The long goodbye part V

Zhang celebration with Bob, Mary, Renji and Song

Another day, another dinner!  What a hard life! This time in an Italian restaurant and our generous hosts were Renji and Song.  Renji was celebrating his appointment as a distinguished professor and we were glad to be there to help him out!

We had a great meal and interesting conversations. Song had recently returned from visiting her parents in China where the pollution is so bad that she wears a mask when she goes out and only saw the sun once during the month she was there.  As more people benefit from increased income, prices in the shops go up.  Now Song does not go shopping without her brother or sister as she has lost track of appropriate prices to pay.  Apparently you bargain even in department stores.  She feels that her American born children will never fit back into the Chinese way of life.  Although they speak Mandarin Chinese quite well, they read and write it very little.  She also explained that you need to have contacts in China to ease your path through life and you also learn from an early age who you need to bribe.  Song had to give money to the doctor in the hospital to ensure good treatment for her father and parents also give bribes to their children's teachers.  I expect it's quite hard to learn the subtleties of this system. 

The long goodbye part IV

Something else to look forward to!

Must see...

War Horse

Managed to fit in a trip to the cinema last night to see War Horse streamed from London.  I expect everyone else has seen it by now! Even the 'cinema' atmosphere couldn't kill the drama.  We were transfixed.  Took Peter a while to recover at the end. 

The long goodbye part III

Goodbye to the Carnegie History Center!

LtoR Ruth, Diane, Anne, Nan and Lou-Vonne

The long goodbye part II

4 women who can talk! L to R Me, Mary, Phyllis, Carol

Very enjoyable lunch today at our rented house with three women who can talk their way through a multitude of topics of conversation!  Everyone bought something...soup, salads, chocolate cake, cream, grapes and enormous strawberries...just a light lunch!  This was in lieu of our trip to Round Top as the day turned out to be cold and dreary.  Inside, we were warm and convivial!   I have at last got round to using the timer on the camera so expect me to be on the edge of many shots in the future!

The long goodbye

Today I bade a sad farewell to the book group.  I was introduced to them by a chance remark and have enjoyed their company.  Intelligent, funny women with a wide range of reading interests.  We have had many feisty discussions in the short time I've known them.  They made me feel so welcome, even though I kept recommending authors they'd never heard of!   Still, they have also introduced me to new reading.  Thank you one and all for including me!

The weekend

Water aerobics, lunch and library on Thursday, in that order!  On Friday Peter returned from a flying (ha!) visit to London.  He took the shuttle from Houston to College Station which seems a sensible alternative to getting on another plane and flying to College Station and a much better alternative than asking your nearest and dearest to drive 2 hrs to Houston through murderous traffic and back again (Peter's night vision being an excuse to hand all the night time driving to me).  A sensible alternative turns into a nightmare when everyone else on the bus has taken the opportunity to pay an extra $5 to be dropped off at their home.  So Peter spent 45 minutes cruising round College Station while I sat at the airport and eventually dashed home to turn the oven off and then dashed back to the airport again.  Fortunately it's only 10 minutes away! We were eventually reunited!

On Saturday we boosted the audience at St. Michael's Episcopal School where they were doing their annual Gilbert and Sullivan with a friend playing the piano, scenery by her husband and direction by their daughter, who is a teacher at the school.  The jokes were good...not many people got them...and the production was brave...

On Sunday we went to hear the Brazos Valley Symphony play music featuring the brass section...a bit of Britten, Handel, Beethoven, a bit of this and a bit of that.  All very enjoyable and very well played.  Afterwards we joined a jolly group at Napa Flats, a restaurant which seems to have some relationship with the Symphony.  The Maestro is there and goes round meeting and greeting and the waitress brings hors d'hoevres courtesy of the management.  Extremely civilised!

Nineteen days to go before we leave and people are asking us how we feel about going home.  Mixed is the right answer!   Some of the things we'll miss are:

• Being warm most of the time
• Water aerobics on offer every morning
• Hassle free driving on wide roads
• Always having somewhere to park wherever you go and never having to worry about it in advance
• No parking meters
• No house maintenance, apart from changing the odd lightbulb
• Open, interactive, unstuffy people
• Excellent service and an almost total absence of surliness!
• Regular, free, high quality chamber music
• Cheap cinema tickets
• A wide variety of lovely fresh fruit and vegetables
• A crisper drawer in the refrigerator that really keeps salad crisp.

I'm sure there will be others!

We're looking forward to:

• Home (there's no place like it)
• Grandchildren and children
• Friends
• The bulbs coming up in the garden, digging in soft wet soil
• Walking....in the city, in the countryside, round to a friends...just walking! 
• Public transport, trains
• The National Health Service! 
• Radio 4, BBC News, Newspapers

Catch up post

A lot has happened since last Friday!   Nothing earth shattering...just busy.

On Sunday we were invited to brunch at the Miramont Country Club, a vast and luxurious 'stately home'.  I don't really understand what 'brunch' is but there was enough food to have about 5 completely different courses.  I restricted myself to three! That's me on the left of the picture.  And if you believe that...!

It was a lovely weekend, weatherwise and by Monday the early morning temperature had gone up sufficiently to make swimming a pleasure.  So I went to water aerobics on Monday, Wednesday and Thursday and I'll probably make it again tomorrow. 

On Wednesday afternoon Carol and I went for a walk in Wolf Pen Creek, followed by coffee, and later I met up with Pat and we had an early supper at Cafe Excell before going to the campus theatre to see Romeo and Juliet with the Moscow Festival Ballet.  Nothing seems to start on time, so we had about 10 minutes to brief ourselves.  Well...programmes at the Rudder Theatre are stuffed with advertisements and it's quite hard work to find information about the actual performance.  Although Pat and I spent some time riffling through, we failed to notice that the performance opened with a piece called Chopiniana, a.k.a. Les Sylphides.  We were puzzled for a while trying to match the drifting around of ladies in white with the start of Romeo and Juliet.  When the curtain fell, about 20 minutes later, and the lights went up for the interval, we realised we had failed to find the appropriate page in the programme.   Our expectations readjusted we waited for the start of the main event.  By now it was about 8.15 and we were out of the theatre by about 9.15 pm.  So it was Romeo and Juliet at top speed....dance, meet, fall in love, get told off by father, take sleeping draft, fool Romeo into poisoning himself, wake up, stab, die.  The end.  Really. The music was recorded and came blaring out of the speakers with a certain amount of distortion.  Dancing was good, I think, costumes were in delicate colours.    When I tell you that Google informs me that the running time of Romeo and Juliet is normally 180 minutes you can see that we were somewhat short changed!  And no balcony scene!

Pink and grey creation

Never mind...had an enjoyable lunch today with two artists.  Swimming tomorrow.  A concert on Saturday with friends and a concert on Sunday followed by dinner. 

In between exhausting social engagements I've been using up odds and ends of yarn.  Here's my latest creation!

Public lecture and banquet

Carol and Manny

Tonight Peter gave a public lecture on the topic 'What on Earth are we doing? outlining what we can learn from the past successful and unsuccessful attempts to mitigate damage to the environment and how many breakthroughs in understanding are facilitated, not just by good science, but by charismatic individuals who sponsor change and eventually get governments to listen.

Carol, Manny and Misty look at the poster

 The first arrivals at the lecture were Carol and Manny. It's Carol who has been taking me on my Wednesday adventures!
 
About 250 people came to the lecture and to the reception afterwards.  Students showed posters of their work and then about 80 people enjoyed a banquet in Peter's honour. Margaret Leinen, Director of Scripps Institute of Oceanography, gave a speech about Peter.  And there were presentations of gifts!  The whole event was masterminded by Bob and Renji Zhang and was quite an experience...though a wedding photograph of the pair of us appearing on the screen was rather a shock!

The poster!

Peter, Bob and Margaret Lineham 

Getting ready

Here's Phyllis who introduced me to her book group

Bob and Mary's family too!

The audience fills up

Peter and the John Junkins who heads TIAS

Beautiful table settings for the banquet

Bob, master of ceremonies

Two Ruths, one even smaller than the other!

Veritas

Best restaurant in College Station...probably!
Not that the picture of dessert is anything to go by...and, before you ask, it's not my dessert!

Snicker doodle sandwich

It's been ages...

...since I did any knitting!  Ha! Ha!

So this week I rattled off a sweater for Saul and a hat for me from left over wool.

The Baltimore Consort

The week so far...

Monday
Laundry, a little light housework, knitting, winter olympics!
Tuesday
Oceanography Wives monthly lunch (avocado stuffed with crab and side salad)
Afternoon in the library typing up a taped interview
Concert by the Baltimore Consort (see above).  They were so wonderful I cried.  We came away feeling so good and slept like tops.  Pure therapy!
Wednesday
Lunch with Carol and Phyllis at an Italian restaurant (Pizza - I know!)
Walk round Veterans Park with Carol to shake off the pizza and check out the statues...
More winter olympics!

So far that's two lunches this week...and two dinners still to come.  Oy vey!

Stephen F. Foster National Park

Sunday and sunshine before a return to freezing temperatures!  So we made the most of it and headed south to the Stephen F. Foster National Park.  Pleasant woodland paths and views of the wide, sluggish Brazos River.  We took a picnic and had a very refreshing walk...not that far, probably about 4 miles, but very relaxing.

The Gala

Feeling a bit the worse for wear after an excellent night at the Gala at the university to welcome the new group of Emminent Scholars!  We got dressed up and had fun!

 

Ready to go!

Wanda and Alan

Peter

Bob and Mary cutting a rug

Mr and Mrs

Clearly time to go home!

Getting to the bottom of the 'must see' list!

Yesterday being Wednesday, Carol and I sallied forth on one of our 'adventures'.  They're not adventures really...just tame outings but we like to dress them up a bit!  We never quite know what were going to find or see and yesterday was a case in point.

We headed for Hearne, about 40 minutes drive up the road from College Station to visit Camp Hearne - a second world war internment camp for German soldiers, mainly from the Afrika Korps.   Apparently the Geneva convention stipulates (and I paraphrase) that if a soldier is captured in a hot place, he must be held as a prisoner of war in a similar environment.  So when Rommel's desert campaign collapsed and Britain had no room for more prisoners of war, and was too cold anyway, thousands of German soldiers were shipped to Texas.   Now did you know that?

We arrived at Camp Hearne to see acres of nothing and a few rusty remnants of water tower etc, but in one corner of the plot, a reconstructed watch tower and a long hut - clearly the museum.  There was only one car parked outside.  We ventured in.   The woman behind the computer leaped to her feet and welcomed us.  We should have been warned by the light in her eyes and her fevered reception of us!  For the next hour she did not stop talking!  She was a mine of information and we had uncorked the bottle and let the genie out!  How's that for a mixed metaphor...

Actually, for a small museum, it was well done.  Lots of photos and artifacts, models etc., well displayed and a very interesting short video - during which the guide DID stop talking.  After an hour during which she had us pinned to the wall with information and no time to look at anything for ourselves, I could sense that Carol was getting restless.  Suddenly she looked at her watch and announced, breaking into the stream of information, "Sorry, we have to go" and we made an unceremonious dash for the door, leaving our guide a little crestfallen.  We sensed she had only just got started!   Outside Carol heaved a sigh of relief.  Clearly the intensity had been too much and had left her battered! 

We were going to explore restaurants in Hearne, but didn't feel like exposing ourselves to more excitement, so headed back to the safety of Bryan and the Village Cafe.   After lunch we went into the dress shop next door and Carol bought a very nice scarf and probably felt a whole lot better!

Latest item...

...off the knitting needles!

This one's for Saul. 

Cold Sunday

On Sunday it was colder in College Station than it was in London!  We huddled at home only venturing out in the morning to buy a few groceries.  In the afternoon we went to the cinema which was empty.  It was the day of the superbowl...the equivalent, if this is not blasphemy, of the cup final!  There were about 8 other people in cinema (screen 18) and we saw 'August: Osage County' a Meryl Streep tour de force!  Well worth seeing.

A great evening

A great evening at Carol and Mannie's and a great meal with everyone contributing...

• Cream cheese and crackers
• Cucumbers stuffed with smoked salmon

• Red pepper soup 

• Salad

• Moroccan baked chicken
• Brown rice
• Roast vegetables 

• Fruit salad
• Flourless chocolate cake 

Yum!  The cream cheese was home made by straining yoghurt overnight in the fridge and adding dill.
Lots of animated conversation...US politics, local politics, the children of today, students today, art exhibitions, Mary's drawings which she bought to show us, mid century modern furniture and much more.   We all arrived at 6.30 and left at 11.00, so you can tell we were enjoying ourselves!