Amman August 19-23 and the USA August 24-September 3

I arrived back at ACOR in Amman mid-day on August 19, in time for a public lecture by Bethany Walker about the Mamluk period, followed by a reception. I spent the next few days sorting through the excessive amount of stuff I have in storage at ACOR, doing some processing of Humayma pottery and working on an overdue book review. I flew to Chicago on a direct flight on the morning of August 24. I will not be back in Jordan until March of 2010.

I arrived in Chicago in the mid-afternoon of August 24. I wanted to travel on to Dubuque, Iowa, to visit my parents, but travel options to Dubuque are few. A roundtrip airline ticket between Chicago and Dubuque costs $600, while there is only one bus a day that leaves early in the morning. Rather than spend the night in Chicago, I took a bus from O’Hare to Rockford, halfway to Dubuque, and stayed in a hotel there. The next morning I rented a car in Rockford and drove to Dubuque. I had tried that arrangement of renting a car in Rockford once before and it worked out hassle-free.

This trip to Dubuque was my first trip back since Christmas of 2007. My brother John and his wife Renee were away on vacation so I was not able to stay at their house in Dubuque. Instead I stayed at a hotel for the week. Once in Dubuque, the first thing I did was renew my driver’s license, which had expired on my birthday in March. I had obtained a six-month extension from the Iowa Department of Transportation, but that also was soon to expire. During my days in Dubuque, I had a busy schedule of dentist appointments as well as an eye examination. I also did plenty of shopping and one day I went on a nature walk in the Mines of Spain nature area south of town.

A meadow in the Mines of Spain nature area

A view from the Julien Dubuque monument showing a tourist boat on the Mississipi River with Dubuque in the distance

By the end of my stay in Dubuque, John and Renee returned from their trip and my sister Linda and her friend Dennis came up from Iowa City for a family get-together on August 30.

The Schick family

I also gave presentations about the Middle East to the residents of the Luther Manor retirement home where my parents are staying, and at my home congregation of St Peters Lutheran Church. On August 31, I also had an interview with a reporter from the local Telegraph Herald newspaper for a human interest article published in the September 1 edition. She had written an article about my work in India a few years ago, but this time she was interested in my Middle Eastern adventures. She was especially intrigued by my minimal material possessions that I have dispersed in storage around the world. The article, along with a short video of me, is available on the paper’s website: www.thonline.com.

On September 1 I drove to Rockford to drop off my rented car and then took the bus from Rockford to O’Hare airport. I checked into a hotel near the airport and then took the subway into the Loop, where I visited the Art Institute.

The next day I went to Hyde Park and the University of Chicago and spent the day meeting people. I first met Iman Saca, a Palestinian-American archaeologist colleague who I had last met a couple of months ago in Bethlehem. I then had a chat with Donald Whitcomb and Jan Johnson, fixtures at the Oriental Institute, and that evening I had dinner with Yorke Rowan, an archaeologist colleague whom I had last met in Jordan a couple of months ago. That was my first time back at the University of Chicago since mid-2006.

The next day, September 3, I took a flight to Frankfurt with a transfer in Philadelphia.