GOD JUL

(i.e. Good Yule, a Swedish greeting)

Only two shopping days till Christmas - although in this economy I doubt most people are doing much shopping.

My Christmas plans were up in the air a bit till I heard from (Uncle) Jack and (Aunt) Joan. They were due out in Phoenix before Christmas - they have a home in Sun City West - but a lot depended on her doctor's permission. This past Saturday, I got a call from Joan saying they'd arrived the day before. To avoid the winter blizzards, they had headed straight south from Iowa, all the way to Texas, then west.

I met up with them at their house (first time to see it) clear across town. I'm in the SE quadrant ("East Phoenix") and they're in the NW quadrant about an hour away. (Phoenix is one of America's most spread-out big cities, number 5 in the US now.) It's in one of the upper-middle class senior citizen communities. Nice neighbors, they say, not like the snooty, xenophobic ones ones up the road at the upper-class senior citizen community! Very nice two-bedroom home with a large back yard with a lemon tree, a grapefruit tree, and a huge cactus.

Now that they're in town, we've arranged for me to spend Christmas Day at their place for dinner. The next day I'll take off for the Bay Area (Marin County) to see Dad's cousin Lois, whose husband Walt died earlier this year. (I only found out when I called from LA airport on my way back to Copenhagen the end of July - it was just supposed to be a courtesy call since I couldn't visit during my short time in California; instead, it was notification of a death in the family.) After that, I'll head down to LA for New Year's. Ann says she'll be coming up. Lots of driving now since I moved "near" California here in Arizona!

Classes ended Friday, thanks be to God! We're off now till January 12.

GIVING THANKS

Our four-day Thanksgiving break was a welcome relief in the midst of a busy term. I left Dad's battered '98 Infiniti at a body shop the Monday before, but with all the AAA insurance negotiations, there was no way I'd be getting THAT back by the Thanksgiving weekend, so I got an AAA-funded rental car for my drive to California. (Probably safest, under the circumstances.)

Old Aramco Brat friend Kim Ayers and her husband Allan Petker had invited me to Allan's parents' home in Bakersfield, up the interstate from LA towards Fresno, so that added a few hours onto my LA drive. The desolate, wide-open spaces of Arizona and the Mojave desert were soothing after living daily in a home-work-home Tempe existence for so long.

It was a Petker family Thanksgiving, and I knew few people there, but it was an interesting mix: the parents’ semi-adopted Cambodian-American daughter and her Burmese-American husband, Allan’s LA artist son Josh, Allan’s aunt’s family and their extended brood (her son-in-law quit his job as a school principal to sign up for the armed forces out of a sense of duty and “giving back”). They were a musical bunch (Allan is a professional master chorale conductor), so the Old 100th sung before the meal turned spontaneously into polyphony!

We drove back to LA late after the meal. I revisited my storage area at my rented condo in San Pedro (I missed my CD collection!) and visited various old Burbank friends from my former Episcopal church there in the 1980’s, St. Jude’s. They’re a friendly, small bunch, and it was hard to get back on the road after church Sunday afternoon!

TOEFL SUCCESS!

I while back I wrote that in October I had taken the main pre-college ESL test that all our ESL students have to take: the dreaded TOEFL (Test of English as a Foreign Language). Well, I got my results this week, and I’m happy to report I am qualified to be admitted into most American colleges now!

Each of the four sections – Reading, Listening, Speaking, and Writing – has a maximum of 30 points. I got 30 on every section, except Listening, where I am ashamed to say I only pulled a 29! (Total = 119/120).

Word got around the office, and one of our instructors who teaches a TOEFL prep course boasted about it to his class. A couple of my students were there, and I have to say, that has given me FAR more credibility among the ESL masses than my Doctorate in Educational Psychology. (Yeah, yeah, so you’re a PhD, but man, you got 119 on the TOEFL!! Awesome, dude!! – ok, our ESL college-bound kids probably wouldn’t say “awesome, dude”.)

Finals and classes end December 19.