Back in the real world

Now that we're back...

...we've had the chance to catch up with our kids and find out what is new and exciting in their lives. All four of them have been on the move in various ways.

​Cameron spent a week in Virginia at the end of July, after which he returned to the U.S. Virgin Islands, girlfriend in hand, for his second year of PA (physician's assistant) school. This year, he's on the island of St. Thomas for his clinical rotations; last year he was on St. Croix for his academic classes. His first rotation is surgical. Since there are no medical students on the island, he's already assisting with surgeries, holding open incisions, moving intestines and closing patients up -- yikes!

Nathan move back to Richmond in the end of May and started a job as a full-time employee of Petco in June. He's in (human) training to be a dog trainer with Petco, and working on the retail floor with their small animals until then. He's living with some of his very best high school friends and enjoying his almost-but-not-quite self-sufficiency. In the photo below, he's wearing his "Pika-Jew" t-shirt, a gift from my sister that she picked up in Israel.

Ian graduated from Virginia Tech back in May with a degree in Aerospace Engineering and took a job with NAVAIR, the Naval Air Systems Command. He is working in Cherry Point, NC on a 5000-person military base and living with two college friends, also conveniently employed by NAVAIR. His lifestyle isn't too different than his off-campus life in college, except that now he can more easily afford the beer and hot wings, has no homework and can go to the beach after work.

​Eli returned to UVA last week to start his third year of college. You might recall that he's officially a third-year student, not a junior. Thomas Jefferson believed that learning was a lifelong process and so UVA eschews the "senior" adjective and the others that come before it. This summer, Eli continued his work as a research assistant for a professor at school. I do know that they are studying X-ray emissions produced by colliding galactic clusters, but the specifics are mostly lost on me, no matter how many times I ask him to explain the project.

​As for Alison and me, we've been cleansing, purging and simplifying our lives since we returned from Quebec. We lived a very simple and spare existence while we were there, and are off-put by the "stuff" that has accumulated in our home over the years. So, we're trying to simplify. The emotional ties that bind us to our "stuff" can often be difficult to break, but we're making some small headway in this effort.