Friday, May 19, 2006

Recap Part 2: Philly Extended. (aka the "Historic" Retelling)

Longer recap:
Philadephia was fabulous. The themes of the trip were "Philly: Historic" and "How many rental car benches can we sit on?" I had forgotten about how much older the east coast is from the west. Everything we saw involved someone telling us "This is the oldest _______ in the entire US, ________ famous historical figure once blew his nose here." Or some such thing.

As for the rental car benches, my sister was smart and reserved a rental car before we got there. Jenn met us at the baggage claim (where I discovered that my luggage's zipper had been thoroughly destroyed. Thanks Southwest!) and we headed over to the rental car place. Mom and I waited outside to enjoy the sun and fresh air. After a while, I peeked inside to see Jenn on the phone with someone. Never a good sign. Turns out, rental car places don't accept any credit card that is tied to a bank account. Visa's NOT everywhere we want to be, it seems. After visiting 3 rental places and watching my sister slowly sink into madness, we finally got it all taken care of, and were on our way to "Historic" Philadelphia.

The purpose for the trip was my sister's nursing school graduation. My mom and I finally got to meet my sisters friends and housemates, and my mom finally met "THE Girlfriend." Jenn, my sister, has never brought a girlfriend home, and so this was a big deal. Luckily The Girlfriend is a wonderful human, and I've never seen my sister so happy, so my mom had good things to say about her. A good step from my mom, who is Mormon, and therefore pretty Gay-Unfriendly. the Graduation itself was a beautiful tearful event. The program my sis was in was home to a lot of "returning" students. The man who gave the class speech was a former steel worker with 5 children. I don't know what I expected from a steel worker, but I was moved to tears by the empathy and compassion he exhuded while he talked about all the things he had learned, and people he'd met through this program, patients and otherwise.
My sister is a brainiac and won a TON of awards and scholarships. Every person in the department knew her by name and had nothing but RAVING positive things to say about her. I'm so damn proud of her, I could burst.

I can't wait to call her and ask her random medical advice. I'm sure she'll love that.
More to come on the other fabulous happenings of the last two weeks. Eventually.
I'm tired, leave it alone.

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