2 out of 10 or 11 schools have been visited and now i have a weekend to rest, reflect, and spend time with friends and family before i visit 2 more on monday. so many adventures have already been had and we only left the bay area on tuesday.
the school year closed on June 15. June 18 was a teacher work day. June 19-21, t & i went to art trainings sponsored by the school district. while t was learning about a whole year’s worth of art curriculum, i was off learning <a href=”http://selfassuperhero.com/students.html”>how to turn myself and my students into superheroes</a>, through a workshop run by the <a href=”http://www.ahc-oakland.org/index.html”>attitudinal healing connection</a>, one of the many fun activities i’ve participated in in the bay area that makes me vaguely concerned i’m joining a cult. but the workshop was fantastic and i had a great time and am excited about how to use all of that in the classroom. and i mean, it’s rare that i get to spend 3 days making art.
friday… we did more things, i don’t remember… saturday and sunday were about packing and socializing, and then monday was crunch time. a lawyer appointment (student loans are already separate when you get married and war tax resistance debt is illegal so it can’t be covered in a pre-nup anyway, so we don’t have to get a pre-nup, thank you <a href=”http://www.milesfamilylaw.com/about.html”>dylan miles</a>), a gps purchase, an oil change, shoe exchanging, prescription pick-up, and a car drop-off all meant for a busy day and very little sleep because there was still cleaning, sorting, laundry, and packing to do. and a bag of split peas to spill all over the floor because that’s just fun at 1 in the morning.
tuesday morning, i got up and biked as fast as i could to the vet to pick up secret’s thyroid pills and then back home. then i walked as fast as i could to the pet food store to get cat food and litter but it wasn’t open yet so i walked back. i finished up the laundry and other bits of things, and then went back to the pet food store, ran home, stocked up the cat food, and changed the litter box. we dashed to our flight, and after t and i stood around waiting for them to find a female security guard to frisk t because she didn’t want to radiate the baby, we finally made it to our flight just as they were calling our name on the intercom. this was particularly tragic because we hadn’t refilled our water bottles or gotten extra food for the pregnant lady. but we made it onto the flight, hurray.
after a transfer in atlanta that seemed ridiculous because we would be renting a car to drive to atlanta (and where we finally got properly hydrated and fed (we DID get t as much water as possible on the plane, don’t worry)), we got on the next plane. in line in front of us was friendly chatty woman and a young man. the woman engaged us all in conversation and the young man wound up telling us all about how he had just gotten back from teaching english in china.
we made it to rdu at about 11 at night. as we were going to baggage claim we found our english-teaching friend surrounded by his parents, covered in “welcome to the usa!” paraphernalia, smiling ruefully and sweetly into a camera one of them was holding up. it was totally charming.
i sent t off to the rental car place while i waited for our luggage (which only got checked because we were so late and there was no room in the overhead bins). when i got to the rental car place and found her, she was standing next to a giant SUV. GIANT. it was totally hilarious to me, and potentially hilarious to t, but currently terrifying and annoying. fortunately they’d told her she could return it the next day and probably get the economy car she’d requested, so we headed off to quickly stay the night at the house of my good friend, j from the internet and her lovely husband. the house is an absolutely adorable home with a screened-in porch in durham, nc.
then in the morning, we poked around getting ready, probably a little too long, and then got on the road back to the rental car place. it took them awhile to find us our promised economy car, but eventually we had that and were really back on the road. after stops in random places for things like soup at panera bread, gas from gas stations, and coffee from coffeehouses too far into town, we arrived at athens, georgia at 7:01 for our 7:00 dinner meeting with a grad student from the language & literacy education department at uga. The food and conversation was lovely, and we talked a lot about the lower cost of living. one topic was the price of traffic and parking tickets, and so it was funny when we got back to our rental car and found a $10 parking ticket on the windshield.
then we drove to lawrenceville, a suburb of atlanta that i’d visited before, to stay with one of my lovely friends from college, her husband, and her stepdaughter. we had an entire little basement suite, and there were friendly cats and a fridge stocked with string cheese and luna bars just for us.
the next morning, we went back to athens where i met with three professors from the lled program. they were all fantastic and great to talk with. i got fed and everyone was just super friendly. i think athens could be a really good fit for our budding family and uga would be an excellent place to go to school. there are still questions about the livability of the funding, but t & i were pretty excited by our second day’s visit.
then we drove through the famous heavy traffic, to gsu in atlanta. as we were driving up, a woman leaned into a cop car and started talking with the officers and then walked in front of them and a whole bunch of other fast traffic. i was there to speak with grad students from the special education program. i’ve been realizing more and more that special ed programs are frequently about interventions and quantitative research which is wonderful and important but maybe i’m more of a critical theory person. the students i spoke with at gsu were wonderful and friendly, but i started to think that maybe i wasn’t looking at the right program there. then i went outside to wait for trisha and observed some sexual harrassment, had someone creepily ask to use my phone, and saw the same 2 guys walk around the block multiple times. i finally went back inside because i really needed to use the bathroom, and then after passing the gauntlet of a couple making out against the bathroom door, there was another guy trying to get me to give him my student card for him to use…. when i told t that maybe gsu wasn’t for me, she was relieved, because she’s just spent that whole time battling the traffic.
we went back to the little suburb and after trying to find a publix with the gps and instead driving to the publix warehouse, we went to dinner with my friend and her family. that was great. after some family tv watching, we all went to our bedrooms. i took a shower and then trisha took a shower, but as she was showering, it sounded like the toilet flushed, and then the water that had been building in the tub also went down the drain. after she got out of the shower, the whole floor from the bathroom through half the kitchenette was covered in water, and so we cleaned that up, washed our feet and went to bed.
the following morning i had a meeting with the dean, who is the brother-in-law of one of the members of the sf quaker meeting and who sounds like a paragon of integrity. i was told by the quaker brother-in-law that he would be honest about all of the schools i was looking at so i sort of used the time to go through my list with him. unfortunately he couldn’t find a bad choice on my list.
after that, t and i met with some grad students at the home of the professor who was sort of hosting this trip, and we went out for food, and then gave us a lot more information about the program. i am absolutely sold on the program and trisha was absolutely sold on the town. the only flaw was the funding.
then, as we were driving out and the gun shop billboards started to fly past, she got a little more nervous, but we are in agreement that even if we choose athens and uga, it doesn’t have to be forever.
we got back to the car rental at 11 again, and j from the internet bravely drove us back to durham in a giant wind storm.
i’ve been emailing professors at schools like crazy, and it’s stressful but also a lot of fun in many ways. it’s nice to have people helping me out and talking with me (and taking me out for food!). it’s a great way to spend a summer.
seams of a peculiar queer 