (as has already been stated elsewhere on this site). We caught up with family happenings for a couple of hours before heading back up to New Hampshire to finish packing for our trip back home this weekend.

Jake and Linda with cousins Patrick and Hana

Bas and Krystyana with their cousins Danny and Andy

This has definitely been a week to give thanks for! Welcome to the family, Teddy!

We’ll try to post more next week on the final part of our Washington, D.C. experience, as well as some posts over at A Foodie Moment on our dining adventures in D.C. (Some photos courtesy of Jonathan Dewhurst)

The Traveling Richters would like to wish you all a very Merry Christmas and Happy New Year! Below is our Christmas card, one that Linda created during one of our brief stops home between trips.

Merry Christmas and Happy New Year from The Traveling Richters

2008 was a pretty amazing year – we visited four continents, spent over four months traveling together, experienced a variety of new cultures and geographies, learned a lot about natural and cultural, ate very well and broadened our horizons.

2009 may be a little more sedate though as we’re all a bit worn out from our travels over the last 2 years (over 8 months on the road). But we still plan on exploring the world and learning from our travels, and sharing our observations and experiences with you, and perhaps meeting up with some of you along the way as well.

So, once again, we wish you a very Merry Christmas and Happy & Prosperous New Year!

Jake, Linda, Krystyana, and Bas Richter

I also wanted to mention that we’re not sitting idle in September either – or at least Krystyana and I are not.

It has long been a goal of mine to learn to speak Spanish fluently, and Krystyana has also had an interest in learning to speak and read Spanish. While language CDs and software are all good and fine, they require a particular learning style and regular allocation of time in order to be effective. Both of those criteria don’t work well for me, but what does work is being dropped into things and immersing myself into new projects. So that’s what we’re doing next month.

We’re going to San Jose, Costa Rica to take part in a 2-week Spanish language immersion program. Krystyana and I each get our own teacher, and for either hours a day we work with our teachers to try and speak, understand, read, write, and think in Spanish. Everything is done in Spanish. It doesn’t work for everyone, but should work for us.

Part of the experience involves outings to markets, museums, and, of course, dining out. And on the weekends we are going to try to explore other activities in Costa Rica, such as white water rafting and the rain forests.

Wish us luck. If I post from Costa Rica, it will be in Spanish (or something that looks a lot like Spanish anyhow). You’ll be able to translate the posts at a place like www.google.com/translate if you don’t read (my version of written) Spanish.

As is undoubtedly obvious, we travel a lot with our kids. While they are 11 and 13, we still worry about what would happen if we somehow got separated from them while out and about in a big city. To deal with that possibility, we try to make sure they always have a laminated card with contact information for us (cell phone numbers) as well as for their grandmother. And we make sure that they have cell phones – but those don’t always work in international locations.

Imagine our pleasant surprise when we checked into the Marriott Park Lane in London back in May, and the front desk staff made a point of handing each child a business card with the hotel’s contact information on it, telling them that if they get separated from us to just use the information on that card to get in touch with the hotel and they would help make sure the kids got back to the hotel safely.

Of the hundreds of hotels we’ve stayed at with the kids over the last decade or so, this is the first and only time the front desk (or anyone at a hotel) has ever suggested or offered this additional piece of mind.

So kudos to the Marriott Park Lane, and other properties, please take note of this simple but useful idea.

The travel bug is never quite distant here in The Traveling Richters’ household.

We’ve just confirmed a trip starting in mid-November 2008 that will start us in Quito, Ecuador for a view days before we fly out to the Galapagos Islands to see the places that gave Charles Darwin his “Eureka!” moment about the idea of evolution and natural selection. Ten days later we get to Lima, Peru, and from there set forth on an expedition to see the high altitude village of Cuzco, and the even higher altitude Incan ruins of Machu Picchu before a return to Lima, and then ultimately home to Bonaire.

Prior to then we have a one week trip to Texas this month to see a concert and study the Alamo in San Antonio.

And we’re in the throes of trying to figure out exactly what all we want to do on a trip that starts us in Nova Scotia in early October 2008, and lands us in New Hampshire to visit family later in the month (hoping to catch some stunning fall foliage along the way, of course). Any suggestions or ideas would be welcome. One thing definitely on the list is to go out on the water with a Maine lobster man and learn more about the business of catching lobsters, firsthand.

We are also planning on hooking up with friends at a conference/retreat in Tucson, Arizona over President’s Day Weekend in February 2009.

Beyond that my tentative court and work schedule looks pretty full, so we’ll have to steal time for other trips as such time becomes available.

More details are in the Current Itineraries link at right.

To those not able to see images in the posts made for the last week, I think I have fixed the problem, again. Hopefully it stays fixed…

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