Wow, it's been a while! Things have been going well in Amherst. I'm happy with my teaching overall, though I still need to work on how I want to handle/conduct my Aural Skills course. In a way it's the easiest course to teach in terms of workload, but at the same time it requires a lot of thinking on one's feet and knowing what will help students. My last couple of semesters teaching aural skills were a few years ago, and they didn't go very well (a combination of early morning, disinterested students, and some curriculum experimentation), so I think I lack the necessary confidence to feel good about it right now. I'll be observing a few other aural skills classes in the next week and seeing what I can do to feel better about it.

At the same time, we've been taking advantage of any extra time to get outside and do fun things. There are literally trails leading away from our back yard into a conservation area, which is one of my favorite places in the area so far: there are a surprising number of trails, all of which are quite pretty and very well maintained (and almost always deserted, except for the main trail, which has runners and dog walkers in the mornings and evenings).

We've also checked out a few of the bike trails. It's pretty easy to get from our place to the Norwottuck bike trail, which has become known as the "pizza ride" because it's easy to get off the trail and to Hillside Pizza, our new favorite restaurant. But the trail itself is lovely--it parallels busy route 9, but feels miles away, and on hot days it also feels noticeably cooler than the surroundings. (That's not so helpful anymore.) And it leads over a gorgeous railroad bridge over the Connecticut River, and into Northampton, where one can take several further trails all the way through Northampton or South to Easthampton.

(Brief side note: I haven't figured out the deal with town names around here. I know Northampton and Easthampton, as well as far-off Southampton and Westhampton, are quite separate towns, as are Hadley and South Hadley (though Hadley is mostly a bunch of farms and strip malls), but I don't know about North Amherst, Amherst Center, South Amherst, and Amherst. Nor do I know if "East Amherst," which I've seen written, really exists or is just a description, or why Mt. Holyoke College is in South Hadley rather than the (further South) Holyoke, or why all of these towns are seemingly in a great big jumble. And I am truly baffled why a community with such a transient (college/university) population refuses, as a matter of policy, to install a single street sign on any major road to confirm that, yes, you are on (say) Russell St., or why all roads longer than 3 blocks change names several times, requiring street signs to say things like "Cherry Ln to Jennifer St. to Grantwood Blvd." and requiring drivers to realize that a street called "Sunderland Rd" in Amherst is probably called "Amherst Rd" in Sunderland.)

Yesterday we took our new bike rack (above--thanks Mom and Dad!) on the car to Northampton and tried one of those trails, heading South, and then back East, before turning back around. It was a very pleasant ride. We took a little "nature trail" at the end of the bike trail in hopes of reaching a promised "overlook," which I assumed would be soaring cliff over the beautiful oxbow in the Connecticut River. It turned out to be a slight (20 foot?) rise over a small, swampy tributary of the oxbow, obscured by lots of trees. I had to strike a heroic pose to make up for the lameness of the overlook itself:

Seriously, it's probably a nice overlook for birdwatchers, but they could have warned us.

There's much more to tell, but this is enough for now. Amherst has been a great place to live so far, and we hear the most beautiful time of year is only weeks away!