pending

Feb 26
packing freaking running around
not really packing but thinking about clothes selection so often that I feel like I have packed ten times....and why can t I find an apostrophe on this Belkin mini keyboard that goes with my mini IPad? This may seriously put me over the edge being my support system for blogging and writing and NO apostrophe. Can't be and it's not-have to hit the function key and the letter l. omg perhaps I should lug along a Mac keyboard.
checking off list: saline drops, really, suggested by at least 3 people who are not hypochondriacs
imodium for the comodium
Off deet bug spray since we are not taking malaria pills
Airborne of course
clean the refrigerator
send out itinerary to appropriate people
pay bills
adapters for charging devices
pat the cat
lots of boneys to the dog who knows something is going on that just may not include her
breathe

Typhoid pills

Feb 17 2014

Took the last typhoid pill this morning. Four in all, every other day with a full glass of lukewarm water, not too hot or too cold, so the living culture of whatever I’m ingesting doesn’t get killed off before it snuggles into the lining of my guts creating protection from the typhoid disease. I don’t want to think about it too much.

We decided not to take malaria pills because of possible side effects like psychosis and screaming nightmares in the middle of the night. We did some research and weighed the risks. Using bug spray laced with Deet when we travel in certain lowland areas like the terai should suffice.

Hep A and tetanus shots done, and I’m already up to date with Hep B because I needed the series before I entered Smith.  Who knew college life was so fraught?

Sent photocopies of our passports off to our travel agent Lalit in Delhi - he is a cousin of Vidya, a friend of my secondary school teacher Don Messerschmidt from Lincoln School in Kathmandu. Don, pushing 70, still leading treks into Bhutan for part of the year, the rest he lives in Portland OR. He has a blog I am following called Himalayan Snows http://dmesserschmidt.blogspot.com/

It’s all a circle.

An Intention

I intended to blog my way through Smith College, throwing forth pithy insight and commentary about a 55-year-old's return to college for her BA in English as an Ada Comstock Scholar. Didn't happen.
I did blog my way through a 6-week stint at Trinity College in Oxford the summer of 2013 -
-but I think mostly because I was a bit lonely in between my tea drinking and scone eating and my two weekly classes. Another story…The Big Summer: somestuff59.blogspot.com

I figure if I title a blog and write a line or three, then I am committed. Furthermore, I am speaking to a creative non-fiction writing class at Smith on Monday morning about my venture with a follow-up report when I return.  Oh, the venture:  a month-long trip to retrace childhood steps that wandered through the Kathmandu valley in Nepal and its environs for almost 4 years when I was 12-16 years old. My mission is to reconnect with place and people. I will visit my old school and talk to kids about their experience as third-culture kids, TCK's. I want to hear their stories, especially focusing on how the internet has changed their experience from mine. I want to write about all this.