What I've been doing since I got back to the US

My dad picked me up at the airport when I got in last Thursday night
and took me home. I stayed up too late, but then woke up fairly early
the next day. I looked at the clock in my room, which said 12:30,
decided to go back to sleep anyway, woke up later, and the clock still
said 12:30. It turned out that it was more like 7:30 or 8am.

That day, Friday I had to myself at home, relaxing, doing laundry,
reading, and packing for my trip up to Maine. About 7:45pm I found
myself getting really tired, so I took a nap for two hours and then
had to jump in the car to get to the airport and pick up the person
who will be the other assistant in Sri Lanka. Her plane had gotten in
early, and then I had a little trouble finding her, but it worked out
and we made our way up to Maine.

When we got up to Bowdoin campus security didn't know we were supposed
to be there, even though arrangements had been made a long time in
advance. Eventually though, they let us into our rooms and we got to
sleep about 2am, although we never did get the key we needed. We
started propping the door open so that we didn't need to call Security
to get back into the room.

The next day, Saturday, started at about 8am, when Sarah (my
co-assistant) and I had to wake up. At 9 we went to breakfast with
the Padma, the program administrator, her husband, John, a professor
at Bowdoin and the founder of the program, Lynn, the program director
for this fall, and Lorry, Padma's assistant. It was a nice breakfast,
nice enough that I was glad not to be paying the bill. The rest of
the day was pretty much taken up by meetings between Padma, Lynn,
Sarah, and myself to talk about general guidelines, specific
responsibilities, and the details of the schedule. We ended the day
with dinner at a Thai restaurant that evening.

It wasn't that late when Sarah and I got back to the dorm, so we
decided to go hang out at a nearby bar and get to know each other
better. That took longer than we'd anticipated, and so we didn't get
back to the dorm and asleep until nearly 1pm.

Which was unfortunate, because Sarah had a flight at 10-something out
of Logan the next day. I was going to be staying around for the next
few days, so I couldn't give her a ride down, but I did offer to give
her a ride to the bus station in Portland. The bus she wanted left at
6 am and we needed to be there early, so we had to get up around
quarter to 5. Somehow we managed it, aided by the early mornings this
time of year, but I was still kind of surprised.

After seeing her off, I headed back up to Bowdoin, where I practiced
taiji for a little while before starting to look for somewhere with
e-mail access to get in touch with all the people I wanted to see.
Unfortunately, since it was the weekend, everything was closed at
school, and when I went into town it turned out that there was nothing
there. I decided I needed a phone card so I went to Wal-Mart and got
one. That felt really strange. I'm not sure why, but Wal-Mart gave
me the worst culture shock I've had since being back. I left as soon
as possible.

After that I was able to call some friends, Pat and Dick Bamforth, and
we arranged for me to meet them up at their small "camp" on Lake
Damariscotta, a little ways north. Dick was the rector at the church
I grew up going to (he retired in 1992), and also a Bowdoin graduate.
I spent the afternoon with them up there, had a chance to go out
kayaking on the lake, and then spent the night with them at their home
in Augusta. That night I also gave a call to some friends, Kurt and
Laurel, who are living out in New Hampshire, and arranged to go over
and stay with them the next night.

The next morning, after showing them some pictures of my trip to
China, I drove back down to school, where I met with my friend (and
former counselor/psychotherapist) Bernie. It had been strange on the
weekend, because, other than the people for the ISLE program, no one I
recognized was on campus. On Monday it was strange because there were
several people I recognized. I got to say hi to Burgie (activities
director and manager of the student union my whole time there, who's
leaving in the fall), Julie Barnes (a classmate, now assistant
director of Residential Life, who went to China for a few weeks as
part of a class when she was a student), Noma (the administrative
assistant in the theater department), Davis (one of the theater
professors, I've taken a couple classes from him and worked on
numerous shows with him), and Deb (assistant technical director,
manager of the scene shop for the theater department), as well as a
few other people. I was hoping to see Michael (technical director,
resident lighting designer), I'd heard he might be coming in to work,
but it turned out that he wasn't able to make it.

That evening I drove on out to New Hampshire, and spent the night at
Kurt and Laurel's place, out in the middle of the woods. Kurt is
working as a carpenter/builder and Laurel will be working as a
counselor at a camp, from what I understood, until she goes back to
Bowdoin for her senior year this fall. It was a good time, we talked,
relaxed, caught up... The next day, Tuesday, Kurt had to work, so
Laurel and I planned, shopped for, and prepared a big, special meal of
bruschetta (tomatoes, basil, vinegar, olive oil, salt, and maybe some
other spices all mixed together, to put on bread along with fresh
mozzarella cheese), a fresh basil and apricot chutney, a simple green
salad, a risotto (with leeks and spinach and parmesan cheese), and a
complicated pie for dessert, with a crust made of gingersnap cookies
and a filling made with lime, with mango and strawberries on the
bottom, and a strawberry-raspberry sauce to pour over it. It was all
delicious, if I do say so myself. It also took a long time to get
ready, so by the time we were done with the meal I had leave right
away for the airport to pick up Mom and Chris, who's flight was
supposed to arrive at 10:06pm. I made it there at about 10:15, but
their flight was delayed, so I ended up waiting for a while and had
started to worry that I might have gotten all mixed up about which
flight they were on or when it was supposed to get in when they
finally showed up.

We went home as soon as we got our bags, and got to bed pretty
quickly. The next day was spent doing more laundry, organizing
things, just taking care of stuff. That evening my brother and I went
out for dinner with our dad, and then went back to the place where he
stays, said hello to Don and Deborah, the people whose house he lives
in, and watched a movie.

Mom had decided that we wouldn't really need to stop on the drive down
to North Carolina, so we spent most of Thursday packing, getting ready
to go, and then we left about 6pm. Chris had some stuff to drop off
at Wesleyan, where he'll be going to work after the wedding, so we
swung by there and then continued south. Mom drove for most of the
night and Chris didn't sleep much, but I slept very well, for being in
a car. At about 4:30 Chris took over, and around 7 I woke up, I think
somewhere inside North Carolina.

We decided that since we were going to be so early (official check-in
time for our hotel was 3pm,), we should swing by St. Paul's Episcopal
Church in Greeneville, NC, where Fisk (the company my parents work
for) had put in an instrument. We called the two people from the
shop, David and Stevie, who were there voicing the instrument (making
the pipes sound right), and they came by about 8am, 10 minutes after
we got there. We were shown around the church, a great new building
with good acoustics, a surprisingly lofty ceiling, and quite a change
from the small chapel that had been the church before.

From there we spent a little time looking for somewhere to get
breakfast, but contented ourselves with some of the snacks we had in
the car and made our way west towards Raleigh/Durham. I drove for
this section, and we got to the hotel about noon. Fortunately our
rooms were ready, so we moved right in. After getting settled we were
about to go out for lunch when my grandmother and aunt and uncle
(parents of the groom) arrived, so we helped them move in, and then
went out to a Tex-Mex restaurant in Chapel Hill (the town where my
cousin and his fiancee went to school and are living now).

At first we'd thought that the dinner would be at 4:30, but it turned
out that that was when the wedding rehearsal was, and the dinner
wasn't until 6:30, so after lunch Mom and Chris took a nap while I
ironed my clothes and listened to the radio. We got to the house
where the rehearsal dinner would be held a couple minutes late, but
with events like this things always runs late, and the dinner didn't
really get started until sometime after 7. It was held on the back
lawn of a small old house that belongs to the university, which is
used to house art and is a historical site, having been built in the
mid 19th century. At dinner North Carolina-style barbecue was served,
with coleslaw, fried chicken, hush puppies, rolls, pulled pork, and
spicy vinegar-based BBQ sauce. Afterwards there was cake, and then a
bunch of people told funny and/or embarrassing stories about my cousin
Terry or his fiancee, Lauren.

Following that, while we were cleaning up, Terry invited Chris and me
to come hang out with all the guys, so we drove his brother Andy and
Lauren's friend's husband Moon (I think he's Korean-American, but I
didn't check) to Terry's friend and former roommate Will's apartment,
where we hung out with everyone for a while, along with a lot of
Terry's friends from school. Later we went to a pool hall and bar (a
nicer place than you'd guess from hearing that) and drank beer and
played pool until we all left around 12:30. Moon had left earlier,
and Andy, Chris, and I went back to the hotel, to sleep.

Then Mom woke us up this morning, told us to go downstairs to get
breakfast, but the stuff that had been put out for breakfast was gone,
and I just came over to the computer and started writing this. And
that's it.