More Weekend Adventures

I’ve hit the road the last two weekends to visit students from out of town. A number of men work here in my city and return home on weekends to their cities several hours away. Last Friday I visited a student who lives about two and a half hours away with a friend. His family gave us a lovely lunch. He showed us the hot springs his town is famous for. He wanted to show us more, but it was just a day trip, and time was short. He insists that we need to return and spend the night so that we can see more, and perhaps we shall.

This weekend my boss had a meeting in another city about four hours away, so we combined it with a visit to one of his students, who is currently my apartment mate’s student. I have a student who lives in the same area, but he and his wife weren’t going to be home this weekend. I almost didn’t go on the trip because of that, but at the last minute I sensed that I might miss something if I didn’t.

Well, I would have missed seeing more mountains and ocean, yes. But I also would have missed meeting more dear people—the wife of the student and two of his sisters. I’m still not sure why, but I think I needed to meet one of those sisters. Perhaps time will tell.

The student and his wife rolled out the red carpet and showed us around town. They fed us a magnificent lunch, took us for a boat ride around the small harbor, showed us the fort, and escorted us to a beach-side park, where the children had pony rides. Then they took some of us women to a wedding in the evening. I love local weddings, but you’ll never see pictures of them here because cameras are taboo.

Hot springs (the water was hot-tub temperature!)

More hot springs water

Mountains

More roadside scenery

The ocean

And, for a bit of trivia, from this coast I was about 60 miles as the crow flies from a country that's in the news a bit these days. I told my apartment-mate last night that we should text our boss and tell him we'd caught a boat over. He would have had a few words for us, and we would not have been very welcome at our destination. Amazing how close we are, though.