A Look Towards The Future

This has been a quiet week here in Seinajoki as my main focus has been to prepare for our Sunday game vs. the Roosters. Hard to believe it will soon be a week since Estalita and the kids left to go back to America. It is certainly an adjustment to not be able to see and spend time with them on a daily basis. I have used some of my time to reflect on this experience and consider some possibilities for the near future. After I leave Finland in 12 days, I will first travel back to North Dakota for 3 or 4 days to tie up some loose ends and pack up some items that we have there in storage. It will also give me a brief time to catch up with some good friends, students, and former colleagues, before I set off in the U-Haul truck to drive back to my new home in Maryland. I say new because I really haven't yet had a chance to live in the home even though we purchased it back in March of this year. I have spent a total of about 10 days there because of finishing my contract at Trinity and then heading off to Finland for the summer. I did shuttle back and forth a few times from the midwest to Maryland when we moved most of our things in April and then again later that month for a two day surprise visit. All in all, things worked out very well for us during our transition back to the east coast. We were able to finally close on the selling of our home in North Dakota last month and now we begin again in Maryland. We left the east in 1995 a week after getting married and ventured out west where would remain for some 14 years. We lived in a number of locales along the way. Those would include Big Sky and West Yellowstone, Montana. Also, there was Park City, Utah and Phoenix, Arizona. Our final stop was Ellendale, North Dakota where we spent the past 6 years while I coached college football and taught in the physical education department at the college. All of those stops were special in some way and hold many dear memories for us, but our final decision to head east was mostly influenced by our desire to live closer to our immediate
families.
My main focus when I return will be to help the kids get settled and be more of a presence around the house to help Estalita. I spent a lot of time working at Trinity due to my full-time coaching and teaching responsibilities and many evenings and weekends away from the family. I will probably do some substitute teaching in the region if I can link in somewhere and I've committed to teaching some distance ed. courses for this fall semester at TBC. Beyond that, I have decided to continue to pursue my writing goals and speak at a few coaching clinics this winter. Estalita and the children had a great time this summer and we are discussing the possibility of returning to Europe to do it again next year. We all feel blessed to have had the opportunity to do this and we feel no sense of urgency to close our minds to the idea of doing it again. The experience was enriching in so many ways and it provided a great avenue for slowing life down and reconnecting with eachother. Only time will tell where the next road will lead to.

Lights out.