busy

Today was a busy day. I drove Yoshi and his father and his father's friends to Pennsylvania. His father and his two friends are visiting from Japan. Yoshi's father has never been to the US before. We all drove in my red car with Mabel. It was crowded. It was fun, although the traffic was horrific some of the time, and getting out of New York was not easy. My car was very dirty, which I felt bad about; it seems like it might be an insult to a Japanese person, so I apologized profusely but I don't know if Yoshi conveyed my regrets. None of the guests speak English, more than hello and thank you. It was good for me to listen to Japanese all day. I actually understand some of it.

Bethlehem is the town where my mother was born and grew up, went to high school, ran around, met my father (when he was a student at Lehigh); where they lived shortly after they got married, after my mother dropped out of Barnard and went to finish in Bethlehem while my father worked as a reporter for the local newspaper. Bethlehem is true Pennsylvania. People are very simple and very friendly. I was wandering around taking pictures and this lady invited me into this strange old music hall that she was very proud of. She was sweet and she liked Mabel too.