I used to go on travel all the time. It involved getting work materials together, getting my itinerary, arranging for a ride to the airport, telling my room mates I'd be gone.
Last week, I went on travel after having kids for the first time. It involved getting work materials together, arrange travel and hotel for 7 people, arranging rides to the airport, arranging child care for my kids (spring break for Sarah, buying groceries, telling DH what meals are available, writing a note for the babysitter, cleaning house, making "mommy" shirts (printing iron on transfers of picks of me and the girls and iron on t-shirts so they wouldn't miss me as much). Oh so much harder than it used to be.
The meeting went pretty well. Had it's ups and downs. The one interesting thing about traveling as a staff member with grad students and faculty is that you don't really belong in either group. I'm not faculty nor am I a student. For a while, there was another staff member with me, but she is also an administrator, which makes her different from me.
The last night, dinner was at the outdoor side porch of a seafood restaurant. It was nice to be outside as the conference room we'd been in had no windows. Dinner was a crawfish boil (they are in season) and other local fare. I love crawfish and was in heaven. I was really sorry that I forgot to bring my camera as everyone had these disposable roasting pans filled with their crawfish and corn on the cob. It would have made a great picture for the website.
One of the grad students had never experienced crawfish before. As she looked at her pan of red things, she picked the first one up, peeled and ate it and said "it reminds me of the first time I gave a blow job (disgusting but not bad)" one of the local grad students replied (without missing a beat) "Well, some people do suck the head."
On the drive home for the restaurant, I was with two of our grad students. As we drove past McDonald's, she noticed the sign for Shamrock Shakes and decided she wanted one. We quick pulled in deciding to share it. Well, they were out. The driver agreed to pull into the next McDonald's. We almost passed it before we noticed it was there pulled in quick. We got one drink, three straws and as each of us finished out turn, we would pull out our straw and lick the shake off the straw. I know it was silly, but we had so much fun.
The trip home was long!! We had to leave the hotel at 4:45 am to make our morning flight. While we had been gone, our town had accumulated 2 feet of snow and more was coming. The flight to Memphis was fine, as was the flight to Minneapolis. But, we hit a snag when we were starting to fly home. First, the prop plane was delayed for mechanical difficulties. While we were waiting for that, they announced that the flight would take us one town over and bus us the 2 hours home. My boss wasn't a patient person and started the process of reserving a van to drive the 6-7 hours home.
They finally started to board the plane, but first announced that the alternate destination had weather coming in and if they couldn't get us there, they would fly to another nearby airport, put us in hotels for the night and arrange transportation home the next morning. As we boarded, my boss asked me to cancel the van. I finally started talking to the person as we got on the plane and one faculty member decided that she really just wanted to drive home, so four of us got off the plane, went to the rental car place and drove home. It actually only took us 8 hours (it was snowing pretty bad the last couple of hours) and being 4 women we stopped a bit.
None of us had winter coats, although I finally bought a sweatshirt as my light hoddie wasn't quite warm enough. During the trip, we chatted about silly things, silliest thing we did growing up, favorite vacations, first time you got in trouble at school, etc. I learned so much about the group. We all agreed that even if we got home after the other group (and we hoped we didn't) we definitely enjoyed our trip!
According to Joe, the girls did pretty well. The "mommy" shirts were a big hit. I made 2 shirts each. Joe told me that Sydney put her first one on Tuesday morning and he finally convinced her to put on the 2nd shirt at bedtime Thursday night. She wore it 60 hours straight. The second shirt she took off when she got dressed Sat morning as I was now home!
Some of the people on my trip wondered why, when I had so much else to do, I bothered to make these shirts. After knowing that the girls, esp Sydney, gathered so much comfort from them, I knew I made the right choice.
I may be traveling back again next month. I hope the trip is almost as enjoyable, without the flight problems!
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
No comments:
Post a Comment