My passport came today! Is it weird that it took less than two weeks for it to be processed? I had been told on September 30 to expect it to arrive in four weeks and that my birth certificate would arrive after that. I was led to believe I wouldn't have it until the end of October. So imagine my surprise to check the mail and find my passport and birth certificate! Now I can travel at will.

This has the potential to be really cool: I might be going to the Dominican Republic in March! I'm on the board for L.O.V.E. (Lasallian Outreach Volunteer Experience), which is Manhattan College's service trip program. At our last meeting, we decided to add two new trips, one to Galveston, TX during January and one to DR during spring break. I am unavailable during January (LONDON YAY, although if I wasn't going to to London, I'd be in New Orleans, so I wasn't going to Texas either way), so I said I'd be totally interested in DR. Also, I might be co-leading this trip. Jenn (our coordinator) said that since these trips are new, she'd prefer to have 2 leaders for each, and she'd prefer that the leaders this time around came from the board, since we are all trustworthy. Katie B. and DJ will probably lead the TX trip, but Emily, Dave, and I all said we want to do the DR, so who knows. Right now, nothing is confirmed, but I think I have a really good chance of getting to go if the trip does end up going ahead.

My mom thinks it's really funny that of all the places I could be going to for a service trip, it could be the Dominican Republic. You see, her brother, my Uncle John, has been there many times, and at one point was claiming that once he retired he would buy a house there and split his time between the DR and Pennsylvania. That never happened; he retired and now just lives in PA. He also claims that at one point he somehow became good friends with whoever was the president at the time. Apparently, during one DR visit, Uncle John went with this president and got to inspect the troops. Also this president declared it to be "John Geary Day."( I have no idea which president of the Dominican Republic Uncle John was referring to, by the way). I'm not really sure how much of this is true. Uncle John is crazy in the usualy "my family is insane" sort of way.

And something random: While I was Googling in an attempt to confirm the existence of John Geary Day (results are inconclusive), I was suddenly reminded of a picture of my grandfather someone had shown me a few years back. It's a picture of him wearing a long NYPD overcoat that they used to wear in the 40's-60's and I believe it's on display in the New York City Police Museum. When I looked for it, all of the picture links were broken on the site I ended up on, and I was extremely frustrated. BUT I did manage to find it. And I'll share it with you:
   

 

I thought that was cool. He actually retired an Inspector, so he was fairly high ranking. Apparently it was his idea to put barricades in strategic locations in Times Square during the New Year's Even celebration. Basically he was a total badass.