Dear Friends and Family,

Well, I completed the San Francisco pilot study with nearly 30 interviews and most of my sanity in tact. As usual, I tried to do too much. The last day of my stay in the bay area, I ended up canceling interviews to spend some time by myself. I had been doing intensive active listening with many people for three weeks and I could no longer listen with any kind of attention span. I did some shopping -- mostly books (of course) and then spent my last night with my mom.

So while visiting my mom that last night, I tripped over some furniture and broke a toe on my left foot. My sister, Angela, spent four hours in the emergency room with me waiting for x-rays. They didn’t show anything, but from the symptoms they said I probably had a hairline fracture. They gave me crutches and some pain killers and told me to stay off my foot. Now how was I suppose to do that when I had to get on a plane for Iowa the next day? It was quite a trip! (My toe is still sore but healing fine now.)

Oh, I checked around again that last day and found my leather jacket. I had misplaced it two weeks earlier while visiting Santa Cruz and was frantic. Turns out I left it in a coffee shop. I was also able to visit Cat’s Cradle up in Elfland that last day. It was the kind of peaceful spot I needed at that moment.

So I got back to Iowa City on Tue., July 15. I had only a few days with my family. Rowan had grown so much in only three weeks that it breaks my heart to think of how much I missed and how much I am missing now. He is walking everywhere! His newest nick-name is "babyzilla" because he walks with hands raised like Godzilla and leaves a similar chaos in his wake.

We went to see the move "Contact" while I was there, starring Jody Foster. What an amazing film! Truly moving. I wept during the most powerful part of the film. I am afraid to say too much and spoil it for people. If you see no other film this year -- go see this film while it is still in the theater.

So I really had to work hard to finish Looking Queer while home. I finished the introduction and the last minute changes. I was able to print all but one file out before leaving. That one had some trouble which Troy and Lon are trying to fix and mail the whole manuscript for me this week.

I was so frantic in trying to get the manuscript finished and get packed that I didn’t sleep much those last couple days. I got to the airport exhausted -- only to find I had missed my plane. They had to put me on another airline to get me to Chicago in time to meet the plane overseas. Didn’t cost extra but it was nerve-racking. I had to walk a lot to get back to United’s area in O’Hare but I made the next connection in time.

The flight over was both great and terrible. It was great because the food was actually good and they even serve you heated moist towels before you eat to clean up with. Very nice. It was terrible because in addition to the eight hours on the plane, it was packed. And I mean really packed. We had no room to move at all. Even I couldn’t sleep in those conditions. Luckily there were two free movies shown.

I wish I could have seen more of the ocean. But it was dark and cloudy through most of the trip, so it was pretty boring until we got to London. The view from the plane was definitely not the U.S. Hard to describe but even the way the land is laid out is very different from the U.S. Not so linear, but still neater.

Things got really strange when we landed. Our plane was late out of Chicago, so we arrived with only 25 minutes before the Amsterdam flight was scheduled to leave. So the United people decided they could not change both us and our luggage in time. They spent the next half hour herding 35 of us around the airport before they could figure out what to do with us. They had to rebook us on later flights. Now, keep in mind that for them it was 8 AM -- but for most of us it was the middle of the night. Add to that I had not slept more than a few hours in several days.

So in this state, I finally arrive in Amsterdam around noon (their time) and have to take a cab with two other students (who met me) to the apartments where we are staying. We arrived in the apartments around 1:00 with a get to know people reception scheduled for 3:00 followed by dinner. I don’t remember much about that first day. Mostly I had a good time, but I finally crashed around 8 PM and slept until 7AM when I had to get up for class. I had made it to Amsterdam. The morning would mean many new challenges.

Dawn