Quick Hits

Here are today's quick updates:

1. The bike saga is winding its way to a good conclusion. My stolen bike will be covered under renters insurance so my friend Jon found me a sweet new mountain bike. I'll probably have it in a couple weeks and when I do, rest assured, you will see pictures. I also got an old road bike to take to school which is really important. I ride 40+ miles a week just getting to class and back and save quite a bit of money by not taking the metro.
2. Kim is covered with mosquito bites. They drive her crazy and I never seem to get them. (my life is pretty boring if all we can find to talk about are my mosquitoes... - Kim)
   
3. My parents came to visit for six days this week. It was great to have them give the guest bedroom a test run. We went to some Smithsonians and Mt. Vernon. and did some general city exploring. They did a lot on their own also. We had a sweet BBQ on Sunday with our friends the Tifts also. It was a really good week.
4. Seattle is undoubtedly the worst place in the USA for a sports fan. The Sonics left, the Mariners are the worst team in baseball, the Seahawks are 1-2 and have everyone injured and just called me to come in for tryouts (but I took a page out of my brother-in-law's playbook and turned down a sure-fire football career), the Huskies are worse than I've ever seen them and the Cougars look like they just might be worse than the Huskies. Just to add insult to injury we also have a WNBA team. At least that's the rumor.
5. Kim's nanny work is still going well and she's working with 2 1/2 year old Jack on his reading.
6. Get your reservations in soon for staying at the Connally hotel. October is wide open but will fill up quickly, for sure.
   

That's about it.



Lunch with the Connallys and the Tifts.
Patrick's new bike.
Cute Jack at the Natural History Museum
Mt. Vernon


Roosevelt Island. Kathryn, here is the dragonfly we saved for you, then it got eaten on our front porch. Sorry.

Classes

Some of you have asked about my classes and while I've tried to give a reasonable description of each class I thought I'd give the official class explanation here. If you have any remaining questions, you are too interested in my classes.

History of Eastern Europe:
This class covers Austria-Hungary, Poland, and the Ottoman Empire (and touching on Russian and Prussia) from 1740 or so until the beginning of the first World War. The professor is great, and really knows this history well. The only problem is that he turns about 1/4 of the class time over to us who do not know this history well. He's stoked to have us present on articles and discuss them. It's fine, but he gives us a ton of time. Pretty soon I start to feel like I would rather hear from the guy who knows what he's talking about. I think I'm just not much of a discussion guy. Most of the time students don't have a lot to contribute and the professors feel like they're really facilitating a great learning experience when they're actually facilitating an ignorance exchange. That said, I am learning a lot in this class and I like the readings.

Colloquium on Europe and Eurasia:
This is my background class required for everyone in my program. Right now we're doing an intro to Europe and in the coming weeks we'll do an intro to Russia. The class is interesting and I like the other students. The notable thing about this class is the teacher. She's a visiting professor from Italy and she's a crack up. Here are a couple of her gems of wisdom:
-Never trust a Greek as they will agree to anything and then do nothing
-Belgians are ugly and have bad coffee
-Norwegians are bad dressers
-Being married to one person your whole life is boring
I'll keep you updated if there's anything I just don't think you can live without.
The class is pretty good and I feel like I'm getting more confident in class and learning what I should be learning. When we switch to other subjects we'll have different teachers which should be cool.

Current Issues in the European Union:
This is the best class ever. I'm learning so much my brain is exploding. The teacher is a Romanian professor who knows the EU ridiculously well. She seems to know the different treaties by heart and assigns a ton of reading. Her lectures are great and she doesn't let anyone get away with a wrong answer. Here's a sample in class exchange:
Professor: Who can tell me why Britain would agree to French agricultural demands?
Student: (confidently) Because they are a powerful country and they thought they could manipulate... (trails off as professor looks at him disapprovingly)
Professor: No. That is wrong. Anyone else?
I love this class because she lectures non-stop for two hours and I just try to keep up. She assigns a ton of reading but I am learning a lot. She keeps asking if she's making it too hard but I appreciate her assuming we can take a lot and learn it. We finished going through the EU structures and now we're learning about different policy areas. Good times.

French Classes:
I'm also taking two French classes at the Alliance Francaise, a local place where they do all kinds of French language promotion. I have one grammar and conversation class and one class on the EU, but given in French and from a French perspective. What I've learned so far is that I am super rusty at French, my accent is worse than it's ever been (not like it was great to start with), but I can still understand almost everything.

Anyway, that's it for classes. Thanks for asking.

General Life Update

Here's the blow by blow update of everything going on:

1. Our first visitor! Ken Rowan, of BCRA fame, became our first visitor from Washington (sorry Anna) when he came over on Tuesday for dinner. He's over for some meetings because BCRA is so sweet it's taking over the whole country. There is no escape.
2. School. Thanks for everyone for asking, school is going well. I have three classes (Intro to Europe and Eurasia, EU issues, History of Eastern Europe) and all of them seem super interesting. My professors are real experts and are also approachable and interesting. In my EU issues class the professor is from Romania and is super hard core. She lectures super fast and knows a baffling amount about EU treaties. I have a ton of reading to do, but it's all relevant and I really feel like I'm learning a lot. If you need to know something about the EU, feel free to email your question. I will then spend too much time making up an answer that sounds smart but may or may not be correct. I promise to use phrases like 'supranational government' and 'pooling of sovereignty'.
3. Nannying. Kim is doing a great job with little Jack. He's super cute and fun and says really funny stuff, we will one day write a long email of just Jack quotes. We've posted a picture of him here. If you want to know more just send Kim an email with a subject line of "Nigerian Prince seeking someone to help with bail." She always opens those ones first.
4. Unpacking: This is the biggest news that we have yet released so prepare yourself mentally: We are basically done setting up our house. Everything is hung on the walls, set up, put away (kinda), etc. If this seems less than breathtaking to you, you are forgiven, but trust us, it is a big deal. Kim did a great job organizing stuff and thanks to her tireless work, the house is now not a stress causing headache.
Here are some pictures of the place. You can see that it's not finished, but compare the 'before' picture featuring the iron to the others and you can see why we're celebrating. Kim again, for the record, the room is a disaster because I couldn't find my dress for Kev's wedding...so naturally I just threw everything that was in boxes all over the room.

Trail of Tears

Unless you're prepared to join me in my sadness, please stop reading now and go back to minesweeper. That said, my bike got stolen this week. As soon as I realized what had happened, I got angry, got angry with myself, and sat down not knowing what to do but feeling completely defeated. A little history:
During the summer of 2003 I was away for the summer and Jon Frederick, who had lent me his bikes a hundred times over the years, found me a Cannondale Super V at a great price. Since then I've had too many good times on that bike to remember. Riding at Glabraith, Whistler, places around Tacoma, and always with friends like Jon. Some of my best memories are on trails. Some of my best scars are from trails. In Tacoma I rode the bike to work whenever I could.
Here in DC, I rode it to school for the first week and a half. I would park it outside the building along with 20-30 other bikes everyday. My friend Hunter told me it might not be the best idea to take it in everyday but I felt ok about the bike being there with so many others. I had a good lock and many of the bikes there were nicer than mine and no better protected.
When I realized the bike was gone a wave of guilt rushed over me as I thought of someone throwing it in the back of a truck and getting $300 for it online or wherever. In general I hold my possessions with an open hand and consider myself unattached to what I own. But as I've been thinking about the bike situation I'm realizing that I do value what I own but almost more than that, I value the power I have to dispose of my possessions as I wish. If I had given the bike away, it would feel fine. If the bike had been run over or broke, I would be frustrated but as I would have the choice to fix the bike or not, I would be ok with that as well. But having that taken out of my hands is hard. It feels so invasive that someone can have that kind of power.
It also made me realize that the things we own mean so much more than just what they can do for us. The Cannondale was a downhill bike, meant to be used to bomb down steep trails and over different obstacles. But there's nothing like that within a three hour drive here. So I wouldn't really be able to use the bike for what it was meant for. It was ok for getting me to school but I was already looking for cheap commuter bike to ride instead. So losing the bike won't really affect me too badly here. I'll still get a cheap bike to ride back and forth and I won't do any down hill riding- exactly what would have happened if I still had the Cannondale. But it kills me to lose that bike because of all the memories tied up in it. I've been out riding with almost every good friend I have and Jon went out of his way to get me the bike in the first place. The bike really opened up a ton of cool outdoor stuff that I would never have gotten to see.
Kim and I are checking craigslist, ebay, pawnshops, etc. to see if the bike shows up, but I'm not holding out a lot of hope for that. I'll keep you up to date.

Unpacking

So our stuff finally arrived on Wed. We worked all day Thur. and left for Kev's wedding on Friday (which was great!). So today is our first real day of unpacking. It is going well, things are everywhere and we are very happy to see our stuff. I took some pictures and once I find the adapter to apple I will show you guys the mess... : )

Things with Jack are going really well. Patrick's having a great time at school, learning all about EU policies and Eastern Europe history. Lots of reading but he is loving it.

Here is a plug for JetBlue, they are a great airline to fly with. I really liked all the leg room, and the directTV, it kept us busy. They fly daily directly from Seattle to Reagan...hint...hint.

Patrick here with a couple thoughts. Kev and Melody's wedding was great and it was cool to see so many of you. Pretty soon here I'll do a post about school so you can look forward to that and check back 4-5 times per day for it.

We love you guys.