Off to G.R.

Fall break has finally arrived! We spend each break with Karen, so after Chuck's classes and my appointments with all of my FY students, we head northwest. Just in time for the unusually warm weather of this fall to turn bitter cold and rainy. Perhaps even frost. We probably wouldn't have been able to work in the yard even if we had been here though there's lots to be done to prepare the garden for winter. Despite the forecast, Chuck is taking is golf clubs (and an ear warmer and gloves and layers of sweatshirts, etc) with him. Hope springs eternal for one last time on a course until next spring. We will wind up the month of birthday celebrations with Karen (a month because she got presents while she was home in September, the staff allowed her to open a package before her birthday, the actual day, and now our arrival. She loves the Olive Garden, so that's where we'll go Sunday after church).
I can't write much about my class' time at the juvenile attention center because of privacy concerns, but suffice it to say that this will undoubtedly be the highlight of the semester for most of my students (and me too). In our debriefing with the other class yesterday, comments about the hopelessness of these young people's situations, even in this rescue kind of place, and their own privilege reveal that even in two sessions, our students learned a lot about themselves and their society. Some of them wish they could continue on in a volunteer kind of relationship. (Not easy to implement.) I am beginning to feel proddings towards that kind of interaction myself once we are retired.