Beginning, Middle, End

Here I am at mid-term It seems like only yesterday that I was trying to figure out how I was going to manage teaching five different classes this semester. It has been a challenge, a good challenge, a time consuming challenge. I have spent the last eight weeks preparing a class I have never taught, learning how to teach an online course, helping students prepare for auditions and competitions, and grading papers - lots of papers! I'm not sure how we have gotten to the middle of the semester and spring break so quickly, but here we are. I am happy for the break!

For as long as the girls have been in school, spring break has been sort of a non-entity because the girls and I have had spring break over different weeks. So, though I was off, I still had to get up and do the school routine with them and while they were off, I had to work. Though we all got a break from the school routine, nothing really exciting ever happened. This year, by some bizarre alignment of the stars, Erin and I are off the same week. We have a chance to do something - and we are, just not together.

Erin left this afternoon for Paris, and several other French cities, with her French teacher and a group of students from another school. I leave for Rome and Assisi tomorrow, a trip that I have dreamed about for many years. Since becoming a Franciscan, I have wanted to visit Assisi, to experience the town where Francis lived, to see the cross that spoke to him, to walk the paths that he walked, to pray in the churches where he prayed, to stand on the dirt where he died. I leave tomorrow truly on a pilgrim's journey. I am going with only the expectation of being present to whatever this place has to say to me.

I am blessed to be traveling with my new love, who is beginning his own Franciscan journey, and several of my brothers and sisters from the Heart of Texas Fellowship. On so many levels, this trip is a dream come true.

Here I am in the middle of the semester, beginning a journey that has the potential to be life changing, and bringing to an end a fantasy and making it a reality.

Assuming that Assisi has embraced a small piece of the 21st century (i.e. Wi-Fi) my intent is to blog daily while we are gone. Stay tuned for pictures and stories from the land of St. Francis and St. Clare.