Adventures in Massachusetts

The past two weeks I have been in Dartmouth, MA at the University of Massachusetts beginning a Masters degree in Counseling and School Psychology. The program is primarily online but interestingly we do have weekly class meetings where we are all online together and discuss. These two weeks are intense course load that help us learn the interpersonal techniques that go into counseling. My cohort here at Dartmouth will take every single class with me through the entire two year program.We are a group of 12 women and 1 man. We are quite diverse in our experiences and backgrounds. We have been immersed in the culture of counseling and have certainly created a bond. Today is our last full day together (and by full I mean we have 3 classes today so our educational day begun at 8:30AM and will continue through 8:30PM) and we will not be together as a group again until graduation.

In the middle of the two weeks our weekend was free. I had a couple of wonderful options to visit folks in the area. I opted to take a little road trip to see my Godson and his whole family. I hadn't seen him in 3 years and when you are 5 a lot happens between 2 and 5. I hadn't met his sister and of course I love my Kevin and Alison. So off to Lewisburg, PA I went. A little jaunt from where I was but I loved every minute of the drive there and back. The Hilgerts are great hosts. We saw the town, enjoyed in local treats, went to Mass and enjoyed being together.

My drive back was a disaster. It was close to nine and half hours from an original six. It is worth noting that even though it took so long I never developed road rage or had the car-claustrophobia and I got to chat with folks on the way. First near the Jersey border, there was a car on fire. I mean in flames. I mean you could see the massive black thick clouds floating into the clear blue skies at the foothills of the Appalachian mountains. Stopped the ride for about 30 minutes. Then I was in traffic for almost two hours in New York waiting to cross the GW bridge. I didn't realize that traveling north there was a toll of $8. Luckily the tollbooth person was kind enough to let me go through without any penalty. Once I arrived to Connecticut, I dashed to the restroom and returned to I-95 to wait in more traffic. As I sat there, I could see in my rear view mirror that there was a car flying towards me down the road. The driver was not being attentive and did hit me. Then I moved forward and hit the guy in front of me. Everyone was fine. We stopped on the side of the road and everything was a-okay. I made it back and hit the books.

On Tuesday, I found another old friend. Jeffro resides in Maine and we met in Needham, MA to have dinner. Though it was not our intention to go there it was so wonderful to see him and to catch up. We didn't even miss a beat. Since Jeff owns the town (his last name is Needham) we played with Trout (his pup) and shared calzones. It was lovely.

Tomorrow I leave to return to the FLA.