It's been a long busy summer and like every expat living here, when the thermometer starts lingering around 110 degrees or more, I've tried to stay away as much as possible. I left at the first sign of heat, May 1, on the pretext of visiting my dad in assisted living in St. Louis and then helping my kids move out of their respective dorms, Chris in Alpine, Texas and Kara in Olympia, Washington. My dad was excited, as always, to see me. I have one word for Alzheimer's: It sucks! At least he still has his sense of humor. I asked how he was and he replied with a smile, "Dopey". After 2 weeks with Dad, a quick flight to El Paso and a 3 hour drive to Alpine (no airport in Alpine) I helped move Chris out. Incidentally, I now know what a 2-month-old, half-eaten, chocolate ice cream cone looks like when it's been left on a corner of a desk. The glue properties of the now plasticized ice cream that seeped through the cake cone and adhered to the desk, are very strong. I'm thinking of patenting that for some kind of natural, edible, super glue. Chris always has the most interesting science experiments. He and I drove a rented van to Tempe AZ and deposited his stuff in storage while we signed him up for his sophomore year at UAT. We then flew to San Diego and were picked up by my lovely sister, Sandra, and, after stocking up at Whole Foods, drove into MX. Chris and I stayed with Sandra and Larry (my sister and brother-in law) at their beach house in Ensenada, MX - just south of San Diego in Baja. It was a couple weeks of bliss; cool ocean breezes, boogy boarding and 4 wheel drive trips into the mountains. One photo shows Sandra directing Larry to turn the jeep around the one way, drop off road so we could drive back down the mountain. Chris and I, then, flew up to Seattle and Kara. Chris usurped Kara's Saab and drove it back down the west coast to MX where he's working at JacobsFarm/DelCabo's warehouse loading trucks with fresh produce on 12 hour shifts and maybe picking up some Spanish from fellow workers (the kind not learned in school). Summer jobs - don't you love it. Kara, in the meantime, was packing for a summer academic program in Beijing, China. I got to see an end-of-the-quarter presentation from a class she attended. It was illuminating to see the ultra-liberal west coast culture - at least by Texas standards. There were recycling bins for every kind of material and the students were actually sorting their trash and using them. Kara and I flew out on the same day, June 14; she for Beijing and I for Abu Dhabi, the same airport, opposite directions.
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