It's Sunday evening, the day before the new quarter begins. This quarter I am teaching two classes, one of them is new for me and the other one I taught in the previous quarter, and taking one class and 3 points of research. It is going to be a very busy quarter and I hope I'll have time to do everything I need to do. The problem with the quarter system, especially as it is done at UC, is that it is so intense: the lessons are given on every other day and as a lecturer I have to prepare them, check works, prepare tests and check them as well. In the previous quarter I barely had time for all that, and I had to give up on checking the students works. Now that I start my studies I will have even less time for that, and it's making me nervous. D, on the other hand, is supposed to have an easier quarter than the previous one, but only slightly easier, and I guess she'll be busy as well. We don't expect to have time for fun during the weekends.
Our flights back were long ones. The part from Tel Aviv to NYC went pretty well: we took a flight with Olympic and the flights were very good, there was room for legs (especially in the Boeing 737 from Tel Aviv to Athens), and we had a separate pair of seats for us on the flight from Athens to JFK (it was an Aerbus 340-200, which was my first time to fly in and the seats are arranged in 2-4-2 format, unlike the 3-4-3 format on Boeing-747). Even the food wasn't that bad, although D, being the vegetarian that she is, got the same three meals, which made her quite sick of Greek antipasti.
To break the sequence of 4 flights from Tel Aviv to Dayton, Ohio we decided to spend the night in NYC. It proved to be a huge success, as we managed to meet three different friends in the limited time we had in the evening after arriving in NYC. It also proved to be a good idea because we came rested and refreshed after a good night's sleep to the second part of our flight sequence, which was less successful. It started with us waiting an hour and a half for a replacement steward on the first flight from JFK to Detroit, which made us miss the second flight from Detroit to Dayton by less than 5 minutes. I was at the gate of the second flight even before the flight was scheduled to leave, only to find out that the gate was locked. We had to wait 4 more hours for the late-night flight. This could have been alright if the management of the Detroit Metorpolitan Airport had realized that the temperatures on the last day of the year in Detroit might fall well below freezing point and had warmed up the terminal. They didn't realize and didn't warm the terminal and each time the gate opens to let people board and disembark the planes the terminal temperature dropped by another degree or two. In short, it was freezing cold there. We wore every possible coat, hat and scarf we had, and still were shivering. D caught a cold, which we assume was the blame of that waiting in the terminal, and she is now sitting here being all sick and miserable. We need the legendary Sunjay Gupta to save her. Eventually we arrived in our home after midnight so we missed all the celebrations and fire-works (except the ones we saw in the car mirror as we drove away from Dayton on our way to Cincinnati). Which reminds me: happy new year everyone.
On Friday I went to show my face at the university, just so that people would know that we returned from the vacation. The university was almost desolated, except for three people I know from the department. One of them is B, who is almost finishing his Ph.D. and was awaiting news regarding a possible position when we left to Israel. He is probably the only person that I talk with at the university on a regular basis. He landed the job, and I am really happy for him.
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