A New Year

Saturday, January 1, 2005

It was the first of the year and Collette woke at 8:10 to wonderfully gray and rainy skies overhead. OLeif had still not come home, two hours later, and she imagined that he would be morbidly tired upon arrival. And Carrie-Bri was hopefully safe and sound in their hotel in New York.

The evening before, Collette had spent comfortably at the house with Mom, Dad, Francis, and Linnea, over “Martin Luther”. On the way over, she noticed the Canadians barbecuing fish, likely freshly caught from their trip back home.

The tsunami’s death total rocketed to one hundred twenty-one thousand by that morning. The U.S. gave three hundred fifty million in aid after criticism from France and Sweden came pouring in at the significantly small thirty-five million originally given. Collette thought the whole situation was somewhat ridiculous – the complaining.