Miss Becky's Blog

Hello from Boston ...

Ken and I arrived in Boston, MA yesterday afternoon. We left our home in Logan, Utah last Sunday (May 28th) and have been driving our daughter's (Kara) car across America to bring it to her here in Boston on the east coast. She has been living here since last August and is working on a PhD in Education at Boston College.

Kara just moved to a new apartment closer to her university, but not near the subway or "T" as they call it, so it takes her about an hour to get to school, as she takes two or three buses. She also needs her car to travel to some of the public schools in Boston where she will be doing some teaching and research projects next year. Kara had left her car at our home this past year and used public transportation. Ken drove her car while he was living and coaching in Las Vegas last fall and winter. It also costs more to have a car in Boston, but at her new apartment there is room to park a car (at the old apartment she would have to pay $150 a month for a parking place).

So, Ken and I drove Kara's car to her. It was a nice, interesting and long (almost 3,000 miles) trip.

It was cold the morning we left Utah as we had been having a lot of rain and even some snow in the high mountains. We drove through the canyon in the mountains just east of our home, through the corner of Wyoming (a neighboring state) and then back over the state line into the north eastern corner of the state of Utah. There we stopped for a couple of hours so I could visit with a lady that I've been working with who had been transferred from the Cache County Jail (in Logan) to the Daggett County Jail near the Utah border. I had not seen her for about five months and we had a good visit, while Ken reorganized some of the things in the car that we were bringing to our daughter, so he could see out of the back window better. He also did some walking and sleeping!!!

The rest of that day (Sunday) was spent driving to Denver, Colorado where we spent the night at my sister Sue's home. Did you know that Denver is called the "mile high city" ... because it is a mile high, over 5,000 feet. In getting there we drove through some very high and beautiful mountains ... the highest elevation was over 9,000 feet above sea level At that point we experienced a snow storm. That day my sister's daughter, Anne, went into labor giving birth to her first child five weeks early. Anne's husband was out of the country on business, so my sister went to the hospital with her and stayed with her for the birth. Ken and I arrived at her home that evening before she and her husband had returned from the hospital. All is going well for the mother and baby, which weight over five pounds -- good for a pre-mature baby.

The next morning Ken and I stopped to visit with my youngest brother, Brad, who lives near Sue in the Denver area. It was neat to see them and I especially enjoyed learning more about my sister-in-law's little home business ... I promise to do a article on it and post in the future. After getting gas, we were on the road again.

Monday, it was different driving. There are are freeways all across America. A freeway is a highway or major road that has no stopping on it ... there are no traffic lights or stop signs. There are places where you enter the freeway and places were you leave or exit the freeway, but there is no stopping, so you can travel at rather high rates of speed and can get places much faster than driving on roads where there are more cars, traffic lights and stop signs. That day we drove on a freeway across the rest of the state of Colorado and all across the state of Kansas (the landscape was lots of agriculture land, fields, farms, very flat with no mountains or hills) to Kansas City which is located on the border of Kansas and Missouri. We stayed that night in a hotel on the Missouri side of Kansas City.

Ken did most of the driving and I enjoy reading and sewing (cross-stitch embroidery), listening to music and sleeping as he drives. When he gets tried, I drive and he sleeps or checks the road map to find the best way for us to travel, and sometimes he reads as well.

On Tuesday, we travel across part of Missouri to the city of Columbia, the location of the University of Missouri, where one of our Chinese friends is a graduate student. We stopped at that campus and tried to locate him, but were unsuccessful. We continued across the state of Missouri (all on the same freeway that we had traveled on from Denver) to the city of St. Louis which is on the border of the state and that border is the Mississippi River ... the largest and longest river in America running from north to south (starts near the Canadian border in the north and runs the length of America to the Gulf of Mexico in the south). We took another freeway now and drove south, crossed the Mississippi and Ohio Rivers and entered the state of Kentucky. This is where my husband, Ken, was born and lived until his family moved to California when he was 15 years old.

Ken was born in an old family home on Bizzel Bluff, a very rural area of the southern most western part of Kentucky. Paducah is the largest city, near his home area. We drove through there, got some dinner and then drove to his cousin's home for the night. She had gone to North Carolina for her sister-in-law's funeral, but had told us we could use her home, which is located on "Mitchell Road". This area is very beautiful, green, rural and quiet. You can not see the nearest neightbors' home from her house. The second night we were there, I was unable to sleep, so decided to get up and read for a while. As I got out of bed, I noticed lighting in the sky and looked out the window to see many fireflies or we also call them "lighing bugs" ... they have a "light" in their tail section that goes on and off and in the dark night all you see is the light going on and off. A couple of these bugs had even gotten inside the house and their lights were going on and off in the dark room. It was so beautiful ... like a fairy land ... I just stood and enjoyed the sight. I had never seen such a sight -- very unusual for me because we do not have this type of insect where I live in Utah. Our climate is too dry for them there. I've only seen this type of insect in the east and southern parts of America.

Wednesday morning, Ken and I took a long walk over the country roads that he had walked as a child ... the only difference was that the roads are paved now and when he was a child the roads were all dirt or gravel. It was beautiful, green with rolling hills and soooooo quiet ... a very nice experience! The rest of the day was spent visiting and talking with several of Ken's relatives and friends. One of his cousins, who was like a brother because Ken spend many summers at his home as a boy, is still working ... he's over 70 years old and has worked for this company for almost 50 years!!! I always enjoy coming here and listening to the people talk ... I always learn more about Ken and his early life.

Thursday morning, we left the Paducah area and drove north east across Kentucky. This is a very beautiful state ... many hills, lots of green forests ... both sides of the freeway. There are also lots of horse farms with green meadows, miles of white fences and nice barns or stables for the horses. We also saw lots of very nice homes. We arrived in Lexington, Kentucky early in the afternoon and met one of our special Chinese friends from Jinan. Her name is Dong Bei, some of you will know her. She has been at the University of Kentucky for a few years working on her PhD. When she arrive in America, she came to Utah and visited us at our home on her way to Kentucky. We had been able to contact her ahead of time on our cell (mobile) phone so we met them at the Medical Center on the U of K campus. It was great to have lunch with her and meet her husband, who is a very fine Chinese man she met here. He was a student at Shandong University at the same time that she was studying on the Shandong Medical University campus, but they did not meet until here at the University of Kentucky where they were classmates and both working on PhD degrees. They returned to China in June of 2004, met each others families and married there. Now they are expecting the birth of their first child in August. Her mother will come to help care for the baby the first six months so Dong Bei can continue her research work and his mother will come the next six months. It was soooooo great to see her again and share in her joy and happiness at this time of her life.

Late that afternoon, we left Lexington, driving north east toward Boston. Just outside the city there was an accident on the freeway and all the traffic stopped for over an hour. We stopped the car and got out ... Ken visited with the man whose car was in front of us and I took the opportunity to take a walk. I walked down the road pass all the cars in front of us, as we could not see what that problem was. I walked close to a mile and got to a point where I could see the road ahead where the accident was. I talked to some people there and then started walking back to Ken and our car. On the way, I talked to several people who asked if I had been able to see the problem, so I told them what I had seen. Soon after I returned to our car, the traffic (all the cars) started moving ... it was really slow for a while, but once we got past the site of the accident, we could drive faster.

From Kentucky we drove northeast across part of the states of West Virginia, Maryland, Pennsylvania, Connecticut and into the state of Massachusetts where Boston is located. Thursday night we drove through some mountains ... not as high as the mountain in our home state of Utah, but very beautiful and green. We chose to drive most that night. About 2:00 am Friday morning, we left the freeway, parked the car and slept in the car for about three house. Then, I felt rested enough to drive and drove while Ken slept some more. Three hours later, we stopped for breakfast and to get gas and then Ken drove the rest of the way. We arrived at our daughter's apartment that afternoon just in time for her to drive her car to the campus for a summer class that she is taking!

After Kara's class, we went out to eat and then she took us dancing ... she love "swing" dancing and it was fun ... bought back lots of good memories for Ken and I, as we did a lot of dancing when we were dating and courting. There was a "Big Band" playing for the dancing and it was so fun to see Kara dance ... she's really a good "swing" dancer. This summer she tells me that she is planning to take a "tap" dancing class with a friend. Kara's really a fun person, great teacher/student and really loves to learn and try new things.

Kara and I both slept in late this morning (Saturday) and it has been raining here all morning as well. So Kara has been doing some studying, I'm writing this message. Ken has taken one of Kara's roommates to get some things she had purchased since she does not have a car and he will be taking Kara to get a new chair as soon as we have some lunch. I hope that the rain will stop by tomorrow so we can do some sightseeing here in Boston, as Ken has not been here before. We are planning to visit Kara's campus on Monday, which is really a beautiful campus and looks a lot like the campus of Oxford in England. Then on Tuesday, Ken and I will fly home to Utah.

It has been a good trip and nice to be with Ken ... our life has been so busy and we have been separated most of it during the last couple of years, so now we need to get reacquainted!!!