On keeping your chin up...

To counteract some of the negativity from my last post, I'll mention some good things that have been going on lately in the program:

- I've read a handful of good books in the last two weeks including In Cold Blood and Catch-22. Both are highly recommended. Gonna try to knock off two more before I leave on Sunday.

- One of the kids that already left took me out and bought me an expensive Chinese food lunch.

- Got to play mini-golf for the first time in years when we were in Yarmouth. I did poorly, but had a lot of fun anyway.

- The Sunday excursion got cancelled because it was finally understood how ridiculous it was to drag the kids to another historic building they wouldn't want to see or try to appreciate. As a result I got to sleep in late, and didn't have much to do all day. Kind of like a free day off.

- There's a good amount of early departures. Less kids means less annoyances.

- The program director has been much cooler to staff lately, probably in response to us bitching and moaning about everything. He bought us an expensive dinner after the Norwich/Yarmouth trip on Saturday. Also, he's offering to subsidize any activities we wanted to do while in the area (and being less stingy with money in general). He said he would pay for my transportation back to Matt's place in Southampton after the program has ended too. Sweet.

- The program ends in less than a week.

More on Yarmouth: It looked exactly like a northeast US coastal town. You know the ones with all the arcades, fried food, sketchy roller coasters and white trash galore. It kind of made me think of home, even if it was a seedier side of it.

I feel bad about not having bought a lot of souvenirs for people, but I literally have no room in my luggage for anything else, and am already way over the weight (and baggage number) limit for my flight back. I'm probably going to have to pay an assload of money just to get my stuff on the plane. I'm going to try to throw away things before I head home. And there I go getting all negative again.

Hoping the last week will go smoothly with a minimum of incidents, but I'm not expecting to be so lucky. Hope for the best, plan for the worst as they say.

I'm hungry, time to eat.