Saturday, August 04, 2007

Prodigal stops for a brief (very brief!) visit

Rick, showed up at the Aerie this afternoon after completing his stint with the inner city yuot’ of Baltimore. He could have been here yesterday but decided to stop off in southeast PA to visit with some friends and then in NJ to see his Grandma. He only stopped to drop off his belongings and get some legal papers taken care of before he hops a plane to Guyana in South America for 11 months with WorldTeach.
He’s headed to a small village near the former Jonestown. There he’ll teach math to high school students. It’s a one year commitment that he researched on his own and provides quite a contrast to the six years in the Marine Reserves (including a stint in Iraq) and 4+ years at the University of Idaho. (His student time was interrupted by basic and MOS training plus the one-year Marine call up/deployment, but he graduated within 6 years of graduating high school.)

We all thought his flight out of JFK was to be Tuesday night/Wednesday morning at around 1 AM, but we were wrong. In checking over his papers, Rick discovered the flight was Monday night/Tuesday Morning at 1 AM. So we’ll have to do some serious running around on Monday morning to see a notary and transfer title of his vehicle to me so I can register it in PA (current tags are those of Idaho), complete the paper work to grant me power of attorney over his affairs, and run to the bank for travelers’ checks, before driving the five hours to his Grandma’s in NJ for dinner and then on to JFK.

The most difficult thing about getting all this done is that it's the weekend. The important places will be closed on Sunday (bank, notary) and it will have to all be crushed into a few hours Monday morning.

He was joking about not being used to this quick turnaround between assignments. He’s much more accustomed to the military (and to a certain extent, academic) hurry up and wait routine. Luck for him Sunday will be a day of enforced rest.

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