Visiting Wisconsin

Moving all my things to Wisconsin was a trip and a half. As it was the early flight, I woke up at 4:45am and Mike drove me to the airport. I had to leave a lot of things but it was good because I like to travel lighter and try not to accumulate stuff... its just stuff anyway. As soon as I got on the plane I feel asleep and no one was sitting next to me. When I woke up 30 minutes later, I was pleasantly surprised to see 2 of my students sitting beside me. They were some of my nicest and best students and we had a blast. I taught them how to play Egyptian Ratscrew, Speed, Rummy and we exchanged stories of what we would be doing during the summer. When we landed and were getting our luggage I saw a few other students and said my farewells to them as well. You think you are done saying goodbye to a place and it never ends when you expect it to. :-)

The flight to Chicago was great as I slept the whole time but when I arrived in Chicago, it turned out that my flight to Milwaukee was canceled. Chicago had just been through a devastating windstorm that damaged more than 20 of their planes. After about an hour of rearranging, I found a way to get to Green Bay but my luggage got lost in the process. I didn't care; I was just glad to see my family and get home.

The next two days I went with Sophia to her college orientation. There wasn't much for me to do there but then again I was there mainly for moral support. It was fun to watch her meet new friends and see her so excited. She is going to have a great time.

My parents are really into biking and I told them I'd go with them for a ride... a 65 mile ride. It was very tiring and my butt was pretty sore at the end but it was also a lot of fun to hang out with them. I didn't really have a picture in my mind of what Wisconsin looked like before coming. I thought that Green Bay must be huge since they have such a strong football team but now I know that it is very rural. When we were riding, we saw field after field after field. It is very green here and the weather right now feels perfect. I don't know if that is because I'm coming from one of the hottest places on earth or because it just feels great, but regardless, I'm glad I came.

I've been trying to focus on spending time with family while I'm here. I've been teaching Daniel guitar and playing video games with him. I've been running with Sophia to get her prepared for cross country. I've cooked a meal and tried to help with some of the cleaning. And I've been watching a lot of movies with everyone. We've also had some great conversations that I'll remember for a long time to come.

Mom, Sophia and I took a day to check out the Manitowoc Maritime Museum. They have a real submarine there and offer tours of it. It is incredible to think that people would live there and all the intricacies of all the different systems in the sub had to have some really good designers. I never thought subs were so big but I guess the really are. An interesting fact is that the sub we were touring could get down to 67 feet in under a minute with a good crew on board.

The museum also had some really detailed boat models and these too were huge. If you get a chance, the museum is a great place to go. Afterwards, we drove about an hour and a half away to a winery. We tried a bunch of wines there and the lady serving us was really nice and gave us a tour even though they only do tours on the weekends. To complete the day, we drove to a butter factory and saw butter being churned and explored the 300 different cheeses that they sell. I tried cheese curds for the first time. They tasted plasticy but good. We ended up buying 3 different kinds of cheese which gave us 3 free cones of ice cream to boot! What a great day!

One of the great things we learned at Sophia's college orientation was that Milwaukee hosts a music festival called SummerFest. (Gretchen had actually told me about this in Curaçao but I had forgotten about it.) Sophia and I went to the website and decided on some bands we wanted to see. We had a great time as you can tell from the video below.