Final Roundup of 2003 in Pictures...
		March 17, 2003 This was a proud day for us all when the CD set, "A Tocar, A Cantar, A Baylar" (To play, to sing, to dance) was introduced to the world. This 2-disk set is Cristián's first professional recording, and he played either baroque guitar or lute in the majority of the selections. We like to think of Cristián as our "son" and he often calls us "Mom and Dad."

On May 7 we hosted a birthday party for our "boy." Cristián's girlfriend Antonia joined us for a song, that I played on my handmade guitar.
		Artie finally got his own handmade guitar on May 24th.

In June, Artie and I took our "homeleave" and made a trip to the USA to join the 60-60-40 celebration of Ray and Shelley Lynnworth's birthdays and wedding anniversary.
The party on the 22nd was a very festive multi-generational affair with friends and family gathered from 3 continents, and this was only a part of a full weekend of activities.

Back in Santiago, we hosted a birthday party for Mónica on August 9th. Her daughter, Coté, helped carry out the desserts with the candles. Among the guests were Cote, her then boyfriend, Arturo, Gustavo, Alejandro (Mónica's son) and la Flaca, our Cristián, and our visitors from the USA, Sherry, Stewart, and Allison Hesch.

Sherry and Stewart were friends from our days at Syracuse University, and their younger daughter is currently studying there. We enjoyed sharing old memories and creating new ones of good times together in Chile.

When we took our guests to the Andes for skiing, Artie got entranced watching the snowboarders. So, two weeks later he went and took a lesson. He says that yes, you do fall a lot at first and the boots are more comfortable than those for skiing!

In late August, Artie and I made another trip to the USA, and we took Cristián with us!
		While visiting the Famulas, we toured Washington, Baltimore, and Annapolis.

		We also visited Ali and Lenny in Connecticut and Ray and Shelley in New Jersey, and toured New York City and Endicott to show Cristián where we each grew up. Having picked up Artie's mom in New Jersey, we all went to a party in honor of my Uncle Richard, who will be 90 on the last day of 2003. His daughters were smart to realize that the weather wouldn't be so cooperative for guests in late December, since my Uncle lives on the top of a hill in the country next to the Ives Family farm in upstate New York. We got to introduce Cristián to 3 of my 4 sisters. Pat wasn't able make it from Montana, but he had already met her here in Santiago.
Bibba, Kathy, Anne Fay, and Margy

Adella traveled back to Santiago with the 3 of us. This way she had company for at least one half of the long trip for her 4th visit with us in Chile. We visited with friends she had met on previous visits and did some local touring. At the end of her visit, she joined us for Oxy's celebration of Dieciocho, the Chilean Independance Day. For those who wonder, Chile won its independence from Spain on September 18, 1810.

My sister, Bibba, came to visit us from November 17 to December 4. We had such a busy time with all sorts of special activities, including a golf outing, a long weekend in Buenos Aires, a gala American Chamber of Commerce dinner where Artie wore his tuxedo for the first time ever in Chile, a visit to the Horn Farm, and Oxy's Christmas-family day party.
Bibba did great when she played golf at the outing, even though she was using borrowed steel clubs that were a bit too short. This was the first time she ever played with a caddy. She could quickly become spoiled!
Another very important event during her visit was our annual Thanksgiving dinner at the Country Club, which has its own page with lots of pictures.

Thanks to Mónica's patient tutoring and 4 and 1/2 years here in Chile, both Artie and I now are much more fluent in Spanish. I am an avid reader of books and newspapers in Spanish, and I read all of Jean Auel's books in Spanish this year. Artie leans more to the spoken word. He has gotten quite comfortable making speeches in Spanish and does it often. He even made one at the Oxy party at left. Éxito means success!

And a few final notes from Artie about our year: We're keeping fit with additional exercises this year. Aside from our individual morning exercise routines, we have started to do some jogging, 15 to 20 minutes every other day. On weekends we jog together. In addition to the snowboarding during an annual ski event (in August), I even tried parasailing with a friend from work this past October. Margy and I dusted off our bikes this year too and did some around-town cycling. We feel good and are enjoying life! Work has been going well. In June, Occidental Chemical did some reorganizing, so my boss changed to the prior General Manager of OxyChile, fortunately like my former boss, he's a friend who's quite familiar with our operations here. We've had a good year, and I'm proud of the OxyChile group's success with getting new long-term contracts, operating well (safely and efficiently), and sustaining a fun spirit of continuous improvement. I enjoy my work and it is encouraging to see the annual progress. I've also been busy with volunteer work as the President of the Overseas Security Advisory Council (OSAC), a US Embassy activity aimed at keeping US companies connected with respect to security issues. And in October I taught a once a week course, for three nights, in English this time, at an English language school (rather than at Universidad Mayor, in Spanish), with the topic "how to interview." It was part of a conversational English course. I continue to stay active with mentoring, some of it informal with friends and family, and some of it formal as a member of the Menttium Advisory Board and as an active mentor. This year as part of this international association's first "virtual" mentoring initiative I have a mentee in California, and I look forward to whatever help I can provide her. Menttium is an organization geared to offer support to female executives with mentors that are not from their own company. To see earlier webpages pages for this year, see the links from our new homepage. You might want to bookmark it for future reference.