Last Sunday, we went over to a former student’s college graduation party. This was my first college graduation party for one of my former students, so it was a little weird for me to see students who had just graduated from high school (or so it felt to me) celebrating graduating from college. It was a small group since so many former students were on vacation, but Mer and I had a good time catching up with Kristen and Josh, as well as meeting some of their college friends and getting reacquainted with Kristen’s family. We could only stay about an hour because we had to head down to our old neighborhood in New Baltimore for another party.

Our friend Anna is in a translation school in Switzerland, entering her third year of her three-year student visa. She was home in Ohio for a couple of weeks, and threw a bonfire party so she could see a bunch of people at once. We are very fond of Anna and her older brother Zach, and like the entire family – they are fun people. Zach is in England with his wife, and so this family of four kids from rural New Baltimore is pretty remarkably cosmopolitan.

We had a grand time at the bonfire. We got to catch up with Anna’s dad, who had recently been rehired at his old company after an 11-month layoff. Anna was her usual tongue-in-cheek skeptical self, and Mer and Anna got to talk for a long time about language. We got to hear about how Anna landed in Switzerland (a semester abroad from Kent State turned into a love affair with the country), and how she loves Europe but has found the high-pressure college system to be a turnoff to translating as a profession.

Sadly, because school started for us the next day, we had to leave earlier than we might have wanted to. I was a little glad, though, because I felt as if we had dominated Anna’s time and was happy that she could pay more attention to her friends her own age who had come to see her. It was a good day to catch up with people we enjoy.