Back on Campus (and it feels so good!)

My mind is much taken up now with the impending visit by my pride and joy, who is finishing up his first year as a teacher. Apparently, there were so many snow days, the school year will last until the last week in June. Gabriel has promised to play the organ at my niece's wedding - which I sadly will miss -- and thereafter, wend his way to my door for a couple of weeks. I am beside myself with anticipation. One yearns so for the presence - the feel - of one's offspring.

Yesterday, I moved ahead with my desire to be useful, to make a positive difference in some small way, with a visit to Keiser University's Central American campus, just a few kilometers up the road in San Marcos. I learned that they follow the North American academic year, and things are quiet for the nonce until classes resume in September. Keiser acquired Ave Maria University just three years ago; as its former name suggests, it was a Catholic institution, and there is still a strong Catholic presence on campus, with a resident priest and a pretty chapel. Work on the chapel roof limited my view to its exterior only. The campus is compact and lovely, with several newer buildings and many plantings and neat landscaping.

I was made to feel very welcome indeed by the head of academic support, who has laudable goals for her programs that may well provide opportunities to be helpful. She introduced me to the librarian, who is a remarkable woman, very personable, and no doubt, in possession of many good stories to tell of her 36 years living in Nicaragua. Just imagine the transformative history she has watched unfold here.

After Gabriel departs for the States, I'll get back in touch about setting up a tutoring schedule one or two days a week. I already feel I have two friends at Keiser, and it is exciting to be flexing my academic muscles, modest thought they may be.

On the literary front, I have made a good start on Tolstoy's War and Peace, that hefty epic widely regarded to be the finest novel ever written. On deck is an even more ambitious read: Edward Gibbon's History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire.