yawwwwwwn--written several days ago but not posted

I am tired and cold and rather stressed. But somehow I will live through this weekend and this trip to East St. Louis. I just hope this time I don't have people coming up to me on the street and trying to mug me for liter bottles of soda.

It was really funny yesterday, because I was talking to my friend in the conservation lab when she mentioned something about the last trip I went on to ESL. You see, I'd heard this story countless times from *one* side, so it was quite interesting to hear the *other* side.

Our networking class sets up computers and labs for various organizations in East St. Louis. I am now the TA for the course, which I took in the spring. However, some groups have lately been assigned to places in Champaign County, and so those groups only go to ESL once during the semester to participate in the community-service project where we give away computers. The second trip involves the actual lab implementation for those groups with organizations in ESL.

My friend and her group had to come late last semester because they had to survey their site here in Champaign County. The three of them showed up for dinner in our hotel looking rather wild-eyed. It turned out that they weren't allowed to drive school vehicles down to ESL because they hadn't registered with the University or something like that, and so a couple of drivers were dug up somewhere. One had just gotten her license to drive in the States and the other just didn't drive very often. Anyway, my friend told me that they all nearly died on the way down so many times, the three of them in her group just started laughing hysterically all the time. And the drivers were mad. My friend and her group offered to drive in spite of the University rules, but were turned down. My friend has had some interesting experiences since she's lived in various parts of Asia and the Middle East, and so I have no doubt that this woman drove like a crazy person. I guess she was cutting across about five lanes of traffic, going 90 mph.

But when I spoke with my friend in the conservation lab yesterday, she mentioned that a friend of hers got stuck driving some students down to ESL on a trip and that they were mean and yelling at her and were just ungrateful in general. But she did admit that perhaps her friend was actually a lousy driver.