Well, I'm back. I was gone for two weeks, but
it feels like six weeks. What is it about being on vacation that makes
the days seem so much longer? I guess it's because you're cramming about 500%
more activities and events into each day. On the way home Friday I began to feel
like our house wouldn't be there when we arrived. I mean, can you just abandon your life for
what feels like 6 weeks and return home to find things just as you left
them?
Apparently you can. My neighbors scarcely looked up
when we pulled into our driveway. You know how fast two weeks goes by in real-life time. I'm guessing the people who lived around us barely noticed we
were gone.
I'm definitely not going to give you a detailed
account of the cruise (week one) and church youth camp (week two). But here's
the short version. No really, this is short if you think about how
much happens on a cruise.
The Cruise:
First of all, we were there to celebrate my
parents' 50th wedding anniversary. All of their children and grandchildren were
there, so it was fun. We like each other and like doing things together, so it
was great. The men brought tuxedos, the women and girls brought fancy dresses, and we had a couple of dress-up nights. The
girls all loved it. And I guess I kind of did too. Here are my dad, brother,
brother-in-law, and me trying to look like the rat pack.
My dad can be Sinatra. My brother-in-law
(obviously
from taller stock) can be Dean Martin. My brother
HAS to be Sammy Davis. (He has the right personality
and the glass eye). That leaves me as the fourth
guy. What was his name? Joey something or other?
As for the cruise itself, I guess I would say
that I discovered I'm not exactly a cruise kind of guy. Don't get me wrong; it
was fun, and I enjoyed seeing parts of the world that I've only read about. I
loved the clear, blue water near the beaches. But I don't know - something about
the insanely indulgent, "let's all pretend that we're millionaires zipping
around the world" thing didn't exactly fit me.
And it's harder than you think to find your way
out of the "Disneyfied" cruise reality, even when you get off the ship. You're
in a foreign country, and you only have a few hours. So you can't exactly wander
around and figure out what to do. So you go for the excursions or planned trips,
which are fun, but they don't feel real. And everywhere you look you see tourist
junk.
I was happiest when I left the tourist areas
and spent some time wandering around the streets of a little Mexican town. I
liked the parts where the real people live. One look at the style of the place,
and you know you're in Mexico.
Tourist
Real. See what I mean?
While wandering some less-traveled streets, my
brother and I stumbled across a fascinating cemetery. It was filled with
mausoleums that looked - well - different. Mexican. Their style and not ours. No
one was around, so I felt like I could take a few pictures without offending
anyone.
And the poorer part of the cemetery, where people
build shrines out of whatever materials are at hand.
Some quirk of nature or aberrant developmental
crisis has made it so that I enjoy wandering through cemeteries and backstreets
much more than being around lots of people. I really don't need anything to do.
I just like seeing where and how people live. I really hated leaving the real
town and going back through tourist town to get to the ship.
What can I say? We sailed around; the water was
pretty; we saw things we'd never seen before; we spent time together; the guys
smoked Cuban cigars at the back of the ship one night. That's a pretty good
vacation, right?
Cohiba! Accept no
substitutes. Actually, my brother and I went to an official cigar shop and
got the real thing. $15 for the smallest Cohiba they had. My dad bought a
box of counterfeits from some guy in a sombrero on a ferry. My brother and I
were so smug when we pulled out our bona fide Cubans! Sadly, we all agreed
that my dad's cigars were much smoother. Not that any of us know much of
anything about cigars.
Youth Camp:
I'm really going to be brief here. This was our
church's first experience with a Christian camping group, the
Southwest
Baptist Youth Camping Association. These people fit our church
theologically and in other ways. Kindred spirits. My assignment this year was to
produce the camp newspaper with a team of reporters made up of kids from the
churches. I had a blast, but the task totally consumed me. I get rather picky
with layout and writing. Just for fun, I put all four issues online
here.
If you glance through them, you can definitely tell that I've been reading the
Onion too much.
It was a good week. I got to know a group of
ministers with whom I can relate. I felt at home. Our church is definitely going
back next year.
Back to Writing:
So now I'm back and settling into the summer. I
spent two weeks not writing anything. It's amazing how fast I slipped back into
a life without writing. I had forgotten what that was like, and it was a nice
break. But you put me in a house with my computer, and I suddenly allow my blog
to become a driving force in my life. I'm fine with that because it gets me
writing. It's just interesting to me how that works.
So tomorrow I'm going to figure out where I am
with writing. I have my folder full of ideas and essays in one state of
development or another. I usually have a feel for what is in there, and I have a
handle on the 3 or 4 things I'm working on at any given time. I have no idea
what's hot and what's not, in the writing part of my brain. Let's see what
tomorrow will bring.
rlp
