Last Day in New York

My old house at 414 S. Ballantine, Bloomington, Indiana. I lived in the coed dorm Read-Clark, my first year. Then I lived in this house for two and a half years. The first year was with Sonoko Matsuya and Iseut, a French cellist. Other French girls lived there during the summer before school started. It was the French House. The next year, Iseut moved to Amsterdam to live with her boyfriend and Ole Akahoshi moved in. He was Japanese but raised in Berlin. His parents played in the Berlin Philharmonic. He had a special relationship with Madame Fournier, Pierre Fournier's widow, and he played on Mr. Fournier's cello. He teaches at Yale now. That second summer, we had all kinds of subletters. Tibor, a Hungarian violist, a brother and sister from Barcelona, a husband and wife from Madrid whom I later visited. It's all a blur. That year, Gema arrived at Christmastime, right when Victor left. She was a live in nanny for a horribly unhappy couple of opera majors. When that gig was over, she moved in at 414 S. Ballantine and we had so much fun. I can't even tell you. And she knew all of the students from the English language learning program, so we had people from everywhere at our parties. No matter what corner of the globe people are from, everyone appreciates a big bucket of sangria. Tons of good memories at that house.

Anyway, we stopped in Kansas City. Here is where the Kansas City Ballet performs.

Freestone saying goodbye to Jackson and shoot I can't remember her name. He had such good friends at the dorms!

Love these guys

Another house in Bloomington, 329 N. Clark

And the pizza place in Bloomington that was right by my house.

Music school

Recital Hall. There were recitals every 90 minutes here, practically around the clock.

Our hotel, which was free with points, was amazing. I wish we had more time to rest!

Topeka, and the Brown vs Board of Education historic site.

And we made it to Denver! This is Bradley, my first college roommate's son. Remember Gwyn? I saw her a couole of times over the summer. She and Bryan live in indiapolis and I love them! Bradley is wonderful. He took us to the donut store where he worked and we hung out with him and his friends for a bit before hitting the road for our last leg.

I love these guys!

We were too close to home to stop, so we pressed on, dodging thunderstorms and getting home at 2 am. What a journey! Glad to be home.

Cincinnati Tourist

The dorm mom who was here for the first three-week session told me that there's not much to do around here, and that she spent her time watching Netflix and occasionally ventured out to the grocery store. Oh, honey! This city is hemorrhaging things to do! They pour from every seam. Every block, every neighborhood is riddled with incredible architecture. You try out one hip restaurant and another one pops up on your radar. The longer I'm here, the more the city opens up to me.

Over-the-Rhine is the revitalized area close to downtown where all the fun eateries are. In the heart of it is the famous Music Hall. Did I get emotional when I walked in there? Of course.

Scott and I were messaging old pictures back and forth one night.

My hair is so fluffy here! I never have a bad hair day! This was during my nightly Firefly viewing session, from 9-9:30 in front of the dorm. Fireflies are magical.

One of the dancers wanted to go to mass Sunday night, but the others had gone that morning. They're not allowed to go anywhere alone, so I went with her. Xavier, where we're staying, is a Catholic university. The church is adjacent to our dorm. The service was incredibly inspiring. First of all, it was ONE hour long. The meeting opened with a WOMAN getting up to make an announcement that the "I stand with immigrants and refugees" t-shirts would be available after church. These are my people! People of action and compassion. Then the pastor asked us all to turn to the people around us and say hello, or "Peace be until you." I loved that because immediately, nobody was there alone. We were all there together.

There was a lot of singing. There was a mission group with a violin, a flute, a couple of guitars, some percussion, etc. The music was happy and borderline raucous. People were smiling big smiles. The sermon was brief, delivered with zeal and received with enthusiasm. For the sacrament, we all filled up to the front, row by row, singing along with the instrumentalists as we went! The sight of all of us filing up with our infirmities, some visible, some not, to receive the sacrament, everyone with a look of peace as they sang, it gave me a sense of unity with humanity, all of us on equal footing and doing just fine.

I left this the first day for the dancers.

Lunch with my college roommate Stacie Modesitt Schmidt and her daughter Mara at Taft's Alehouse. So fun!

Running errands for dancers. I got to know the owner of Cincinnati Dancewear, Mary Beth.

Sam's Club runs!

Got a little carried away decorating for movie night. You can't leave me alone with scissors and tape and an assignment to set up movie night.

I watched a class at the ballet center. Freestone looked great!

A couple of the weekends, the cafeteria didn't work for our schedule, so I set up lunch for the dancers.

Graeter's ice cream is famous here. It was National Ice Cream day one day and we went for $1.47 cones.

I explored the waterfront and went to the Underground Railroad museum.

Over-the-Rhine

It was burger week here. This was Ladder 19.

I hit the zoo on $1.00 day. I got there early. It's a great zoo. The baby hippo's, Fiona, is a major celebrity here.

9 am and I can get so many different beers at the zoo. Ha ha! This is not Utah!