Underage drinking

I renewed my Alaska driver's license today and discovered that my old license has actually been suspended since 2005. Reason: underage drinking in Homer, AK. Problem: I have not been underage since 1999, and I have never been to Homer. It is all resolved now, and I have a new license, and Jeremy and I are departing Juneau on the ferry to Kodiak Island in a couple of hours. We'll write a lot more once we get to Nebraska on July 3 and have regular access to a computer. We've seen a bear, a few porcupines and seals, and lots of my old friends. And eaten a lot of fish. It's been great.

The Road Less Potholed

Our hit counter is over 1,000! Yeah, most of those are probably me and Jeremy ... but, I wonder who reads this blog? So, I'm back in the States. I arrived Saturday, and immediately got a frappucino at Dulles while I was waiting for Ksenia to pick me up. It was a coffee light frappucino, and maybe it's because it was the "light" variety, but it was really gross. I miss cafe glasse in Yerevan - cold coffee with full-fat ice cream ... yum! My disappointment with the frappucino was more than tempered, however, by the bump-free ride back from the airport. Imagine ... miles and miles of road, smooth as a baby's bottom. It was unexpected bliss.

Airport to airport

Greetings, reader. I write now from Vienna International Airport's business class lounge. Yes, I get to fly business because I am traveling on official orders with a transit time of more than 14 hours. This is actually only my second time in a business class lounge. My first was in the Alaska Airlines lounge in Seattle, which was actually much nicer than this one. They had comfy couches. Here, the decor is typically European (at least in my limited experience, which mostly involves airport hotels). The colors and furniture appear straight out of the kids' section of the IKEA catalog. Though the egg chair I am sitting in is actually quite comfortable, I just had a free croissant and free cup of tea, and I don't have to sit on the floor in Terminal A, so I really have no business being snarky.

My Washington-bound flight will depart in about three hours and 15 minutes. My computer battery will die about an hour before that, just in time for me to board.

And ... I've left Armenia. Perhaps for good, or perhaps Jeremy and I will go back sometime to show our children where we met. Either way, it won't be the same. New buildings are going up all over town, the road to the Renco apartments is PAVED (see pvs post), and an ice-cream bar costs 43 cents, up from about 27 cents two years ago. The roads are more crowded, the drivers more aggressive, the SUVs bigger, and the rest of the population no better off than they were in 2005. The times, they are a-changin' ... but maybe not that much. And I'll miss Yerevan.

A whole new world

I am blogging from the new departure terminal at Zvartnots Airport in Yerevan, Armenia, via the terminal's FREE wi-fi connection. This is big news. The terminal only opened a few days ago. It's brand spankin' new, doesn't smell like smoke, isn't freezing cold, and there are even chairs with foot-rests. And this happens just before I leave.

The other thing that happened, happened yesterday. I drove home, and noticed that they were paving the alley that leads to my (former) apartment building. Unfortunately, I do not have photos of the new paved road. I only have a photo of the alley as it was two years ago when I moved in.



It has changed quite a bit. There are new buildings on either side, and it is usually full of cars. That will probably not change now that it's nice and smooth. As irritating as it is that they chose the day before I left the country to finally civilize the road, I take solace in the fact that it will be potholed in a matter of weeks, if not days.

80% Done

Well, I'm almost done with this whole graduate school thing. I gave my capstone presentation last week to a class of community development students. It involved a 20 minute ice breaker (called Jet Fighter), a 30 minute presentation and then 15 minutes of Q&A. I was required to give this presentation in order to complete the first half of my final graduation requirement. The other part is to turn in a capstone paper.

What is a capstone? It's sort of like a thesis, but instead of dealing exclusively with theory, it's a reflection of my recent year-long internship. I took the opportunity to address an issue that I felt Mikva was beginning to realize existed but hadn't quite started to fully address. My capstone dealt with Mikva Challenge's need to create a long-term evaluation framework in order to judge its impact and certify that it was meeting its mission statement.

Well, now that the presentation part is done, I now have to turn in the paper. And now that I'm not working, that should happen anyday. Or maybe next week. Sometime anyway. No, seriously, it's 80% done according to my advisor. Just need to retool some paragraphs and update some things. So, here's to the final 20%!!!! Wish me luck.