Hello from Indiana! Tonight we have a guest writer — a draftee actually.
This is Grandma Jane. We are visiting Jeffrey and family as we travel from New York to Florida. Indiana is not exactly the most direct route but it does allow us to see everyone “back home in Indiana.”
I told Jeffrey that his loyal friends and fans were waiting for a message on the blog and he suggested that I should write it since he was so busy. So here I am.
Number one: Jeffrey and Mary are home (for those who wondered) and Jeffrey is back in college and back to heavy-duty exercise, weight lifting and body building.
First (because grandmas are allowed to brag even when the modest grandson is not so sure): Jeffrey earned Dean’s List status for his academic work for the fall semester. Very fine work! He now has two great semesters with good grades behind him.
This semester, he is taking courses in organic chemistry, physics, cultural geography, American religious studies, and art history plus labs for the two science courses. Needless to say, he is doing a whole lot of reading!
He continues with body building and will participate in a show in Florida in March and one in Michigan in April. He will be a guest poser at the Ball State University show in April. We hope to attend and cheer him on.
Of course he is also doing the prescribed exercises related to his Russian treatments and the doctors tell him that the goal now is to exercise and exercise so that the messages from the brain to the lower body will be received and understood. It will take much practice.
That pretty well sums up what he tells us he is doing. He sounds and is busy.
For those who asked on Jeffrey’s blog about my travels to Vietnam and Cambodia and why in the world I’d go there — Vietnam has been on my travel list for a long time and the opportunity to go came up so I went. I’d wanted to go to Angkor Wat and the temples since I read the Life Magazine article when Jackie Kennedy went there in the 1960’s and this trip included that as an option.
It was a three-week trip and took us from north to south in Vietnam and included time in the big cities of Hanoi and Ho Chi Minh City (Saigon), the seaside resort of Nha Trang, the mountain retreat city of Dalat, and many small villages. We climbed down into the Viet Cong tunnels at Cu Chi, up the mountains to see the ruins at My Son, out into the waters of Hai Long Bay (Tonkin Gulf), and through more rice fields than you can imagine. We visited temples and pagodas, prisons (including the “Hanoi Hilton” where John McCain was held), markets, factories (silk weaving, embroidery, and rice paper), and we ate new fruits (like dragon fruit) and new “snacks” (like snake jerky complete with bones). People were friendly and helpful (like washing me off when I tell in the mud), the hotels and food were great, and the massages were plentiful and cheap ($14 per hour!).
Cambodia was very hot (95 degrees and humid) as we climbed around Angkor Wat. The number of temples plus the size and extent, and the efforts required to reclaim them from the jungle were quite amazing.
It was a great trip and I’d recommend it to anyone.
End of entry and guestwriter.
Grandma Jane
