Trip Home

So let me summarize the 2010 NAD conference the best I can! It’s really also the story of my trip home from Japan. Actually, let me start by saying that before I left, I had a pretty relaxed week; most of the time was spent creating ASL materials like a video with numbers and another video with 100 American names (thank you, fakenamegenerator.com!). I had tutoring sessions in the afternoons, and the Tea Ceremony club put on a lovely demonstration for me. Unlike the tea ceremony I attended in Hawaii, where I couldn’t bear to drink the thick matcha, this time I drank it all down.

On Thursday night before I left, I met Rachel and Renca (friends from Gallaudet) for dinner at Fusao. It’s a restaurant owned by a lovely deaf couple, and we ended up meeting up with MJ Bienvenu, her partner, and a few other deaf people too. I didn’t get much to eat that night because we were all sharing and there weren’t many vegetables, but the conversation was enjoyable.

Flying home on Friday was pretty uneventful. I spent about $30 on KitKats of various flavors – green tea, wasabi, soy sauce, and so forth. I had a bulkhead seat in economy. Having the bulkhead was nice, but United’s movie method is lousy compared to ANA’s – one movie per channel, and they wait until all movies are done on all channels before starting over. There were also no movies with English subtitles – the entertainment guide indicated that there should be some, but I never found anything. So I was pretty restless and cramped the whole trip back. You know, Economy Plus may seem like a silly luxury, but it’s worth it for such a long trip.

So I flew into Dulles, and my wife picked me up. I made her get out of the car so I could hug her properly! On Saturday, I made some of my friends come out to the suburbs so we could have lunch, and then in the evening we went to a Vietnamese restaurant that had a large vegetarian menu, for my father-in-law’s 70th birthday. On Sunday, we drove to Philadelphia for the NAD conference, and I met up with the College Bowl coaches and half the team. (The other half was flying in from Poland after having competd in the Under 21 Deaf Basketball Tournament.) We went to my favorite restaurant in Philadelphia, More Than Just Ice Cream, for dinner.

Monday and Tuesday were pretty laid back – we had a few practices, but that was pretty much it. On Wednesday I had a rotten day, because I was treated like a child when I tried to explain that we’d been told the night before we’d be in the Opening Ceremonies, as we have in years past. It turned out we had been cut at the last minute, and nobody had told us…but I ended up having a cryfest instead. Guess it was all the constant pressure, or something. In the afternoon, I worked at the Gallaudet booth in the exhibit hall. It wasn’t very interesting because most folks wanted to talk to the alumni office, and I was there with the admissions office. There was only one potential student, I think! At the end of the day I went out and had a margarita, because I’d been having a rotten day ALL day…yes Bob, that line was for you!

Thursday was Game Day. We had a pretty easy day…honestly I don’t remember anything until the game! Gallaudet had a pep rally before the game, which was exciting for me…but it felt a bit odd that it was only for Gallaudet. I think all the teams should get up there. It did pump me up, though, and I was in pretty much constant motion as we waited for the game to begin.

We did well in the first round, ending up ahead of NTID and CSUN. NTID made a lot of challenges in the second round, but we stayed far ahead. Going into the third round, they must have been scared, because they didn’t challenge anymore. Until we got to an entertainment question, which they challenged – so we challenged too, to keep ourselves ahead of them. The question was about the sequel to Saturday Night Fever, which took its title from a hit song from that movie. I gave the answer “Stayin’ Alive” and NTID said “Staying Alive” – well, the apostrophe was right for the song title, but the question was really about the movie, which used the G…so we went down 10, NTID went up 10, and I went into panic mode. They REALLY gave us a run for our money, and it all came down to the last question! Amazingly, we won by a scant two points…though I had done the math wrong on the scores, and I thought we lost! (By the way, in videos of the game, you can see everything I feel…my wife was cracking up after the fact because I have NO poker face.) Fortunately we came out ahead, and we got to give our coach his Gatorade bath. (The story there is that two years ago, he said he’d never had one, so we gave him one. But then he said the one little bottle wasn’t enough…so this time we used two big bottles!)

On Friday we had to be up bright and early for the Gallaudet breakfast. Having gone to sleep at 3, it was a miracle that I made it at 7, but I did. Later in the day, we had a celebratory dinner at the Melting Pot. It was kind of awkward because our coach wasn’t there, but it was fun, and my wife got to come! Well, it was fun until the end of the cheese course, anyway…you know how they warn you that the cheese at the bottom of the bowl is hottest? I was having some spinach and artichoke cheese, for which I’d leaned partway across the table, and just as I got it back to my mouth, it fell. Into my cleavage. I hollered and frantically unrolled my napkin, and managed to get it off, but not before it gave me a second degree burn. I scared everybody at the table, but fortunately I was able to see the humor in being badly burned by CHEESE, so I was laughing too and they knew I was all right. It hurt like crazy though! The rest of the night was rather subdued as a result, and my wife says we can’t go back to the Melting Pot unless I wear battle armor! (I did watch the whole Miss Deaf America pagenant, though, mostly snarking along with our coach’s high school age daughter. “Oh my god, what is she wearing?!”)

The next day, Saturday, my burn was feeling better, and we finished everything up and drove home. I slept the ENTIRE way…woke up once for 10 seconds in Baltimore, and then not again until Tyson’s Corner! Then when we got home around 6, I slept for three more hours. When I woke up, I had some of my mother-in-law’s homemade banana pudding for dinner, and that was the end of my trip home.

This morning we went to Amphora so I could have one last serving of eggs and hash browns, and then it was off to the airport. I blew my last thirty American dollars on a couple of glasses of wine, some cheese, and nuts. And then I boarded the plane! I had upgraded to Economy Plus, so I was nice and comfortable. I might even do it for the final leg home on August 5th.