This is not turning out to be a normal end of the semester. Usually, by now, I've watched 18 episodes of Top Chef and started writing to make up for the last two month's non-writing festival I call teaching. And coordinating the "area." And planning on a visiting prof at the end of the month. But, even before turning in grades, I took off for Tucson for a weekend of swimming and applying sunscreen. I still smell like chlorine and sunscreen--it was magnificent. But also crazy because I came home to grades and visiting prof plans and meetings and appointments and oh yeah a presentation I gave this morning and then do laundry and pack for a camping trip this weekend.
Also: with housesitters? One feels compelled to leave less than 1,000 dirty sunscreened, footprints on the floor.
All of this is in preparation for the trip to Italy about which at this point I can only complain. It will take three days to get to Lecce. We have to drive down to Hub City on Sunday, get up at 5 to fly out from Hub at 7 on Monday, fly to Atlanta for 3 hours. Hang out in Atlanta for another 3 hours and then fly 10 hours into Tuesday, land in Rome, fly to Brindisi. Then, dumbly, I told my dean I'd check out our sister school in Siena where Egg and I will interview and film people about I don't know what. We'll get to our destination and then fly out again 4 days later from Bari to Florence, which is 1.5 hours away and whose flight leaves at 8. Meaning we wake up again at 5 and drive to the plane.
I'm sure/I promise that when I get there, I'll stop complaining about my so hard existence. Or maybe after the Siena part of the trip, when I'm back, fully sunscreened and chlorinated in the villa's swimming pool.
Perhaps I should have stayed in Tucson.
5 comments:
I know whereof you speak. I remember a particular bit of travel from a couple of years ago where I felt so stressed, well into the trip, that I wasn't sure I was going to get over it. I hope your travel is as easy as it can be and that there will be plenty of chlorine and sunscreen in your summer.
I will hear no complaining about the trip to Italy. None. I want only the reviews of wines and such foodstuffs as to make the heart ache. Let the critiquing begin.
Hi,
Do you have to do end of the year reports?
I've been working what feels like forever on mine.
P.S. I disagree with Dr. Write. I think it'd be hilarious if you sincerely complained the whole time and bitched about how taxing the whole experience is and you were envious of my in upstate New York watching foreign movies.
I don't have my annual file due until September. But I just did my first year one in January which took forever.
And I plan to keep complaining. It would be unlike me to stop when I'm quite convinced the whole trip will be a disaster.
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