Eclipse

I'm going to jump back and forth in time for a few posts, I think. I haven't been keeping up with blogging, but I'm still doing things.

When my dad first had his accident, I immediately flew to the US, where I met my Mom and brother and nephew. After a week, things were looking hopeful, so we all decided it seemed okay for me to return to Spain, where a bunch of US friends were convening for a long-anticipated eclipse viewing. Planned mostly by my super-organized friend E, it was a group of about 25 people, more than half of which were physics grad school friends and their families. We stayed in Salamanca, a lovely university town that was two hours away from where we were going to watch the eclipse. (Staying outside of totality was a cost-cutting measure, and definitely worth it.)

E-Day, as we might call it, was a group effort. Four cars of people, driving two hours and the arriving in a hot, barren field to wait for six hours in 40C / 105F heat. I should explain at this point that people were not allowed to watch the eclipse from the side of roads, only from designated viewing areas, because of the risk of fires. Huge numbers of police had been mobilized to organize this, and it was probably a wise idea - in spite of this, we still saw a fairly serious wild fire on from our vantage point that afternoon. And we arrived so early because we were concerned about traffic; rural central Spain is not really set up for the number of visitors it was receiving.

To survive, we had purchased a HUGE tarp, which we stretched across the cars. We sat on the dry stubble in the shade in between the cars, eating snacks, ham, olives, and watermelon, and drinking vast quantities of ice water, all of which we had brought with us. 

Six hours in a baking field is a lot, but it helps to bring friends.

When it was close to the actual celestial show, the sun was quite low in the sky and the temperatures were bearable, so we dragged the tarp out as a picnic blanket to with with hundres of our new Spanish friends. It was my very first total eclipse and definitely as amazing as I had imagined. 

Life after

 

I just returned to Madrid, so here are some thought on my month in Ohio. It was a difficult but productive month. I was so glad that I could spend time with my mother, both just to keep her company and to help with the many administrative tasks that come with a death. By the time I left, I felt like all the time-sensitive financial and bureucratic processes were nearly done, and now there´s the long process of grieving and figuring out what life looks like after a loss.

Grief makes me exhausted, and I did not have energy for socializing or studying language or exercise. I did try to do some walking, just because that gets me outside and not stuck in front of a computer or in a car (which is where I was for hours every day). My parents´ property includes 20 acres of woods, but the ticks were especially bad this year, so I mainly stuck to the road. Since the Midwest is laid out in 1-mile increments, I could walk the "section" bounded by the road and get a nice 4-mile (7 km) walk. There´s no other pedestrians, and luckily not too much traffic, since you need to be ready to jump in a ditch if a car drives by and hasn´t seen you. Amish horse-drawn buggies abound too, but I always crossed over to the other side for them. So I got some nice views of farms with goats, horses and cows, but also the occasional groundhog or deer. I will miss all the nature, but not all the driving, that comes along with a life in the country.