Utah Sojourn

My life and experiences while I work towards my MS in Utah.

My Photo
Name:
Location: Gitting, Manyara, Tanzania

Just finished my MS in Watershed Science at Utah State University. Am now embarking on an adventure in Tanzania through the Peace Corps. After 2 months of training, I have just started teaching secondary Chemistry and Physics, which will be for 2 years.

Saturday, July 28, 2007

Run, Party #1, Harborfest Fireworks
This morning I got up early and headed to Oswego with my dad and brother for a 5k race. As we were waiting for our race, the kids had a couple fun runs and I thought I saw someone I knew from Rec starting the mile race. Sure enough, I spotted her dad and recognized her as she came around the turn. I talked with her after the race and found out that it might be best for me to visit Rec (where I worked for 3 summers) on Tuesday rather than Wednesday because the latter day is Thunder Island day.

For our race, my family decided that we didn't want to run too hard and would take it easy. The first mile was about an 8 minute mile and I picked it up not long after that because I just wanted to run faster...I'm not sure why though...I mean, I hadn't run in almost a month...maybe it was the plentiful oxygen in the air making me high or something. Well, with less than a mile left, Chris comes up (he decided to stop running w/ dad and catch me), passes me and beats me. I ended up finishing at 23:12 (about a 7:30 pace per mile), which isn't too bad. My dad saw one of his friends from work there with his wife and we watched their daughter, my dad's god-daughter, finish the 10k. We also saw one of my dad's cousins at the race. However, I was most excited about seeing Brian Chetney before and after the race. He was the adult from the Oswego City-County Youth Bureau that ran our Youth Advisory Council (YAC) meetings. YAC was a group of students from the high schools in the county that acted as liaisons between the youth bureau and the teens. I've known Brian since 10th grade and started my tenure on YAC when he started his. I first met him and his wife at a retreat that made a big difference for me and I remember her being pregnant...so I felt old when I saw his 3 kids there...I mean, I remember when his oldest daughter was still a fetus! Anyway, it was great to see him and his wife as I hadn't seen them in over 4 years. Ahh, the memories...

After the race, we headed home, cleaned up, then headed down to my Galvin grandparents house (the one in Tully where I lived spring 2006 while student teaching). My mom's older brother (Uncle JJ) and his family were in town so we had a party for the family for that reason and some others: my brother is in town, his birthday is tomorrow, Grandma's birthday is Monday, and my grandparent's 50th wedding anniversary is soon. So my mom's other brother and his family were there as well as us, my grandparents, and a couple that the family has known for years and my uncle was good friends with the guy. It had been 2 years since I had seen my Uncle JJ or the rest of his family and it was great to see them again even if we had to wait a bit for them. My uncle had been in a really bad car accident at the beginning of February 2006 and basically died but they revived him (despite a DNR) and he miraculously lived. I say miraculously because he shouldn't have lived beyond 3 days but not only did, he's walking and talking again. To be sure, he has to use a cane and gets tired more easily and has limited use of his right arm, but he's doing quite well considering. I understand why my parents (and grandparents for that matter) didn't want any of us cousins seeing him for awhile. It is much easier emotionally not to have seen him when he was healing because even though I heard what shape he was in, not seeing it makes it less real in a way. But it was great to finally see him again. Plus it was good to see my cousins again; since the last time I saw them, James has finished his first year at the Naval Academy and Stephen grew at least a foot in height as well as a foot of hair on his head.

Of course, we got the cousin picture and I have some other pictures from the day too. There's a sweet one of my grandma making a weird face as she looks through the scrapbook that my mom started putting together for their anniversary. It's only partway done (there's a lot of old slides that she had developed as prints to put in it), but she brought it anyway for people to look at.

We got home from the party with enough time to head up to Oswego for the Harborfest fireworks. They are put on by the Grucci family, who renowned for their fireworks shows. The shows are 25-30 minutes long and choreographed to music they play on the radio. My family wouldn't listen to me when I tried telling them where the best place to view the fireworks is (I went last year). We ended up in an okay spot but next time I'm going to listen to my family and just leave them...and it was great hearing my sister complain the whole time....but it was nice to see good fireworks.

0 Comments:

Post a Comment

<< Home