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Victoria Express
October 2nd, 2009
I hope all of you have seen the wonderful movie “White Christmas” with Bing Crosby and Danny Kaye featuring the music of Irving Berlin. It is absolutely one of my all time favorite Christmas movies! There is this wonderful scene where the 4 main characters are on a train headed to Vermont and start singing in the dining car. Well, while this wasn’t 1954 and we certainly weren’t singing, I felt like a part of White Christmas last week while aboard the overnight train, The Victoria Express, from Hanoi, Vietnam to Sapa (a hill tribe area in the very north of the country). Everything from the wood-paneled sleeping cars to the red leather booths and dim lighting in the dining car was straight out of the movie. I had to do everything I could not to break out into song (which I am sure I would of had my mom, sister or women cousins been there)…
Other Recent Posts
Lakes and Lilies
October 1st, 2009
I just returned from a fabulous 2 week trip through Vietnam. This year, for the first time, we made a stopover in Dalat, a lake town in the central highlands area of the country. I had two marked highlight in Dalat. The first was the wonderful 5-mile walking path that goes around the [...]
Read More...The Crows
August 20th, 2009
India seems to have two seasons: hot and monsoon. We entered the monsoon season about a month ago when the first rains in 8 months began. It now rains almost daily, but is so wonderfully refreshing and renewing.
Well, on one dry afternoon, my husband, brother and I were walking back from lunch at a cute [...]
The decadent world of Indian Cuisine
August 18th, 2009My brother came to visit on his way back from Nepal to the Unites States. Craving a change from Dal Baat (lentils and rice), the “only contribution Nepal has made to the culinary world,” as David would say, we decided to take Indian cooking lessons in hopes of learning a few of the secrets [...]
Read More...Fun in Colorado
August 17th, 2009
JL Lane is winding up its summer at the Minturn Market outside of Vail, Colorado. Here are a few photos of the fun we’ve had there this summer.
Read More...Micro-loans affect Quang Ngai Province
August 15th, 2009
My mother and I got a fabulous opportunity last year to spend a day with some of the women who have been receiving micro-loans from JL Lane over the past year. Our journey out into the Quang Ngai Province was organized by Plan, a wonderful outreach organization with whom we work. [...]
Read More...A Sneak Peak- layers of ruffles
August 13th, 2009
We wanted to give you all the first sneak peak into our new skirts we’re getting ready to debut. These wonderful, layered confections come in gold, black, and eggplant. They are fabulous with boots and a jean jacket on a cold mountain night, or try cute flats and a t-shirt for a daytime get together, or [...]
Read More...A year in India
July 31st, 2009
Surrounded by a wonderful team in the United States, I, with my husband, was able to move overseas this year to India to work on our sourcing and our supplier relationships. For as long as I can remember, living overseas in a developing country has been a shared dream of Jim and mine. In college, we [...]
Read More...The joy of piglets
July 30th, 2009
One of the areas where we are working with Plan Vietnam is in a rural commune outside of Hanoi known as Hanh Nhan where women are receiving microloans.
On our last visit to this region, we were invited into the house of a woman who had been one of the recipients of a microloan. In our conversation [...]
The Microfinance Revolution
July 29th, 2009
At the core of JL Lane is a desire and commitment to better the lives of women and children in developing countries. For the past seven years, we’ve been working with non-profits on programs that reach out to underserved families in Southeast Asia. Recently, we’ve focused on microfinance and job training in South Asia.
JL Lane [...]