(posted by Suz)

and I did not quit TKD (yet).  I’ve been in and out of town, and when in town, drowning in work/patent bar review classes etc.

I would go to the social events, if I had a long enough attention span to read Mary’s e-mails. :-)

Anyway, I went to June for a friend’s wedding in Italy, came back to work for a mad week of classes (I’m studying to take the patent bar) and work, then went on another vacation to Hawa’ii with my family.  We went to Honolulu and had a great time, but due to poor planning and general lameness did not do as many cool things as most people do when they are in Hawa’ii.  Certain siblings of mine preferred to stay in the hotel room all day. (???)  I practiced forms by the beach in the early morning when there were relatively few people to gawk at me.  That said, no one really paid attention to me, possibly because there were are lot of other people at the beach to stare at.  Also, the other people were scantily clad, whereas I was not.

Italy was a much shorter trip - I spent the first two days (one in Pisa and one in Milan) catching up on sleep and trying to fake it in Italian.  It went okay.  You can pick up a lot of Italian by repeating what Italians say to you.  Pisa was a nice small town, but I didn’t even go see the Tower, since I had just flown in and was sleep-deprived and jet-lagged.  Milan felt unfriendly and cold, except for some random friendly British guys I encountered.

Then I headed to Tuscany near Siena for three days of partying and “Sports Day” organized as part of my friend’s wedding.  It was a huge wedding group full of Caltechers (where the bride, groom, and myself went to school) and Londoners (as the bride and groom now live there).  British people are fun to party with, but some of them only seem interested in drinking.

At Sports day, we had a mad marathon of soccer, softball, bocci (?), flag football, and some bizarre fifth “sport.”  I played soccer and flag football, which was a lot of fun.  Our team (the groom’s side) lost. I think we weren’t just as athletic as the bride’s side, which was full of expert soccer players and people who cheat in sports.  (I was supposed to add that last phrase in surface support of the groom’s side.)

Well, hope to see you all again soon!