I started with a loooong day of traveling. Three flights to get to Bloomington, Indiana; from Kyiv to Amsterdam, then to Detroit, then to Indianapolis. The last flight was slightly delayed, but not nearly as much as it might've been.
My uncle (whom I hadn't seen since fall 2012,) met me at the airport, and we picked up his rental car. From there we drove to Bloomington, only having to turn around twice. Whoops! Even though the airport in Indianapolis is probably 10 years old, I've only gone from it to Bloomington one other time. Most of the time I fly into Chicago.
By the time we got home from dinner my body was completely confused as to what time it was, but I stayed awake chatting until after midnight. Ooops. That didn't help with jet lag.
I was wide awake the next morning at 0630, argh. It wasn't light outside and no one else was awake. I putzed around and found cereal for breakfast, cheerios for the win!!
Eventually everyone else was awake, and dad went to pick up a couple more arrivals. They came back to Bloomington, and we all said our hellos. I hadn't seen one cousin since January 2014, and an aunt since fall 2000. Clearly my family is not so good about getting together regularly.
Most people don't know that the brother of the Dalai Lama lived in Bloomington for many years, until he died in ........ During his years in the city he taught at Indiana university (I will usually refer to it as IU) and established the Tibetan Mongolian Buddhist Cultural Center.
This temple and complex is in southeastern Bloomington, and you feel as though you're in a totally different place. We walked around the prayer wheels and looked at the sand mandala inside one of the stupas. We looked inside the temple, noticing the religious books of several other faiths. It's a very calming place to spend time.
I went back to Dad's house for dinner, pizza was ordered. That's the biggest family dinner any of us remember for quite a while.
After dinner I went with Dad and my uncle to round 3 of the women's national invitational tournament, usually called the WNIT. Dad had scored courtside seats for us, which was awesome. I've never been that close to the action, it was a whole new perspective. IU won, which made it even better.
I tried to stay up for another basketball game, but didn't succeed.
Even though I fell asleep at a decent time, I still woke up super early, thanks jet lag.
Since I was up so early I was able to convince Dad to let me use his car to go to Needmore Coffee Roasters. I've known the owner for a long time, I was thrilled to support a local business. She has been roasting coffee wholesale for several years, having a coffee shop was quite new. All of her coffee beans are ethically sourced from fair trade farms in Central America. I'm not a coffee drinker, but all of her other products for sale in the shop are locally sourced.
She has found a great chai for use in a chai latte, which made me happy. I want to have more the next time I visit.
I picked up coffee to go for a couple cousins as well.
Not long after I got home, two cousins showed up, along with my sister and nephew. We had arranged to do a day long road trip, yay. At some point when I'd been looking at a map of the state I noticed there were a number of towns with names of countries. I thought it would be fun to visit a couple of them.
My sister drove, and since she knew where she was going, we weren't worried about getting lost on the back roads.
Our first stop was Cataract Falls State Recreation Area. From the name I suppose this makes it a step down from a state park, but I don't know what the difference actually is. Right near the first parkplatz is a red covered bridge, you can't help but see it.
On the other side of the bridge was a small path down to the water. Not a big path, I got the impression there aren't heaps of people who visit this area. Or maybe we were just early visitors in the season.
We got down to the water, each of us taking our own photos. My cousins and I travel semi regularly, and I love their photos. When I saw photos of this trip later on I was surprised by the differences, despite all of us being in the same place. Awesome.
The rec area has two sets of falls, upper and lower. The falls by the covered bridge are the upper falls, and according to the sign they are some of the biggest in the state. I had to climb down in a couple places, of course I ended up with bruises from falling against the rocks.
We walked along the road to lower falls instead of driving. Another thing my family has in common is a love of walking. On both sides of the road were woods, I figured there must be hiking trails in the area.
The lower falls weren't as impressive as the upper falls, but I'm still glad we saw them. I saw a couple people with big cameras setting up for shots, so maybe they saw something I didn't?
We drove to Poland, IN and went to a local diner for lunch. I'm a huge fan of diners, and the characters you see in them; I was thrilled when I'd found this place listed on a travel app.
The food was okay, not wonderful not awful, the pie wasn't nearly as good as I wanted. We all snickered to ourselves when we saw a man stand up wear leather motorcycle pants with suspenders. We overheard part of the conversation from a table on the other side of the room, they were talking about Trump. Given that this was small town Indiana, they were probably supporters.
There isn't much to the town of Poland, IN, it's really small. The church was quite picturesque though.
We next drove to our last stop: Brazil, IN. The seat of the county, and the birthplace of legendary union leader Jimmy Hoffa. While we were there we looked for him (or his body, as neither has been seen in a looong time,) but they were nowhere to be found.
Brazil isn't terribly exciting, with very little listed on travel apps. I liked the look of the county courthouse, which is quite grand. On the side of another building I saw a giant mural, but we didn't stop to see it.
After the coffee shop I convinced everyone else to stop for a few minutes in front of the courthouse. On one side of the front lawn was a plane, my guess is it was from WW2, the tail said FU-434. There was also a memorial to soldiers from a different era.
After this stop we drove back to Bloomington, my sister knew exactly where to go. Yay.
That night everyone had dinner at Dad's house, (two more family members had arrived,) then we watched another basketball game. As I said earlier, my family is sports obsessed.
The next morning was Saturday. Some folks went to the church to deal with technical issues, I went with the cousins to see a little of IU's campus. It's a gorgeous campus, consistently named as one of the most beautiful in the country.
That afternoon everyone gathered at the church for Grandma's memorial service. It was emotional, to say the least. Afterward we had a small reception, Dad and my uncle had put together photos of Grandma's life. I'd never seen many of them so it was fun to watch.
Toward the end of the reception we got someone to take photos of the entire group, which was awesome. For my family it's incredibly rare for a gathering like this to happen.
Afterward everyone went out to dinner together. Again, a nice gathering, with time to chat with each other.
I went back to Dad's house and packed up my stuff, then hopped in Mom's car and went with her to her flat.
On the way we stopped at a supermarket to pick up food for me, as I was determined to enjoy some foods I don't get to have very often.
The next morning the whole group went to church. For once, my family sat at the very front of the sanctuary, something else we rarely do. During the service my sister baptized her son, I was so proud. (My sister is an ordained minister, she has baptized several children.) I was happy to see her present her son to the congregation.
After the service we all went to lunch at a local restaurant. It was my first time there but everyone else seemed to know it, or had at least been there once before. Yum.
After eating I drove Mom back to her flat. She let me borrow her car to do some shopping around town, then I went over to my sister's house again. Since we don't get much sister time I wanted to take advantage while I could.
The next morning was the end of the trip. As usual I woke up early, so I took time to start packing. I'd come to the states with empty space in my pack, knowing I was going to shop.
I drove (in Mom's car,) to Dad's house where we picked up one of my aunts, then we drove to Indianapolis International Airport.
It was hard to say goodbye, and the trip was too short, but I'm glad it happened.
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