My first trip to Europe

Flashback:

I always wanted to travel – had Australian pen pals in grade school, met all the exchange students in high school, graduated high school with three years of French and three of Spanish. Continued with Spanish in college and added a year of Italian. I was finally going to go abroad my Junior year in college, but I dropped out and life took detours.

In 2011 my kids were all out of college and my responsibilities dropped to mainly me, so it was time.

Thanks to my old college, I got the student apartment in Bologna, Italy, for a week that summer. I brushed up on my Italian with Rosetta Stone and took off for Europe–and had to change planes in Frankfurt! I managed to pull up “Sprekinzee inglich?” (spelling phonetic) and, fortunately, the official-looking young man replied, “Of course I speak English. I work in the airport.”

Here’s a YouTube I made of Bologna.

Archiginnasio

Adventure of a different sort

For those who read the last post, it took about three months, but my son’s back at work! Life is good.

So I missed the India adventure, but I’m revving up for a major life change and, since I’m not sure what shape that will take yet, this is an adventure of a different sort.

I’m finishing my Masters in Administration, emphasis professional writing, in December. I’ve already started my final project – designing and implementing the marketing plan for my new book, Self-Publishing for Schools. As part of that plan, I’ve revamped the formatting on all my novels and revised Running Away in an uncensored version. Both that and SP Schools have LCCN numbers, so they’ll be more marketable to libraries. I’ve begun lining up some major marketing, including Book Expo America, the American Library Association’s Conference in June, and the ALA pre-conference catalog that goes to about 17,000 people. It’s gambling on myself.

All of my books will be at the IBPA booth at Book Expo America (Javits Conference Center, NYC) May 29-31. I’ll be at the IBPA table on Thursday, May 29, from 4-4:30. Hope to see you there!

NYC is so expensive, I’m arriving early Thursday and flying out late Saturday. Javits Conference Center is Midtown Manhattan, and I found a posh resort that has hostel-style shared rooms less than a mile from the conference. That will also be an adventure.

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Sometimes the plan changes

I set aside five weeks to go to India with a medical YATRA. I learned enough Hindi to say “I’m a teacher; I’m not a doctor.” I had two CPR kits and was practicing to teach villagers how to keep someone alive. I was going to leave for Phoenix on Jan. 15. Instead, I got to try my two Hindi phrases on the medical personnel at UC Davis, Sacramento.

The first weekend in January my son was in a car accident. He got out of the car, saw headlights coming, and apparently dove over the guardrail to get out of traffic. He was on a bridge, thirty feet in the air. He doesn’t remember much other than that and the other car was abandoned when police got there. Thank goodness they looked over the edge and saw him.

He got out of the hospital the day I was supposed to leave for India. By then the stitches where his back and arm had been operated on could get wet, but because of the broken arm, he needed help getting the back brace off and back on. Conveniently, I had a few weeks cleared so I could stay and help him–India will happen another day. I got to shop at an Indian grocery and eat at India House in Rancho Cordova while I was in Sacramento, so it was not a complete loss. The YATRA says they’re refunding the money I gave for food and lodging, but Air Canada and Travelocity have not been so kind. Air Canada hasn’t even responded to my complaint at the way their refusal was handled: The first person said to call and reschedule once I heard from the doctors how long I would be needed. As long as it was before my flight was scheduled she said there was no problem. When I called back to reschedule, I got a different woman who said I could not reschedule unless I was going to fly sooner, which of course was not an option. When I asked to speak to a supervisor, she said she was the supervisor and had worked there twenty years. Her tone was quite nasty.

Ah well. The funny thing is, I had a feeling something was going to go wrong. My daughter was flying to Colorado the same day on a small airline and I’d worried she might end up in a crash in the Rockies and I’d have to turn around as soon as I got to Mumbai. I never expected to see my oldest in the hospital.

He’s alive, walking, off all pain killers, and can lift a dinner plate. So he’s good. It’ll be a few more weeks before he knows if he can go back to work, but he’s ready to be flexible about his future–except for his back with the two metal rods in it, that won’t ever be flexible.