« May 2002 | Main | August 2002 »
Chapter one is finished
Chapter one is finished. I'm back in Indiana. It's only 5 am here, but my body says it's noon, so it won't let me sleep any more. The flight back to the states was very good. It only took 13 hours with a short layover in London. Amazingly enough, both flights arrived early. The flight from London to O'hare arrived almost a full hour early! I've never had that happen before.
Now that I'm back, I look forward to visiting friends and family and relaxing for several weeks.
Posted by neal on Jun 20, 2002 at 04:50 AM | Comments (0)
Wow, I just finished my last class. I think.
Wow, I just finished my last class. I think. I might have class tomorrow, but no one seems to know for sure. I'll go to school and if any student's show up, we'll hang out and play games, but I don't really expect them to come (even if there is supposed to be class). I can't really teach any more, because all the grades are in the grade books and everything is finalized so the kids have no motivation to learn. Besides, it'll be the last day of school, even if I could give them a grade, I doubt they'd care. I remember being a student.
It's been an eventful week for me trying to get my airplane ticket. I had an appointment to go to the travel agent today to pay for my ticket. I got a nice fat tax refund from Uncle Sam, so I even had money to pay for it too. Credit is an unknown thing in Hungary, so, like most transactions in Hungary, I had to pay for the ticket in cash. This tax refund was sitting in my account in Grand Rapids, but, no problem, I had an ATM card so I could withdraw cash from a "bank-o-mat" (as they are called here) here. No problem. Easy-cheesy. So I went to a bank-o-mat only to discover that my ATM card had expired 4 days earlier. Rats! Strike one. SO I thought, I have a bank account here at a Hungarian bank, I'll just do a wire transfer, It's electronic, it should be there instantly. Nope. The bank said they couldn't guarantee that the money would bet there within 2 weeks! Strike tow. So I wasn't sure what to do, but the next day at school I found something unexpected. At Trefort we get paid in a very interesting way. We get a claim slip in our mail box, then we take it to the post office and collect the cash. So when I showed up at school, my pay slip from May was waiting for me, but there was another slip with no explanation. So when I took it to the post office, I discovered it was a summer bonus that was almost a full month's salary. Suddenly and unexpectedly I had almost enough money for the ticket. Cool. God's taking care of me.
Posted by neal on Jun 12, 2002 at 07:51 AM | Comments (0)